There was dead silence for some seconds, Uncle Dominick was the first to break it.
“You married her?” he said slowly, the words falling from his lips like drops of acid. “You mean to say she is your wife?”
Willy nodded stubbornly.
My uncle stood looking at him, the blood mounting in dark waves to his pale face, till I should scarcely have known him. He made a stammering attempt to speak, and moved some steps forward towards Willy, groping with his hands in front of him as if he were blind, before the words came.
“Leave the house!” he gasped, in a high, shrill voice—“leave the house!”—swaying as if shaken by the passion that filled him—“you infernal, lying scoundrel, or I will kick you out like a dog!”
He stopped again to take breath, but recovering himself caught at the collar of Willy’s coat as if to put his threat into execution.
“You needn’t trouble yourself,” said Willy, raising his arm and retreating before his father’s onslaught. “You’ve seen pretty nearly the last of me now; but, whether you like it or no, I’m going to stay here for to-night.”
Uncle Dominick grasped at the edge of the sideboard to steady himself, his face so dark and swollen that I thought he was going to have a fit.
“Stay here!” he roared, the full tide of rage breaking from him with ungoverned savageness. “Stay here! I’ll see you damned before you spend another night in this house!”
“Now, look here,” said Willy, in a hard, overbearing voice, keeping his eyes fixed on his father’s face, “it’ll be the best of your play to keep quiet. I’m going to stay here, and that’s the end of it!”
His insolent manner appeared to cow my uncle. The colour began to fade from his face, and his expression became more controlled, though it was more evil than ever when he spoke next.
“And your bride? May I ask if she has done me the honour of coming here?” He wiped a thin foam from his lower lip with his trembling hand. “Or is she perhaps at her father’s residence?”
Willy turned his face so that I could not see it. “She’s in Cork,” he said.
“I suppose you intend eventually to return here after your honeymoon?” my uncle went on, with a nasty smile, pouring out and drinking another glass of brandy, while he waited for Willy’s reply.
“I’ve done with this place for ever,” answered Willy steadily, looking straight at his father. “I married Anstey Brian for a reason that maybe you know as well as I do.”
“What do I know about your reasons for degrading yourself?” interrupted my uncle, dashing his hand down upon the sideboard with a return of his first fury. “I only know one thing about her, and that is, that she and her family shall get no good of their infamous plotting!”—the glasses on the sideboard clashed and rang as he struck it again. “You shall never own a stick or a stone of Durrus!” he cried in his harsh, broken voice. “Your cousin shall have it all—your cousin shall get everything I have. I will see to that this very night!”
“Oh, all right,” Willy answered coolly; “the sooner the better. But I may as well tell you that if you went down on your knees to me this minute, I wouldn’t touch a halfpenny, nor the value of one that belonged to you. I’ve money enough to take me to Australia, and when I go away to-morrow morning it will be for good and all.”
I had up to this stood by a scared and silent spectator; but now I tried to make my voice heard—
“I won’t have it, Uncle Dominick,” I said, half choked with my own eagerness. “It is no use leaving it to me; I won’t have your money.”
Uncle Dominick took no notice of me at all. He had sat down on the chair nearest him, his passion having seemingly exhausted his strength, and his hand on the table beside him shook and twisted as if he had lost all control over its muscles.
Willy spoke to me for the first time.
“See here, Theo,” he said gently, also ignoring my protest, “you’d better go on upstairs out of this; you can’t do any good here.” He glanced at his father. “Do go now, like a good girl; he and I have got things to settle before I go.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and half pushed me to the door.
“Promise you won’t let him do that,” I said, trying to hold the door as he opened it. “Tell him I won’t have it.”
He did not answer; but, disengaging my fingers from their grasp of the door, he held them in his for an instant.
“I’ll see you again,” he said; and then shut the door and left me standing outside.
I waited for a long time in the drawing-room, but Willy did not come. Ten and eleven struck; the fire died out, and the candles on the chimney-piece burned down till the paper which fitted them into their sockets took fire and began to flare smokily. I went out into the hall and listened, but could hear no sound of voices. Some one was moving about upstairs. Perhaps Willy had gone up by the back stairs from the dining-room. Perhaps he had changed his mind and did not want to see me after all, I thought, making my way up to my room in unutterable weariness and despondency.
There was a light under his door when I passed, and I stopped uncertainly outside. He was dragging boxes about, and opening and shutting drawers; evidently he was packing. Should I call him? This would be my last chance of seeing him, as he was going away by the early train in the morning. But with the thought, the remembrance of Anstey fell like a shadow between him and me. What could I say to him if I were to see him? How could I ignore the subject which must be uppermost in both our minds? And yet, how could I bring myself to speak of it? Most likely he had felt this same difficulty, and had purposely avoided meeting me.
I went slowly on from his door, and into my own room, trying to realize the impossible thought that I had seen the last of Willy. Willy, the trusty comrade of many a day’s careless pleasuring; who had taken me out schooling and ferreting, and had ransacked every hedge to cut for me superfluous numbers of the flattest of black-thorns, and the straightest of ash plants—Willy, with whom I used to gossip and wrangle and chaff in the easiest of intimacy; who had been, as he himself would have expressed it, the “best playboy” I had ever known. I could not believe in this grim ending, that would have been grotesque, if it had not been so tragical. Willy married to Anstey Brian, and going away for ever to-morrow morning, and going without even saying good-bye!—these were things too hard and too sorry to be taken in easily.
A knock came at my door.
“Theo, are you there? Could I see you for a minute?”
I opened the door and went out into the corridor. Willy was standing there in his shirt-sleeves.
“I heard you coming up,” he began quickly, “and I came to say ‘Good-bye.’”
“Oh, Willy!” I said wretchedly, “are you really going?”
“Yes; I’m off by the early train,” he answered. “It’s late now; I won’t keep you up.” He put out his hand to me. “Good-bye,” he said.
I took his hand, and held it, unable to say a word.
“Good-bye,” he repeated, in a whisper.
“Willy,” I cried suddenly, “why did you do it? Why did you do it?”
“I can’t tell you—I had to. Maybe, some day——” he broke off. “I must go. Will you say ‘Good-bye’ to me?”
“I will,” I said, carried away by the restrained misery of his voice, and putting my arms round his neck. “You’ve been too good to me—oh, Willy, my dear, I’ve brought you nothing but bad luck. Good-bye.”
I kissed his cheek—he was my only cousin, and I was never going to see him again—and then I tried to draw myself away from the grasp that was tightening round me, but it was too late.
“I’ll never say ‘Good-bye’ to you,” he said fiercely, straining me to him. “I won’t let you go till you tell me if you meant what you said to me in the wood. Was it me you cared for, after all?”
“Don’t ask me, Willy,” I implored. “Let me go!”
“I won’t!” he answered, with reckless passion, trying to press his lips against mine.
I put my hands over my face, with a shrinking which told me in a moment the depth of the self-delusion which had carried me to the point of saying I would marry him. He must be told the truth now, no matter what it cost.
“I meant that I was fond of you,” I said; “but I never was in love with you.”
“I see,” he said bitterly. He let me go at once. “Then it was Nugent, after all.”
I turned away without answering, but at my own door I stopped, and again held out my hand.
“Willy,” I said, breaking into tears, “say ‘Good-bye.’”
He took my hand again, and kissed it softly; he was crying too.
“God help us both!” he said. “Good-bye.”
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The postmaster at Rathbarry was evidently not in the habit of despatching many telegrams. He was now standing in the street, scratching his red beard, and looking thoughtfully up at the single wire which dropped from the tarred pole—literally the last outpost of civilization—down through the roof of his little shop, while I read to him the message with which I had ridden over early on Tuesday morning.
“You know where Boston is?” I asked, when I had finished; “Boston, in America, you know?”
“Boyshton, miss?” he said, correcting my pronunciation. “I do, miss. Sure I think it’s there that me sisther’s son is a plumber these five years.”
“Well, listen,” I said, beginning to read it aloud again, “‘To Farquharson, 16, Charles Street, Boston. Start for Boston February 6th. Theo.’ Are you quite sure you understand it? It is very important.”
“No fear at all, miss,” he answered, and went into his shop to get my change.
This was a lengthy proceeding, which involved the sending of a little girl to the public-house opposite, and an argument, as to the amount to be returned to me, between Mr. Cassidy, the postmaster, and his daughter. However, I was in no particular hurry to get back, and Blackthorn never objected to standing. The day felt more like May than the second of February. The only tokens of yesterday’s rain were the swollen yellow streams in the gutters on either side of the narrow street, and the delicate clearness of the sky. It was so enticingly mild and spring-like, that by the time that Mr. Cassidy had brought me my change, I had made up my mind to go home by the longer road, instead of by the usual way round the head of the harbour.
The road I had chosen went past the Clashmore entrance gates, and as I rode slowly along it, I noticed the ravages which the storm had worked in The O’Neill’s woods. Half-uprooted firs and beeches leaned forlornly against their neighbours in every direction among the plantations that sloped to the road, and torn boughs hung over the demesne wall. Near the big front gates a group of men was collected in the road, where a tree had, in falling, partly broken down the wall. As I came near, one of them, a short, square man, detached himself from the others, and, lifting his hat, walked towards me. To my astonishment I found that it was O’Neill himself.
“How do you do? I’m delighted to see you,” he began effusively. “I see you’re surprised to find me here. I came down from Dublin on Saturday, to settle some business, and I’ve been shut up ever since by the storm. I dare say you’ve had plenty of it at Durrus?” He hardly waited for my answer. “And what have you been doing with yourself all this time?” he went on. “I don’t think you look quite the thing—very charming, of course”—with a wave of his hand—“but still not as blooming as you did when I saw you last.”
“I have been in the house a good deal lately,” I answered evasively; “the weather has been so bad.”
“Has Willy come back from Cork yet?” O’Neill asked, turning to look at where his men were working as he spoke. “I heard that he was there yesterday.”
There was no use in trying to conceal a fact that would soon become common property.
“Yes,” I answered, in a constrained voice, “he came home last night, but not to stay; he—he went away again this morning.”
“Ah!” said O’Neill, still watching the sawing and chopping of the fallen tree; “has he gone away for long?”
“Yes; I am afraid he has.”
“Gone to England, has he?” pursued O’Neill, running his pudgy hand along my horse’s neck.
“No,” I replied unwillingly; “at least, I believe he is going there first.”
“Then he is going to emigrate?” O’Neill said quickly, forgetting his endeavour to appear ignorant, and looking at me through his eye-glass with undisguised excitement.
I made no answer.
“The fact is,” O’Neill went on, clearing his throat, “I heard some rumour that he had got into trouble; but I hoped it might not have been true. These people,” with a glance at his workmen, “delight in exaggerating, especially if it is bad news.”
Then it had become common property.
“What did they tell you?” I said faintly.
O’Neill’s red face got a trifle redder.
“Well, it sounds preposterous, but they had some cock-and-a-bull story that he had—a—in fact,” he said, looking considerately away from me, “they said he was married.”
“It is quite true,” I said, with despairing candour; “he has married the daughter of the man at the lodge, and he—that is to say—they, have started for Australia.”
“God bless my soul!” ejaculated O’Neill. “Dear, dear, how very shocking! I couldn’t believe it when those fellows told me about it this morning. What a pity it all is—a nice young fellow like that ruining himself in such a way, and we all thought——” He stopped and stammered, perhaps becoming aware for the first time of the connection between the news we were discussing and my pale face and red eyes. “I mean, we had never anticipated anything of this kind.”
I began to gather up my reins preparatory to saying good-bye.
“I hope Madam O’Neill is quite well? I have not heard from Connie for a long time.”
“Oh, quite well—quite well, thank you. I left them in Dublin.” Then, laying his hand on the reins as if impelled by irresistible curiosity, “I suppose your uncle is very angry with Willy?”
I assented.
“Ah! very naturally; but, upon my soul, I think it was as much his own fault as any one else’s. He never could get on with his own family, you know. There was your poor father, now—the dearest fellow in the world—my greatest friend—though, of course, he was a good deal older than I,” O’Neill threw in parenthetically,—“he never hit it off with him. He hasn’t spoken to me for years past because I backed up Owen when he got into trouble with his father; and there was that other business about Owen’s funeral—a hole and corner affair—no one given any notice about it, the poor dear fellow buried in Cork as if he were a pauper!” O’Neill paused, and blew his nose with indignant vigour. “But all that’s neither here nor there,” he resumed; “all I mean to say is, that Dominick was not the man to make the best of a young fellow. That poor boy Willy never got a chance. He was brought up, as you might say, among the common people; and, now I come to think of it, we did hear something of this girl before—but that was before you came, you know. Ahem!”—he cleared his throat—“it really is most incomprehensible.”
“I am afraid I must say good-bye, O’Neill,” I said hurriedly, each of his words giving me a fresh stab; “and I do not know if I shall see you again, as I am going away on Saturday. I am going back to America.”
O’Neill looked as aghast as was possible for a person of his complexion.
“That’s the worst news I have heard yet. How can you treat us so cruelly?” he said gallantly. “You come over and break all our hearts, and then off you go, and leave us to mend them as best we can.”
“I hope it is not as bad as all that,” I said, with a sickly smile. “I won’t say good-bye to you now; I am sure I shall see you again before I go—perhaps at Miss Burke’s to-morrow.” And I rode quickly away, without heeding the farewell words that he shouted after me.
To say the truth, I could not face another good-bye, even with O’Neill, and I trotted home at a good pace along the muddy road, doing my best to outstrip the associations that every fresh turn in its familiar windings called up.
There was a note for me on the hall table when I arrived.
“Miss Burke left it herself, miss,” said Roche, “and she hopes you’ll send over an answer this afternoon. She wanted to see the masther, but sure he’s not able to see any one—and no wondher, faith, no wondher!”
The note was written on the small coquettish paper, with a golden “Mimi,” engrossed on the corner, which was affected by Miss Burke, and her good-natured, untidy handwriting had sprawled over all four sides of the sheet. She said that she “heard that Willy was gone,” and, without making any further comment, she asked me if I would come and stay with them for as long or as short a time as I might wish. She hoped I would come to-morrow, if possible, as it was their “at home” day, and I might meet a few friends; and she remained, mine most affectionately, Mary Burke.
I considered the matter. It certainly would be a relief to get away from Durrus and its horrible silence and forsakenness, even for a night or two. To-day was Tuesday; I did not start till Saturday. If I went over to Garden Hill to-morrow afternoon, timing my arrival so as to evade the “few friends,” I could stay there till Friday morning. I knew it would make no difference to my uncle; I could tell him about it when I saw him at dinner: and I sent a note telling Miss Burke that I should be very glad to go over to her to-morrow afternoon. But I did not see my uncle at dinner.
“He’s not at all well, miss,” Roche said mysteriously. “I was telling him a while ago that ’tis for the docthor he should send; but indeed, he was for turning me out of the room when I said it.”
“Do you think he would like to see me?”
“Don’t go near him at all to-night, miss,” Roche answered, with unexpected urgency. “He’ll be betther to-morrow—you’ll see him then.”
But I did see my uncle again that night. When I went upstairs to bed, I was startled by seeing his tall figure, in his dressing-gown, standing outside the door of the room which Willy had locked. He had a large bunch of keys, and was trying them one after the other in the lock.
“Perhaps you can help me with these,” he said, looking round as I came up to him. “I am almost sure that one of these keys opens this door, but I cannot find it.”
His hand trembled so much, that the keys were shaking and jingling as he held them out to me.
“I am afraid Willy has got the key——” I began.
“But, my dear, I think it is very probable that we shall find Willy in that room,” he said, in a low confidential voice, pressing the keys upon me. “I cannot think why he remains in there. I have tried several times to-day to open the door, but that fellow Roche keeps pestering me. I believe he is in league with Willy.”
My own hand was trembling almost as much as my uncle’s, but I did not dare to refuse to take the keys, and I made a pretence of trying one in the lock. He watched me anxiously for a moment.
“No, my dear, I see it is no use trying to-night. You are tired, and so am I”—he sighed deeply, and put his hand to his chest,—“this oppression that I am suffering from tries me terribly. I will go to my room and see if I can get a little rest. I need rest sadly.”
“Yes, you look very tired,” I said, in as ordinary a voice as I could manage, handing the keys back to him.
“Do I? Well, to tell you the truth, I have been quite unable to sleep lately. I am so much disturbed by these hackney carmen who make it a practice to drive past the house at all hours of the night; I hope they do not annoy you? I have told them several times to go away, but they simply laugh at me. And the strange thing is,” he continued, leaning over the rail of the corridor and looking suspiciously down into the hall, “that though that tree is still lying across the avenue, it does not stop them in the least—they just drive through it. Well, good night, my dear,” he said, nodding at me in a friendly way; “we must give it up for to-night, but we shall unearth Master Willy to-morrow.”
He nodded again, and walked away down the corridor.
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When Maggie came into my room next morning, she told me that Dr. Kelly had been sent for.
“The masther was very bad all the night, and it wasn’t daylight when Misther Roche come down and said Mick should go for the docthor.”
I dressed as quickly as I could, and, when I came downstairs, found that Dr. Kelly was already with my uncle. I rang the bell, and, after an unusual delay, Roche answered it.
“You had better ask Dr. Kelly to come in to breakfast,” I said.
“Very well, miss; he’ll be going now in a minute. He’s with the masther in the little study.”
“In the little study?”
“Yes, indeed, miss. At four o’clock this morning he lepped out of his bed, and nothing would do him only to go downstairs; first he was for going away out of the house down to the bog, or the like o’ that, an’ when I was thrying to stop him, he says, ‘Let go,’ says he, ‘Poul-na-coppal is the only place,’ says he; ‘we’ll be late if we don’t go now!’ and I was put to me thrumps to howld him.”
“Did you tell Dr. Kelly all this?”
“Oh, bedad, I did, miss!” said Roche, with modest pride, “and more too. There he is now in the hall. I’ll go tell him you want to spake to him.”
The little doctor’s vulgar authoritative voice and complacent manner inspired me with a certain confidence in him, though what he said about Uncle Dominick was not very reassuring.
“It’s hard enough to say how it’ll go with him,” he said, sitting down opposite to me at the breakfast-table. “Yes, thank you, I take three lumps; I’ve a very sweet tooth. Of course, he’s not as young as he was, y’ know; it’s a nasty attack, and his constitution’s greatly pulled down since I saw him last.”
Beyond this he did not seem inclined to give an opinion, and began to tell me about some Shakespeare recitations, in which, it appeared, he was to take a prominent part. But I reverted to the subject of my uncle’s illness at the first opportunity.
“Oh, never fear, he’ll pull round; but we’ll have to be very careful of him,” he said, hurrying through his breakfast with practised rapidity.
“He was wandering in his head last night,” I said tentatively.
“Oh, I know that, I know that,” he replied, rubbing his truculent red moustache violently with his napkin; “Roche told me all about that.”
“Because,” I went on, “if you thought there was anything serious, I would not go over to Garden Hill to-day. Miss Burke asked me to spend a few days with her,” I explained.
“Well, why not?” broke in Dr. Kelly, brusquely. “Now, if you don’t mind me telling you so, it would be the best thing you could do”—screwing up one small intelligent eye and looking at me observantly. “You just want a little change, and Roche is well able to mind your uncle”—he gave his tea-cup a swing to collect what remained of the three lumps before swallowing its contents. “Well, I must be off now. I’ll be at Miss Burke’s meself this afternoon, and I’ll call in here again on my way home. Good morning.”
Roche was waiting in the hall, and I heard Dr. Kelly’s last words.
“Mind, now, you keep a good eye on him. I’ll send over the medicine.”
Up to this I had not been able to examine the contents of the post-bag, and I now went over to the sideboard and shook them out. There was nothing in it but a circular or two, and a small flat parcel. I turned over the latter, and saw with a start my own name in Willy’s cramped boyish handwriting. Cutting the string quickly, I found inside another wrapping of paper, carefully tied up, and sealed with his well-remembered signet-ring. Under the string a half-sheet of note-paper, folded in two, had been slipped. There were only a very few words written in pencil on it.
“I think you have a right to this, and some day I would like you to see it, but please don’t open it till my father is dead. Yours ever, W.”
I turned the parcel over and over. It felt like a book with a soft cover; but why Willy, of all people in the world, should send me a book, and what it could have to say to Uncle Dominick was more than I could fathom.
It was no use trying to think about it. Everything lately had gone beyond my powers of comprehension. I was sick of conjectures, and exhausted by unexplainable disasters. I would not let myself think of Willy; it did not bear thinking of, that he was now turning his back on his own home, for no apparent reason, except the contradictory one that he had married, contrary to his father’s wishes, a girl whom he did not love. One comfort was, that I also was soon to leave Durrus behind me, and in my case it would certainly be for ever. Even if Uncle Dominick had meant anything by his threat of leaving me his property, it did not make any difference to me. Nothing would induce me to have anything to say to it. Willy would have to come home and take possession when the time came, and I would go on living my peaceful uneventful life in the house in Charles Street with Aunt Jane. That was what it was going to be, I determined—a placid, unexciting existence; an occasional classical concert; a literary tea or two; no more dances or frivolities—I had in the last two or three months grown too old for them.
I went up to my room and began to get through some preliminary packing before lunch, and as with a heavy heart I folded up and laid in my trunk the dresses which I had bought in Boston with such pleasant anticipations, Aunt Jane’s words came back to me with humiliating force—“I trust you will not have cause to regret the headstrong self-will which has made you unable to content yourself in a quiet and God-fearing household.”
The morning went quickly by, and, when I had finished packing, I sat down by the window with an aching back and a hot head, but nevertheless with satisfaction in the thought that the big trunk which I had just filled and locked need not be opened again until it had once more taken up its quarters in the house in Charles Street. Some irrational sentiment had made me defer the packing of my habit till the last moment, and when I did at last lay it on the top of my dresses, I slipped the parcel Willy had sent me into its folds.
I raised the window, and looked out into the mild still air. By this time next week, Willy and I would both be on the sea, being carried to opposite ends of the earth, without anything to connect us for the future, except this parcel, which he had forbidden me to open. It seemed to me, as I looked out at the woods of Durrus, the place that I was so fond of, and that yet I almost hated, that it was a true saying—
The sky was dark and sullen, with layers of overlapping clouds roofing it down to the horizon, and on the lonely sea-stretches there was not so much as a fishing-boat to be seen. The place was unusually deserted, and in nothing was Willy’s absence more clearly shown than in the fact that the fallen sycamore was still lying across the bend of the avenue, no attempt having even been made to cut away the branches. I looked away from it with a shudder, remembering Uncle Dominick’s dreadful confidences about it the night before, and I wondered how I should summon up courage enough to go into his room to say good-bye to him. It seemed unnatural to leave him when he was ill; but I knew very well that I could be of no real use to him, and the mere thought of another scene such as that of last night actually made my blood run cold.
A sound of the snapping of twigs made me again look in the direction of the fallen tree, and I saw that a woman, whom I soon recognized as being Moll Hourihane, was breaking away some of the smaller branches, and making them into a bundle for firewood. It was the first time I had ever seen her occupy herself rationally, or that I had been able to watch her in unobserved security, and my eyes followed her movements with a fascinated curiosity as she made herself a large bundle, and, having hoisted it on to her back with surprising ease, crossed the grass between the house and the drive, and walked along close under the windows until she reached the end one, which was the French window of my uncle’s study. She stood for a moment or two outside, looking in, and then drew her hand once or twice down the glass.
I had leaned as far out of my window as was possible, and I now called out to her, “Go away! You will disturb the master. Go away at once!”
She drew back from the window, and looked up, shading her eyes with her hand, to see where my voice had come from. She soon saw me, and I again motioned to her to go away. Instead, however, of doing so, she stood quite still, and throwing back her head, she fell into a sort of paroxysm of voiceless laughter, pointing at me, and rolling her head from shoulder to shoulder. Seeing that she paid no attention to what I said to her, I was on the point of leaving the window to go and look for Roche, when the French window was opened, and Roche himself came out, and with a torrent of abuse, delivered in voluble Irish, he drove her away.
“The divil’s cure to her!” I heard him say to himself as she retreated, “coming frightening the masther like that!”
“Roche,” I called, “how is the master?”
“Oh, a dale betther, miss,” he replied, coming under my window. “He was quite aisy till that owld one came with her ugly face at the window. But sure you can see him to-day before you go; he’s quite composed in his mind. He was asking for yourself just now.”
In order to be quite sure of missing most of Miss Burke’s friends, I had not ordered the trap till half-past four, and I put off going to see Uncle Dominick until about a quarter of an hour before the time I was to start. At the door of his study I met Roche coming out.
“Go in, miss; he’s getting on first-class. I’ll have a cup of tay ready for you agin you’re coming out,” he said, opening the door for me.
My uncle was standing by the window, with a book in his hand. He gave a quick glance at me as I came in.
“Yes, they are capital prints,” he said, as if in continuance of a conversation. “I am glad you have come. There is very little light left; but if you will come to the window, I will show them to you.”
He had on the long Paisley shawl dressing-gown which he had worn the night before; his figure looked immensely tall against the dull light; and his high bowed shoulders, with his head sunk on his chest, gave him the appearance of some forlorn sick raven.
“I have come to say good-bye to you for a day or two,” I said, going over to the window. “I am going over to the Burkes’.”
“Well, you will have time to look at this book before you go,” he answered, turning over its leaves with a sort of suppressed eagerness. “This now, do you remember showing me this?” He held the book towards me, and I saw that it was the old volume of “The Turf, the Chase, and the Road,” which my father had given him, and he and I had once before looked over together. “That is a long time ago now.”
“Yes,” I replied, glad to find that he was so easy to talk to; “I can hardly believe that it is only three months since I came.”
He looked fearfully ill and wasted; he was shaking from head to foot, and his restless, bloodshot eyes kept wandering from the book to the trees outside. Whatever Dr. Kelly might say, I was certain that he was much worse than he had even been last night. I could not pretend to myself that I was fond of him; but after all, now that Willy was gone, I was practically the only relation he had left in the world, and I felt more and more that it would be heartless of me to go away and leave him in such a state.
He did not appear to notice what I had said, and I went on—
“I don’t really care about going to the Burkes’ in the least, Uncle Dominick. I would quite as soon stay with you, if you would like me to.”
“Stay with me! What do you mean?” he said, with some surprise, slipping the book into the wide pocket of his dressing-gown. “You only came last night—or was it the night before?—and, of course, you must stay. You will have to attend the old man’s funeral. You know”—with a low laugh—“they all think that you were buried in Cork; but you’re not, you know—you’re not.”
He had laid his trembling hand on my wrist to emphasize what he said, and I was afraid to move.
“No, do not go,” he went on, his voice getting more and more hurried. “I want you to see about that fallen tree. They cannot possibly get the hearse up to the door while it is there. Why are you looking so frightened, Owen? She is not here. You know, you were very ill when you came, and I had to get her to look after you. She was looking in through the window a little time ago; but Roche hunted her away, and she can’t do you any harm now.”
I was almost too terrified by this time to be able to conceal my fear; but I said, as calmly as I could—
“I am not afraid of her. I think it is time for me to go now; let me send Roche to you.”
“No, no!” he whispered anxiously, clutching my wrist more tightly, “he knows nothing about it; he wasn’t here. No one knows but Mary Hourihane, and it was all her fault. Owen!” he cried, his voice rising hysterically, “don’t stare at me! I declare to God I never did anything to you until she came in and asked me to help her to take you—there—out through that window—out to Poul-na-coppal.” He dragged me from the window into the dark corner by the fireplace. “Hide there! Be quick! lest she should see you!” he panted, his teeth chattering, and the perspiration breaking out on his forehead. “I hear her coming. There she is!” fixing frenzied eyes on the wall opposite. “Look at the bog-mould on her hands. She says she did it for my sake! Don’t let her come near me; she will put her arms round my neck, and I shall die!” He let go my hand, and made a rush to the window. “She is out there too!” he said, with an awful cry, turning back and cowering again in the corner by the fireplace; “and there—and there; she is everywhere! Don’t leave me, Owen!”
But his appeal did not stop me in my flight from the room for help.
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I am not very clear as to what happened next, Mrs. Rourke told me afterwards that I had burst into the kitchen with “a face on me like death,” only able to say, “The master—go to the master!”
After that, I suppose I somehow made my way to the drawing-room, as I next remember walking to and fro between the window and the fireplace, with a confused feeling that by doing so I should steady my whirling brain.
He had called me “Owen.” He had mistaken me, in his madness or delirium, for his dead brother—a mistake which my strong likeness to my father made easy to understand; but neither madness nor delirium could account for all he had said. “You were very ill when you came.” “They all think that you’re buried in Cork; but you’re not, you know!” “I declare to God I never did anything to you.” “She asked me to help her to take you—there—out through that window.”
What had all this meant? He certainly believed he was speaking to my father. If I could only think it out quietly! What had Moll Hourihane to say to my father, and what had she done to him that he should be afraid of her?
Then he had spoken of “the old man’s funeral”—my grandfather’s funeral. How, even in his ravings, could he have forgotten that his brother died two or three days before his father? It was no use; I could not think it out. I must wait until my brain was calmer, till my thoughts had ceased to reel and spin. I was only groping in the dark—in a darkness from whose depths one persistent idea was thrusting itself at me like a sword.
The distant sound of wheels on the drive reminded me that it was past the time at which I was to start for Garden Hill. I hastily resolved to wait and see Dr. Kelly before going there, and I rang the bell in order to send a message to that effect out to the yard. No one answered it for some time, but at length the door opened. I was standing by the fire, with my elbows on the mantel-shelf and my forehead in my hands, and, hearing a bashful murmur in Maggie’s voice, I said, without turning round—
“Tell Tom I shall not want the trap until I send for it.”
The door closed, but footsteps advanced into the room.
“Well, what is it?” I said wearily, taking down my arms.
There was no answer, and, turning round, I found myself face to face with Nugent.
I looked at him stupidly, without taking the hand which he had conventionally held out to me. He drew it back quickly.
“How do you do?” he said very stiffly. “Miss Burke asked me to leave a message for you on my way home. She hopes you do not forget that she expects you this afternoon. She thought you would have been with her at tea time.
“I could not go,” I answered, without moving.
“Miss Burke desired me to say that you were not to disappoint her,” going on conscientiously with his message, “as Dr. Kelly had told her there was no necessity for your staying with Mr. Sarsfield.”
“My uncle has been much worse. I must wait and see Dr. Kelly.”
My lips were stiff and cold, and I moved them with difficulty. It did not occur to me to ask him to sit down; my only wish was that he should go away while I was still able to keep up the semblance of an ordinary demeanour. He looked at me for a moment.
“I am very sorry to hear that Mr. Sarsfield is worse. Miss Burke had no idea of that when she sent the message.”
“I do not know when I shall be able to go to her. Perhaps never!”
The last words forced themselves out against my will; he must see now that something was wrong. Why did he not go?
“Is there any message I can give Miss Burke for you? If I could be of any use——” he began, less formally than he had hitherto spoken.
“No, thank you; nothing,” I answered, still standing motionless.
There was a brief pause. Nugent glanced at the clock, and then again looked at me. He hesitated for a moment, as if waiting for me to speak; then, finding I did not do so, he picked up his gloves from the table by which he was standing.
“I think I must say good afternoon now,” he said, this time without offering to shake hands with me. “I hope there will be a better account of your uncle to-morrow before I start. I have only come down for a day about some business.”
I did not attempt any reply, and he left the room.
The stress was over, and, after an instant, I wondered why it had been so great. It was a long time now since I had thought myself near breaking my heart about him; when he came in, it had not so much as beaten faster. I had felt stunned, but it was only by the shock of seeing him again at such a moment. Now I assured myself that I was glad he had come and taken my thoughts for a little time from those ghastly ravings of my uncle. Seeing him had been a kind of assurance that things were going on in the usual way, and that I was not living in a nightmare. I was sorry that I had not taken his hand; by not doing so I must have given him a false impression, and I even wished now that he had stayed longer. In a few minutes I should have lost that feeling of faintness, and have been able to talk naturally to him.
The drawing-room had become very dark. I felt as if I were the only creature alive in the house, and Uncle Dominick’s words were again beginning to crowd back with new and insistent suggestion. I would not stay indoors any longer. There was still some daylight, and it would be better to wait outside in the fresh air till Dr. Kelly came.
I walked down the drive till I came to the fallen tree. I was more weak and shaken than I had believed, and I sat down on one of the great limbs that had sprawled along the ground. There was a heavy silence in the air; the sky was low and foreboding, and a watery streak of yellow lay along the horizon behind the bog. A rook rustled close over my head, with a subdued croak; I watched him flying quietly home to the tall elms by the bog gate. He was still circling round them before settling down, when a sound struck on my ear. I sprang to my feet and listened. It had come from the bog; and now it rose again, a loud, long cry, the cry of a woman keening. Every pulse stood still as I heard it, and I held to a branch of the tree for support, as the wail grew and spread upon the air.
Some one came down the steps of the French window of my uncle’s study, and ran across the grass towards me, and I recognized Roche in the twilight.
“Did ye see him?” he called out. “Did he pass this way?”
“Who?” I answered, starting forward.
“The masther—the masther!” he cried, and then stopped as the keen rose again from the bog. “God save us, what’s that? ’Tis from the bog—’twas the bog he was talking of all day! Run, miss, run, for the love of God!”
I hardly waited to hear what he said, but ran for the bog gate as I have never run before or since. The air was full of the crying; the pantings of my breath made it beat in waves in my ears, as I came along under the trees. The gate was wide open, and I could see no one in the gloom ahead of me as I blindly followed the sound along the rough cart track. I strained my eyes in the direction it came from, running all the time, and I soon saw, or thought I saw, against the pale light of the sky, a figure down in the bog to my right. I made for it, stumbling and tripping among the tussocks of heather and grass-grown lumps of peat, once, in my reckless haste, falling over a great piece of bogwood that stood out of the soft ground. The figure was that of a woman, who was kneeling, keening and wringing her hands, on the farther side of the black Poul-na-coppal, by which I had once seen Moll Hourihane, and, hurrying with what speed I could round its broken, shelving edge, I found that the surging thought which had grown during my run into an unreasoning conviction had been right—the woman was Moll herself.
That she, who was supposed to be unable to utter a sound, should be making this outcry did not then strike me as strange.
“Where is the master?” I said breathlessly. “What are you crying for?”
For all answer, she flung her arms high over her head, and extended them both with a frantic gesture downwards, towards the water, and then fell again to clapping her hands and beating her breast. At the same moment the irregular fall of footsteps sounded in the road, and I called out with all the strength left to me. At my voice, Moll’s crying, which had ceased as I first spoke to her, broke out anew; but I paid no heed to her, and taking a step forward, peered with a sick terror down at the inky gleam of water in the bog hole. It was quite still, but water was dripping from a plant of bog myrtle that hung out over the edge, and, putting my hand on it, I found it was all wet, as if it had been splashed.
The voices of the men were close to me; I staggered back to meet them, and sank down on the ground as Tom came up to me.
“Did you find him, miss? Is he here?”
“He’s there,” I said wildly; “ask Moll! He has killed himself!”
My face was turned toward the road, and as I spoke I saw near me on the dark ground a glimmer of something white that did not look like a stone. I dragged myself towards it. It was a book lying open, a book with pictures, and, dark as it was, I recognized the outlines of one of them, “The Regulator on Hertford Bridge flat.”
It was the book which I had seen my uncle put into his pocket. I did not want any more proof of what had happened, and letting the book fall, I covered my face with my hands and lay prone in the heather. Moll’s keening had stopped altogether; footsteps hurried past, and I heard excited voices in every direction round me.
“Get ropes and a laddher!”
“Yerrah, what use is that, man? There’s twenty foot of mud in the bottom! Go get a boat-hook.”
“’Twas in here he jumped whatever. Do ye see the marks of his feet?”
Then Roche’s voice, in broken explanation—
“He was cowld, and I wasn’t out of the room three minutes getting the hot jar an’ blankets, an’ whin I got back, he was gone out the window!”
“Well?” said another voice.
“I ran to Miss Theo, who was sitting below at the three,” went on Roche; “an’ we heard the screeching, an’ we run away down——”
“Where’s Miss Sarsfield now?” said the first voice imperatively.
I knew the voice now; the ground rocked and heaved under me, flashes came and went before my eyes, and for an instant the voices and everything else melted away from me.
When my senses came back to me, I felt that I was being lifted and carried in some one’s arms, but by whom I did not know.
“Put me down,” I murmured; “I am able to walk.”
I was placed gently on my feet.
“All right now; I’ll take Miss Sarsfield home,” said Nugent’s voice: “go back and help Dr. Kelly. Can you come on now?” he asked, “we are not far from the gate, and my trap is close to it.”
I tried to answer him, but my voice was almost gone, and my knees shook under me when I made a step forward. He put his arm round me without a word, and, supported by it, I managed to get as far as the bog gate, but there my strength failed me.
“I am afraid I cannot go any farther,” I said, tottering to the low bank beside the road, and sinking down on it. “Please don’t trouble about me.”
He sat down beside me, and, putting his arm round me again, drew my head down on to his shoulder.
“Why did you send me away from you?” he said, bending his face close to mine.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, trembling.
“Must I go away now, my darling?”
I said nothing, but in the soft darkness his lips met mine, and in a moment all the grief and horror of the last week slipped away from me—everything was lost in the long forgetfulness of a kiss.
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