“and wouldst thou leave me thus? say nay.”
a lowering grey sky succeeded the sunshine of the day of the hunt. i crawled down late to breakfast, feeling very stiff after yesterday’s exertions, and was on the whole relieved to find that willy had gone out for a long day’s shooting, and that till lunch at least i should have no one to entertain but myself.
the evening before had been, as far as willy had been concerned, of a rather{166} complicated type. i had done all in my power to efface from his mind the memory of my unfortunate laughter, but until dinner was over he had remained implacable. uncle dominick, on the contrary, had been unusually bland and talkative. it appeared that madam o’neill and her eldest daughter had called on me while i was out, and my uncle, having met them on the drive, had brought them in, given them tea, and had even gone so far as to ask the two girls to come with their brother to dinner the next night. he had given me to understand that this unusual hospitality was on my account—“although,” he added, “i have no doubt you two young people are quite well able to amuse each other.” the look which accompanied this was, under the circumstances, so peculiarly embarrassing, that, in order to change the conversation, i made the mistake of be{167}ginning to describe the hunt. too soon i discovered that to slur over willy’s disaster would be impossible, and my obvious efforts to do so did not improve matters.
“so you went off with young o’neill,” my uncle had said, with a change of look and voice that frightened me; and nothing more was said on the subject.
my discomfiture was perhaps the cause of the alteration in willy’s demeanour after dinner. success far beyond my expectations, or indeed my wishes, was the result of my conciliatory advances. i went to bed feeling that i had more than regained the position i had held in willy’s esteem, and a little flurried by the difficulties of so ambiguous a relationship as that of first cousins.
from all this, it may be imagined that when i heard from roche that “the masther was gone to town, and would not{168} be home for lunch,” i regarded the combined absences of willy and his father as little short of providential.
i observed that the magenta and yellow dahlias which had decorated the table on my arrival still held their ground, albeit in an advanced stage of decay; and, remembering the glories of the autumn leaves, i suggested to roche that with his permission i might be able to improve upon the present arrangement.
a little elated by the expectation of surprising willy with the unusual splendour of the dinner-table, and not without an emulative thought of the o’neills, i determined to ransack the shrubberies for the most glowing leaves wherewith to carry out my purpose. a few minutes later, i left the house with a capacious basket in my hand, feeling a delightful sense of freedom, and full of the selfish,{169} half-savage pleasure of a solitary and irresponsible voyage of discovery.
i wandered down the nearest path to the sea, and, keeping to the shore, came to the little promontory which, with its few ragged trees, i could see from the windows of my room. there was a certain romance about this lonely wind and wave beaten point that had always attracted me to it. when, in the early light, i saw the fir trees’ weird reflection in the quiet cove, i used to wonder if they had ever been a landmark for some western dick hatteraick; and now, as i scrambled about, and tugged at the tough bramble-stems that trailed in the coarse grass, i was half persuaded that any one of the rough boulders might close the entrance of a smuggler’s long-forgotten “hide.”
i had soon gathered as many blackberry-leaves as i wanted, and, sitting down{170} beside one of the old trees, i leaned my cheek against its seamy trunk and looked across the grey rollers to the horizon.
a narrow black line stole from behind the eastern point of durrusmore harbour, leaving a dark stain on the sky as it went, and from where i sat i fancied i could hear the beat of machinery.
it was the first time i had noticed the passing of one of the big american steamers, and i watched the great creature move out of sight with a strange conflict of feeling. uppermost, i think, was the thought of what my regret would be if i were at that moment on board her, bound for america. i was a little ashamed when i reflected how soon the newer interests had superseded the old. i had been but a week in ireland, and already the idea of leaving it for america was akin to that of emigration. what, i wondered, was the charm that had{171} worked so quickly? was this subtle familiarity and satisfaction with my new life merely the result of ?sthetic interest, or had it the depth of an inherited instinct?
i could not tell; i could only feel a strange presentiment that my existence had hitherto been nothing but a preface, and that i was now on the threshold of what was to be, for good or evil, my real life.
i picked up my basket and retraced my steps down the little slope, till i again found myself in the shrubbery walk. on one point my mind was clear. my liking for durrus was in no perceptible degree influenced by my feeling for my uncle and my cousin. i reiterated this to myself as i strolled along in the damp shade of over-arching laurels towards the plantation which lay between the sea and the lodge.
uncle dominick was anything but a{172} person to inspire immediate affection; and then willy—well, willy certainly had many attractive points, but, although he was a pleasant companion, he could not be said to be either very cultured or refined.
i left the path and strayed through the wood, stopping here and there to rob the branches of their lavish autumn loveliness. a sluggish little stream crept among the trees, and along its banks the ferns grew thickly. i knelt down in the stubbly yellow grass beside it, where the pale trunk of a beech tree stooped over the water, and picked the small delicate ferns that were clustering between its roots. having gathered all within reach, i still knelt there, watching a little procession of withered beech-leaves making their slow way down the stream, and studying my own dark reflection on the water.
i was at length startled by the sound of{173} voices that seemed to come from the path i had just left, but from where i was, the thickness of the intervening laurels prevented me from seeing to whom they belonged.
it soon became evident that one of the speakers was a country girl. she was talking rapidly and earnestly; but what she said was unintelligible to me till she and her companion came to the point in the path which was nearest to me, when, after a momentary pause, the soft voice broke out—
“ye won’t lave me for her, will ye, now? ye said ye’d hold by me always, and now——”
something between a sob and a choke ended the sentence. several sobs followed; and then the girl’s voice went on excitedly—
“ah! ’tis no use your goin’ on like that;{174} ye know ye want to have done with me entirely.”
i could hear no reply; but that reassurance and consolation were offered was obvious, for as the footsteps died away i heard something like a broken laugh from the girl, with some faint echo of it from a man’s voice.
“who can she be?” i thought, with instinctive compassion. there was a certain perplexing familiarity in the low pathetic voice, and i walked home, feeling unnecessarily depressed and troubled by what i had heard, and wondering sadly at the self-abandonment which had led to such an appeal.
the path by which i returned skirted the garden and formed a loop with the one by which i had first entered the wood. as i approached the broader walk, i saw a girl’s figure flit down the other path,{175} and i had just time to recognize it as being that of anstey brian. simultaneously came the recollection of the pleading voice in the wood, and in an instant i knew why it had been familiar.
“then it must have been anstey,” i thought, feeling both sorry and surprised. the entreaty in her voice had made it very plain how serious a matter her trouble was to her, and the helplessness of her quick surrender showed that she had lost all power of resistance or resentment. i was astonished to think that so pretty a girl as anstey should have cause to reproach her sweetheart with want of constancy. “who could he be?” i wondered. then, remembering that the path she was on was a usual short cut from the lodge to the yard, i came to the conclusion that one of the durrus stablemen must have been the object of this broken-hearted appeal.{176} i determined that i would try and find out something further about anstey and her lover, and wondered if it would be of any use to mention the subject to willy.
