“or in the night, imagining some fear,
how easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!”
willy did not come home till dinner-time, when he reappeared in exceedingly good humour. i, on the contrary, felt the vague ill-temper of a person who has spent a wet sunday afternoon in solitude, and i found dinner long and dull. in the drawing-room after dinner, i sought the resource of music to raise my spirits; but i was debarred from even this last consolation, for willy implored me to “let the piano{90} alone,” as his father disapproved of music on sunday.
we finally settled down in armchairs by the fire, and i discovered that willy possessed in a high degree the feminine faculty of sitting over a fire and talking about nothing in particular. he pretended to no superiority to the minor gossip which forms the ripples in the current of country life, and he had quite a special gift of recounting small facts with accuracy and detail, and without any endeavour to exalt his talent as a story-teller. his tales had, in consequence, a certain intrinsic freshness and merit, and till bedtime we maintained a desultory, but on the whole interesting conversation.
when i got up to my room, i found it full of smoke and extremely cold. the window had been opened to let out the smoke, and the chintz curtains rustled and{91} flapped in the draught. making up my mind after a few minutes that even turf smoke was preferable to the cold disquiet of the wind, i went to the window to close it, and noticed with a good deal of amusement that, the pulley being broken, the housemaid had supported the sash with one of my brushes.
there was something in this misplaced ingenuity which was eminently characteristic of the slipshod manner of life at durrus, and by force of contrast my thoughts travelled back to my mother’s orderly household. i leaned against the shutter and looked out, beset by poignant recollections of a time when life without my mother seemed an impossibility, and when durrus was no more to me than a place in a fairy story.
the wind had blown away most of the fog, and the rain had ceased, but a thin{92} haze still blunted the keenness of the moonlight. i gazed at the dark shapes of the trees in the shrubbery till i lost the sense of their reality, and they came and went like dreams in the uncertain light. in my ears was still the throb and tremor which seven days and nights spent in listening to the screw of the alaska had imprinted on my brain, and my thoughts and surroundings seemed alike hurrying on in time to its pulsations. i was at length roused to realities by a sound which at first seemed part of the light chafing of the laurel leaves, but which in a few moments became detached and distinct from the vague noises of the autumn night.
it came nearer, and gave the impression of some stealthy advance in the wet grass under the trees. at length, at the verge of their shadow, just opposite my window, i heard the gravel crunch under a soft{93} footstep. the next instant a woman’s figure slid into the dim light, and came out across the broad gravel sweep with a rhythmical swaying gait, as though moving to music.
half-way to the house she stopped, and, raising her arms above her head with a wild gesture, she began to step to and fro with jaunty liftings and bendings of her body, as though she were taking part in a dance. backwards and forwards she paced with measured precision; then, placing her hands on her hips, she danced with fantastic lightness and vigour some steps of an irish jig. suddenly, however, she checked herself; she knelt down, and, turning a pale face to the sky, she crossed her hands on her breast and remained motionless.
her absolute stillness had in it an intensity almost more dreadful than the strange movements she had previously{94} gone through, and i stood staring in inert terror at the grey kneeling figure, with a face as white as that which was still turned rigidly skywards in what appeared to be the extremity of supplication. just then the moon shone sharply out, hardening and fixing in a moment the limits of light and darkness, and, as if with a sudden movement, it flung the shadow of the praying woman on the ground before her. she started, and slowly rose to her feet, and, with her hands still crossed on her bosom, turned her face towards me. i saw the moonlight glisten in her wide-open eyes, which were fixed, not on me, but on the window of the room next to mine. then opening her arms wide, she let them fall to her side with an extravagant obeisance, and sidled back into the impenetrable shadow of the trees.
there was i know not what unearthly{95} suggestion about this weird dance and agonized devotion, that seemed to paralyze my mind, and render it incapable of any thought except fear. i stood bewilderedly looking at the spot where the darkness had swallowed up her figure; but before i had time to collect my ideas, she reappeared at a little distance, and, as well as i could see, turned up a path which led through the shrubbery in the direction of the lodge.
as she passed out of sight, i suddenly remembered what willy had said to me about anstey’s half-witted mother. this strange dancer was, then, no ghost nor dream-creature, sent on a special errand to me, as i had first feared, and then, with returning courage, had almost hoped might be the case.
she was only “old moll hourihane.” it was a simple explanation, and perhaps a humiliating one; but, in spite of my anxiety{96} to possess a ghost-story of my own, i accepted it with relief. i shut the window and locked my door, and, though still trembling all over with cold and excitement, i went to bed, thankful that “mad moll” had introduced herself to me from without, instead of first appearing to me within the walls of durrus.
