“which do you pity the most of us three?”
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{75} 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.{76}
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{77} 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{78} 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.{79} 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,{80} 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{81} 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 {82}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{83} 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{84} 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{85} 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{86} 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{87} 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{88} 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.{89}”
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.{90}”
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{91} 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 misunder{92}standing 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{93} 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.{94} 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.
