“look in my face; my name is might-have-been.”
“ah me! my heart, rememberest thou that hour,
when foolish hope made parting almost bright?
hadst thou not then some warning of thy doom?”
the fire in the library was dying out. i had been sitting on the hearthrug in front of it for some time, with my elbows resting on the seat of a low armchair, from whose depths jinny’s snores rose with quiet regularity. the window had been grey with the last of the dull light when i first sat down there, and, without stirring, i had watched the grey fading by im{96}perceptible changes from mere blankness into an absolute darkness, that invaded the room and filled it like a cloud.
the turf fire, with soft noises of subsidence, had sunk lower and lower in the grate, and, abandoning its effort to light up the heavy lines of bookshelves, now did little more than edge with a feeble glow the shadow of the chimney-piece upon the ceiling. a few minutes before, a flicker had leaped up from the red embers; it had not lasted long, but the transient glare had made my eyes ache. for two or three seconds afterwards the blackened fragments of a sheet of note-paper had been shaken and lifted uncertainly by the thin turf smoke, and they were now drifting away with it up the chimney. my hand, lying open upon my knee, still retained the sensation of holding something which had been clasped tightly in it all the afternoon{97}—the letter which i had just burnt—and it seemed to me that in my heart there was the same sense of emptiness and loss.
it had cost me something to burn it, and as the flame crept over the pages, i had come near snatching it back again. but after all there was no need to keep it; its contents were not so long nor so intricate, i thought bitterly, that there was any fear of my forgetting them.
“dear miss sarsfield” (it began),
“my sister has asked me to tell you that she has been obliged to change her plans, and is leaving clashmore to-morrow instead of next week. she desires me to say how sorry she is at having to give up the ride to mount prospect, and to go away without seeing you. she would write herself, but is too much hurried. i fear that i must make the same apologies{98} on my own account, as i find that i shall have to go to london in a few days, and may possibly not return before the summer; and, as i am afraid i shall not be able to get over to durrus, perhaps you will kindly let me say good-bye by letter.
“sincerely yours,
“nugent o’neill.”
nothing could have been more simply put; nothing could have expressed more incisively the writer’s meaning. even in the first moment of reading it, i had been at no loss to understand it. in the legitimate amusement of flirting with “an american girl,” he had gone a little farther than he had intended, and he now lost no time in removing any undue impression that his words might have made upon her. what was it that willy had told me long ago—how long ago?—“he could tell you many{99} a queer story of a yankee girl he met at cannes!”
possibly he would now be able to add another “queer story of a yankee girl” to his repertoire—how, in the course of a most ordinary flirtation, he had discovered one afternoon that this girl was losing her head, and how he had been obliged to leave the country so as to avoid further difficulties.
the last scrap of the letter fluttered upwards out of sight as this idea, which it had suggested, came into my mind. the intolerable sting of the thought acted on me like physical pain. i started up, but by the time i was on my feet i was ashamed of it. “no,” i said to myself vehemently, “he would never do that; i have no right even to think it of him. and although, i suppose, he has changed his mind now for some reason or other, i know he{100} was in earnest when he was speaking to me; i am sure of it. perhaps he lost his head too—men very often say more than they intend—and then when he got home he thought better of it, and felt it was only fair to let me understand as soon as possible that he meant nothing serious. how could i have been such a fool as to let half a dozen words upset my peace of mind?” i asked myself desperately. “whatever he meant by them, it is no use my thinking about him any more. i had better begin at once, as he has done, to try and forget it all,” i thought, as i groped my way out of the room; “but just now i feel as if it would take me all my life.”
as i dressed for dinner, i shrank from the prospect of the long difficult hours that lay between me and the solitude of my own room. but i think that my powers of further suffering must have been exhausted;{101} a benumbing weariness was my only sensation as i sat at the dinner-table, and, looking from my uncle to my cousin, felt, in some far-off way, that our lives were converging to their point of closest contact, perhaps to their climax of mutual suffering.
i had not energy to talk, and i occupied myself for the most part in efforts to keep up the semblance of eating my dinner. willy went on with his in a kind of resigned surliness, taking as little notice of me as was compatible with common politeness. this state of things i should much have preferred to any open signs of enmity or friendship, if i had not noticed that my uncle was narrowly observing us, and was even making various attempts to involve us both in the conversation, which had hitherto been little more than a monologue upon his part. beyond an occasional grunt, willy did not even try{102} to respond; and as for me, though i did my best, utter mental and bodily fatigue made the framing of a sentence too laborious for me.
several times during the progress of dinner, i found that roche was looking at me with anxious interest; and once or twice he came to my rescue with unexpected tact, by quietly changing my plate as quickly as possible, so that my uncle should not see how little i had eaten of what he had sent me.
dinner was longer, and uncle dominick more determinately talkative, than usual; but at last there came a break in his harangue, and i took advantage of it to make my escape into the drawing-room. i sat for a long time over the fire by myself, lying in an armchair without any wish to move. i felt as if i had sunk to the bottom of a deep sea, whose waves{103} were rushing and surging over my head, and i wondered dully if this was what people felt like when they were going to have a bad illness. my mind kept stupidly repeating one short sentence, “let me say good-bye! let me say good-bye!” they were the last words i had seen of nugent’s letter as it curled up in the flame of the library fire, and they now beat to and fro in my brain with sing-song monotony.
i believe i must have dozed, for the noise of the door opening aroused me with a shivering start. willy came into the room with a newspaper in his hand, and, sitting down at the other side of the fire without speaking to me, began to read it. i fell back in my chair again, waiting till the striking of ten o’clock should give me a reasonable excuse for going to bed. the crackling of willy’s newspaper and the sleepy tick of the clock were the only{104} sounds in the room. i had never before seen willy read a newspaper so attentively, and i watched him with languid interest from under my half-closed eyelids, while he steadily made his way through it. now he had turned it inside out, and was reading the advertisements; certainly it did not take much to amuse him. could he have felt, on that day after the dance, as dead to all the things that used to interest him as i did now?
it was only four evenings ago since i had listened miserably to the passionate words which i had not been able to prevent him from saying; he must have forgotten them already, or how else could he sit there with such stolid composure? if he could recover his equanimity in four days, perhaps in a week i should have begun to forget that persistent sentence which still kept pace with my thoughts.{105}
the dining-room door opened and shut with a loud bang, and i heard the sound of uncertain footsteps crossing the hall. the crackling of the newspaper ceased, and a sudden rigidity in willy’s attitude showed me that he was listening. the step paused outside the door, and then, after some preliminary rattling, the handle was turned. willy jumped up and walked quickly to the door, as if with the intention of stopping whoever was there from coming in. before he reached it, however, it opened, and i saw that it was his father whose entrance he had been trying to prevent.
“it’s not worth while your coming in, sir,” he said; “theo’s awfully tired, and she’s going to bed.”
“tired! what right has she to be tired?” said my uncle, loudly, coming into the room as he spoke. he put his hand on willy’s shoulder and pushed him to one side.{106} “get out of my way! why should i not come in if i like?”
he walked very slowly and deliberately to the fireplace, and stood on the rug with his back to the fire, swinging a little backwards and forwards from his toes to his heels. there was some difference in his manner and appearance which i could not account for. his face was ghastly white; a scant lock of iron-grey hair hung over his forehead; and the dark rings i had seen about his eyes in the morning had now changed to a purplish red.
“and what have you two been doing with yourselves all the evening? making the most of your time, willy, i hope? perhaps that was why you tried to keep me out just now?”
he began to laugh at what he had said in a way very unusual with him.
“theo,” willy said abruptly, interrupt{107}ing his father’s laughter, “you’re looking dead beat; i’ll go and light your candle.”
“what are you in such a hurry about?” demanded uncle dominick, turning on willy with unexpected fierceness. “don’t you know it is manners to wait till you’re asked?”
willy did not answer, but went out into the hall; and i, feeling both scared and angry, got up with the intention of following him as quickly as possible.
“good night, uncle dominick,” i said icily.
he bent forward and took hold of my arm, leaning his whole weight upon it.
“look here,” he whispered confidentially; “how has that fellow been behaving? you haven’t forgotten our little talk this morning, eh?”
“i remember it quite well, good night,{108}” i repeated, trying to pull my arm from his detaining hand, and move away.
the action nearly threw him off his balance; he gave a stagger, and was in the act of recovering himself by the help of my arm, when willy came back with the lighted candle.
“for goodness sake, let her go to bed,” he said, striding over to where we were standing, and looking threateningly at his father.
uncle dominick dropped my arm. “what the devil do you mean by interfering with me, sir?” he said. “let me tell you that i will not stand this behaviour on your part any longer! i suppose you think you can treat your cousin and me as if we were no better than your low companions? i know where you spent your afternoon to-day. i know what those infernal people are plotting and scheming{109} for. but i can tell you, that if they can make a fool of you they shall not make one of me! this house is mine. and you may tell them from me, that as sure as i am standing here”—emphasizing each word with a trembling hand, while he clutched the mantelshelf with the other—“you shall never set foot in it, or touch one penny of my money, if——”
“look here!” said willy, stepping forward between me and his father; “that’s enough; you’d better shut up.”
“how dare you speak to me like that? your conduct is not that of a gentleman, sir!—not that of a gentleman! i say, sir, it is not—that—of——” his voice had grown thicker and more unsteady at every word.
“here’s your candle,” said willy, thrusting the candlestick into my hand; “you’d better go.{110}”
“she shall not be ordered about by you!” thundered my uncle, making an ineffectual step or two to stop me. “she shall stay here as long as i like. i will be master in my own house. come back here!”
he spoke with such fury that i was afraid to go, and looked irresolutely to willy for help. but before he could speak, my uncle’s mood had changed.
“let her go if she likes,” he said suddenly, staring at me with a sort of stupefaction. “good god! let her go if she likes; let her go!” he cried, covering his eyes with his hands and dropping into a chair, and as i slipped out of the room i heard him groan.
