‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’”
“A night of mystery. Strange sounds are swept
Through the dim air.”
Aunt Jane’s answer to my letter had come. It had been much what I expected it would be; she said she would be satisfied to see me back at any time I saw fit to come, and she even unbent so far as to say that the sooner that was, the better pleased she would be.
That was a week ago, and I was still{150} at Durrus. If I had kept to my original idea, I should by this time have been on the Atlantic; but the steamer by which I had meant to have sailed was only taking to Aunt Jane a letter, in which I had for the present, at all events, postponed my return. I had not been able to explain very clearly my reasons for changing my mind—principally for the excellent one that I was not quite certain what they were. As the date on which I had settled to go came nearer, it had appeared to me that the imperative necessity for my leaving Durrus became more and more imaginary.
I had gradually come to take fresh views of life. It was not very long since I had seen, for the first time, a new aspect of it, and had weakly given myself over to its enchantment. But since then I had made up my mind that that aspect was one that did not concern me personally any more,{151} and I now believed that there was nothing to prevent me from going on with my life in the old way, as if I had never had that glimpse of another possible future.
My idea that on Willy’s account I ought to go away had changed into the directly opposite conviction, that on his account I ought to stay. What my uncle had said to me about him that morning in the garden had not, I must admit, very greatly disquieted me. I knew very well—I could not help knowing it—that what he had said was true, and that it was my influence which, though unintentionally on my part, had driven Anstey’s into the background. But I would not believe his warning that there was any further danger in the future.
Poor little Anstey! Uncle Dominick’s hints had made me think with a great deal of unavailing pity about her. The{152} recollection of her soft eyes and deprecating voice made his definition of her as “an impudent girl” singularly inappropriate. I had very little doubt but that Willy, being both susceptible and idle, had amused himself, for want of better occupation, by making love to her, and, so far from pitying him for being “entangled,” all my sympathies were on the side of the “entangler.” Even if he had ever had any real feeling for her, it had become, I was very sure, a thing of the past; and, knowing Uncle Dominick’s strong wish that I should stay at Durrus, I believed that he had ingeniously used this imaginary peril as a reason for my doing so.
However, that whispered interchange of words at the gate on the way home from Moycullen, gave unexpected reality to his fears as to the consequences of a “misunderstanding” between Willy and me.{153} Here was his prophecy being fulfilled, and I was all the angrier with Willy from the haunting feeling that it was I who had to a great extent revived this undesirable state of things. It was of no use to try and persuade myself that I had no real moral responsibility in the matter. My conscience had developed an exasperating sensitiveness in connection with Willy, and was persistently deaf to the excellent arguments which I brought to bear upon it. I began to wonder whether it might not be possible to undo some of the harm I had done, by beginning over again with Willy on new lines—by adopting a friendliness so frank and so unsentimental, that he should gradually be led into a state of calm and cousinly companionship.
I lost no time in trying the experiment, but after a few days I had to confess to myself that it was uphill work. Willy was{154} baffling, more baffling than I had believed he ever could be. I did not even know whether he appreciated the cheerfulness which I sometimes found it so hard to keep up. There was a latent moroseness about him by which, perhaps from its unaccustomedness, I could not help being a little overawed. It bewildered me and set me at fault to see him spend the evening, as he often did, in virtuously reading some standard work, instead of wasting it in our old good-for-nothing way, by sitting over the fire and doing nothing more profitable than playing with the dogs and talking illiterate gossip. I could not make him out. I had once thought his character a very simple one, so much so as to be almost uninterestingly transparent, and this new complexity occupied my mind and mystified me considerably. I suppose mystery is always interesting, and just then I was{155} inclined to cling to anything that led my thoughts away from myself. At all events, whatever might have been the cause, I thought and speculated about him more than I had ever done before.
On the day that we went to the Burkes’, he had been more incomprehensible than ever. He rode there with me in a state of such profound gloom, that I wondered if it were the result of some culminating quarrel with his father. I certainly could never have anticipated the admirable way in which, during the visit, he comported himself; still less his continued good spirits on the way home. I did not at the time understand their cause, but I afterwards knew that it was what had happened that afternoon that had, to a great extent, cleared the atmosphere. It was now more than a fortnight since then, and he had had no very serious relapse into moodiness.{156} We had pretty nearly arrived at the ideal friendly but unromantic footing that I had hoped for—quite enough for me to permit myself a little self-glorification, and going back to America any sooner than I had intended seemed more unnecessary than ever. Uncle Dominick had effaced himself almost entirely from our lives. Dinner was now the only time during the day that I saw him, and he used to sit and listen to what we were saying without joining in it. There was nothing about him to remind me of his outburst that night in the drawing-room. When he spoke, it was usually to say something which, for him, was almost affectionate, and his manner often showed traces of feebleness and exhaustion which were very new with him.
Thursday, the 28th of January, was Willy’s twenty-fifth birthday. We had{157} fitly celebrated it by going out hunting, and, having come home hungry after a good day’s sport, were now, in consideration of having had no lunch, indulging in poached eggs at afternoon tea.
“The men in the yard tell me that there are to be great doings to-night in honour of me,” Willy remarked, when the first sharp edge had been taken off his appetite. “There’s to be a bonfire outside the front gate, and Conneen the piper, and dancing, and everything. It means that I’ll have to send them a tierce of porter, and that you’ll have to turn out after dinner and go down and have a look at them.”
“So long as they don’t ask me to dance, I shall be very glad to go. But would your father mind?”
“Mind? Not he! You’re such a ‘white-headed boy’ with him these times, you can do what you like with him. By{158} Jove, he’s a deal fonder of you than he ever was of me!” said Willy, with ungrudging admiration.
“I am sure he is not,” I said lazily, and as much for the sake of contradiction as from any false modesty. “It is most unlikely. I know if I were he, I should naturally like you better than I like myself.”
“What on earth are you trying to say?” said Willy. “Would you mind saying it all over again—slowly?”
“I mean,” I said, slightly confused, but sticking to my point—“I mean that if I were your father, I should see a great many more reasons for being fond of you than I should of me.”
“Well, as far as I can make that out,” said Willy, grinning exasperatingly, “it seems to me that it’s a pity you’re not my father.{159}”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Just suppose that I was your father——”
“I’d rather not, thanks.”
I did not heed the interruption. “I should be much fonder of you——”
“Then, why aren’t you?”
“I don’t care what you say,” I said, feeling I was getting the worst of it; “I know what I mean quite well, and so would you, only that you choose to be an idiot.” And, getting up, I left the room with all speed, in order to have the last word in a discussion which was taking a rather difficult tone.
The sea-fog had crept up from the harbour towards evening, and it fell in heavy drops from the trees upon Willy and me as we walked down the avenue after dinner to see the bonfire. There was no moon visible, but the milky atmosphere held some luminous suggestion of past or{160} coming light. It was a still night; we could hear the low booming of the sea in the caves below the old graveyard, and the nearer splashing of the rising tide among the Durrus rocks.
“There’s no sound I hate like that row the ground-swell makes out there at the point,” said Willy. “If you’re feeling any way lonely, it makes you want to hang yourself.”
“I like it,” I said, stopping to listen. “I often lie awake and listen to it these nights, when the westerly wind is blowing.”
“Maybe you’d get enough of doing that if you were here by yourself for a bit, and knew you’d got to stop here. I tell you you’ve no notion what this place is like in the winter. Sometimes there’s not a creature in the country to speak to from one month’s end to another.{161}”
“I ought to know something about it by this time.”
“You think you do,” he answered, with a short laugh. “But you can’t very well know what it was like before you came, no more than you can tell what it will be like when you’re gone.”
We moved on again.
“Cannot you ever get away?” I asked sympathetically.
“No; how could I leave the governor? I tell you,” he went on, “that if you were boxed up here with no one to talk to but him, you’d go anywhere for company.” He stopped for a moment. “Do you know that, before you came here last October, I was as near making a fool of myself as ever a chap was”—breaking off again, but continuing before I could speak—“I believe I didn’t care a hang what I did with myself then. I suppose you’ll think that {162}I’m an ass, but it’s very hard to have no one at all who cares about you.”
“I am sure it must be,” I said, feeling very uncomfortable, and walking quickly on.
I had a nervous feeling that in confidences of this kind I might find the “calm and cousinly” footing that I so much desired, slipping from under my feet.
We were now near the gate, and could already hear the squeals of the bagpipe, and see the glare of the bonfire in the fog. All round the semi-circular sweep outside the lodge, a row of women and girls were seated on the ground, with their backs to the ivy-covered wall, while a number of men and boys were heaping sticks on to a great glowing mound of turf that was burning in the middle of the road. The barrel of porter which Willy had sent was propped up in one of the niches in the{163} wall, and in the other niches, and along the top of the walls, were clustered innumerable little boys.
As Willy and I came through the open gates, a sort of straggling cheer was set up by the men, which was shrilly augmented and prolonged by shrieks from the children in the niches. Willy walked up to the bonfire.
“Well, boys,” he said, “that’s a great bonfire you have. I’m glad to see you all here.”
At this moderate display of eloquence there was another cheer, and as it died away, a very old man, in knee-breeches and tail-coat, came forward, and, to my intense amazement, kissed Willy’s hand.
“I’m a tenant in Durrus eighty-seven years,” he said, “an’ if I was dyin’ this minute, I’d say you were the root and branch of your grandfather’s family! Root and branch—root and branch!{164}”
I was not given time to ponder over the meaning of this occult commendation, for an old woman, darting forward, snatched Willy’s hand from the man. She also began by kissing it resoundingly, but, with an excess of adoration, she flung it from her.
“On the mout’! on the mout’!” she screamed, flinging her arms round him; and then, dragging his face down to hers, she suited the action to the word.
Willy submitted to the salute with admirable fortitude; but, in order to avoid further demonstrations of a similar kind, he called upon Conneen the piper to play a jig. I heard from the other side of the road a long preliminary drone, and the piper, a weird-looking, crippled hunchback, seated on a donkey, began to produce from his bagpipes a succession of sounds of varying discordancy, known as “The Foxhunter’s Jig.{165}”
I drew back into the smaller gateway to watch the dance. The figures of the four dancers showed darkly against the background of firelit, steamy fog, and the flames of a tar-barrel which had just been thrown upon the bonfire glared unsteadily on the faces of the people, and on the glowing network of branches overhead. Willy was one of the four who were dancing, and was covering himself with glory by the number and intricacy of his steps. He had chosen as his partner the stout lady in whose cottage we had once sheltered from the rain, and above the piercing efforts of the bagpipes to render in “The Foxhunter’s Jig” the various noises of the chase, the horn, the hounds, and the hunters, the plaudits of the audience rose with more and more enthusiasm.
“More power, Masther Willy!”
“Tighten yourself now, Mrs. Sweeny!{166}”
“Ah ha! d’ye mind that for a lep! He’s the divil’s own dancer!”
I looked on and listened to it all from the gateway, feeling, in spite of my Sarsfield blood, a stranger in a strange land. I did not recognize many of the people about me; beyond some of the junior members of the Durrus household, who nodded to me with the chastened, reserved friendliness of the domestic servant when away from her own roof, and Mary Minnehane, whose white teeth shone in a broad grin when I looked at her, I knew no one. Neither Anstey nor her mother were anywhere to be seen, though I had looked up and down the row of faces several times for them. A small, ugly old man, whom I knew to be Michael Brian, the lodge-keeper, was in charge of the barrel of porter. I noticed during the dance that, although he never took his eyes off the{167} dancers, he did not applaud, and before it was over he left the barrel in the care of a subordinate, and went past me into the lodge.
In a minute or two he returned, bringing Anstey with him, and she began to help him in dispensing the porter. The niche in which it was placed was quite near to where I was standing, and I could hear him scolding her in a low voice. She looked frightened and unhappy, and Willy’s half-confession on the way down made me watch her with a peculiar, pitying interest. When the jig had ended with a long squeal from the pipes, intended, I presumed, to represent the fox’s death-agony, Willy led his breathless partner back to her place, and slowly made his way to me, amid a shower of compliments and pious ejaculations.
“Phew I’m mostly dead!” he said, leaning against the gatepost beside me,{168} and fanning himself with his cap. “Mrs. Sweeny has more going in her than ten men, and dancing on the gravel is no joke.”
While he was speaking, I saw that his eye had fallen on Anstey, and almost imperceptibly he faced more and more in my direction, till his back was turned to her and her father. Another dance began, but, instead of joining in it, he lighted a cigarette and went on talking to me.
“Perhaps we’d better be getting home,” he said presently. “You must have seen about enough of it.”
We moved from where we were standing into the carriage-drive, and he said a general good night to the assemblage. The jig was stopped, and one of the dancers shouted—
“Three cheers for Masther Willy!”
“Huzzay!” rose the chorus.
“And three cheers for Miss Sarsfield!{169}” called out a woman’s voice, which I fancied I recognized as my friend Mary Minnehane’s, and another “Huzzay!” arose in my honour.
Willy looked at me with a beaming face.
“Do you hear that, Theo? You see, they think a good deal of you too.”
“It’s very kind of them,” I replied, retreating precipitately into the darkness; “but I hope they don’t expect me to make a speech.”
“Masther Willy!”
I heard a hoarse whisper behind me, and, looking back, I saw that old Michael Brian had followed Willy through the gates.
“Masther Willy, aren’t you goin’ to dance with my gerr’l?”
“No, I’m not; I’m going home,” said Willy, roughly. He turned away, but Brian caught his sleeve.
“Ah! come back now and dance with{170} her,” he said, in a part bullying, part wheedling voice; “don’t give her the go by.”
Willy wrenched away his sleeve.
“Go to the devil! You’re drunk!” he said, in a low angry voice.
“Dhrunk is it? Wait a while, and you’ll see if I’m dhrunk,” said Brian, following him as he turned from him, and speaking more threateningly. “Dhrunk or sober, there’ll be work yet before ye’re done with me.”
Willy made no remark on what had taken place as he joined me where I was standing a few paces in advance of him. I did not know what to say, and we walked silently away up the avenue. The noise of the bagpipes died away behind us in the fog, and the moaning rush of the tide, now full in, on the strand, was again the only sound to be heard. We had got into the{171} darkness of the clump of elms, when Willy stopped short.
“I thought I heard some one there in the trees,” he said. “I wonder if that old blackguard——” He did not finish the sentence, and we both listened.
“I don’t hear anything now, whatever,” he said, moving on. But before we had gone more than a few steps, I heard a twig snap.
“There is something there,” I said apprehensively, coming closer to him. He felt for my hand, and put it into his arm.
“Never mind; very likely it’s only a stray jackass; don’t be frightened at all.”
We walked on quickly until we were in the open beyond the little wood, and we were near the house before he spoke again.
“Theo, I think I’ve made the most miserable hash of my life that ever any one did. You needn’t say anything, and you{172} needn’t think that I’m going to say anything that would annoy you anyway; but I just feel that everything’s gone against me, and I may as well chuck it all up.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, Willy!” I said, trying to speak with more cheerfulness than I felt. “That is a very poor way of looking at things.”
“Very likely, but it’s the only way I’ve got.” We were on the steps by this time, and he opened the hall door. “Anyhow, it doesn’t make much difference how I look at them; I suppose it will all come to the same sooner or later.”
He shut the door with a bang, and I went upstairs.