Kitabı oku: «Only an Irish Girl», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VIII

Very slowly the days pass at Donaghmore; a detachment of the constabulary keeps strict guard over the old house, the master of which lies sick unto death.

It seems as if the old man's life is fading with the year. The shot that entered his arm shattered the bone immediately below the elbow, and, the wound not healing, this, together with the shock and excitement of that night's work, is telling on him.

Honor goes about like a ghost; she looks pitifully changed; but there is only faithful old Aileen to be troubled by her looks. Launce has gone back to Dublin and Horace has joined his regiment at Aldershot.

One care has been lifted off the girl's heart; Power Magill is no longer a prisoner.

The first thing that Honor heard on her return from Scanlan's cottage was that Power Magill and two others had got away, having given their guards the slip on the mountain road between Glen Doyle and Drum.

The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people; and, if he was Kate Dundas's lover, as Launce in his jealous rage declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.

But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of attraction to the neighborhood – its pretty drawing-room is deserted. Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public, and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could assume for such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friendship and very little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her chance of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.

November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.

Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.

One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor's voice.

Belle is not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps; but if she has been fretting for Launce – as Honor thinks – she has certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.

She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.

"I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never hear anything at Donaghmore."

"The news!" Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.

"Oh, it's nothing very wonderful – perhaps nothing that you will call news after all!" Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and understanding it. "It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in Devonshire. Maybe she has gone back to him."

"Maybe she has," Honor assents coldly.

"And they are saying too," Belle goes on more gravely, and looking anxiously at her friend, "that the two men who were with Power Magill have got off to America. I'm sure I hope it is true!"

Honor says not a word. She is thinking of the man who is left a homeless wanderer on his native mountains – an exile within sight of his own walls!

"It's an awful pity about poor Power, isn't it, Honor? Sometimes I cry my eyes red thinking of him," Belle goes on in her pretty plaintive voice; "and I often think he must have gone with the rest to Donaghmore to keep them in order. He couldn't have gone, you know, to – to do any harm!"

Honor looks at her gratefully, and the words linger in her mind and comfort her in some vague way during her long and lonely walk to Donaghmore.

The sun has set as she enters the gates, and a mist which has crept up from the river makes the wide empty space on her left, as she walks up toward the house, look more like a lake than solid earth.

She has left the ruins behind her, not without a nervous shiver in passing, when the sound of a step, falling lightly but regularly on the strip of grass by the side of the drive, arrests her attention and sets her heart beating rapidly.

"It is all my own foolish fancy," she says to herself, and walks faster.

The step follows faster too. She stops, and instantly that light footfall is silent. Not a creature is to be seen. The old ruins rise grim and bare between her and the pale evening sky, but not a sound comes from them.

"It must have been my own fancy," she tells herself, and, reassured, starts forward almost at a run.

But listen! Again the step sounds behind her; more distant and far less rapid than her own, but clear and unmistakable. Her heart gives a great throb, the color dies out of her cheeks, and by the time she reaches her own door she feels ready to fall from haste and fear.

The old butler is crossing the hall and he looks at her curiously.

"Have you seen anything to startle you, Miss Honor?" he says at last.

"No; I have seen nothing. Why do you ask?" Not for worlds would she own to any one the ghostly fears that shook her out there in the dusky avenue, with the sound of those following steps in her ears.

"Well," adds the butler, "one of the girls has just come in, miss, in a state of great fright, and says that she saw the old abbot himself at the corner of the avenue, watching the house for all the world as if it held some treasure of his own."

"Nonsense!" Honor says, turning suddenly pale, even in the lighted hall. "I hope these silly tales are not going to begin again. Your master will be very displeased if they come to his ears."

As she enters the sitting-room she sees that her father is not alone.

A tall man is standing on the rug before the fire, talking with much animation. It is Brian Beresford.

"I have taken the liberty of invading you without even an invitation," he says, coming forward with outstretched hand.

"And you are welcome," the girl answers softly. "Besides, your last invasion was so well timed, we may well forgive this one."

"Ah," he says, smiling gravely, "that was a rough sort of invasion! I hope I shall never have to attack Donaghmore in that fashion again."

"I hope not indeed!" Honor agrees promptly. "I don't think I could live through another night like that."

"Oh, yes, you could – through a dozen such, if necessary. I quite admired your bravery. I never saw a young lady so cool under fire before."

She blushes as she listens; her heart thrills with a half-reluctant pride at his praise.

"What has come to me," she says to herself crossly, "that I can't look at the man without blushing? It's time I had more sense."

"I have come to stay a day or two," he tells them.

A week passes, however, and he does not go away. To Honor it is a week of very mixed sensations. She has never before known any one like this stolid Englishman, who under all his composure hides a passion so fiery, a will so strong.

On his part he is very grave and gentle. Not once does a word of love pass his lips; and she is glad of it, for she is in no mood to think of love or lovers.

"It would be horrible to think of such things," she tells herself, "while poor Power Magill is wandering in homeless misery."

She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight, lying chill and white on the grass and the bare flower-beds.

"Where is he now?" she asks herself with a shivering sigh, as she listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question she is asking continually; but who can answer it?

He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some dark gorge in the mountains.

From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one is coming slowly toward the house – a girl, little more than a child, with an old cloak flung over her head – country fashion. Honor watches her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to pass the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.

The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a letter – not a bulky letter, a mere scrap, closely twisted; and, without a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.

"Who has sent it, Nora?" – for she recognizes the child now that she sees her face.

But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, passing over the moonlit grass like the mere shadow of a girl.

The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for their guest.

There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:

"Will you venture to the old ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M."

As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.

"How he must have suffered," she says to herself, "to have changed like this!" Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted! There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.

As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale scrap of paper.

His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.

CHAPTER IX

Never has time passed so slowly to Honor Blake. All the morning she goes about her work with a listless preoccupied air that could not fail to attract attention if there were any one to heed the girl or her moods.

Perhaps Brian Beresford heeds them; but Honor never gives a thought to him. She would be glad if he would go away and leave her to herself; but since he makes no such offer, she puts up with him.

And now, in the late afternoon, she sits down at the piano, more to pass the time than to amuse their guest. In truth, as she plays she forgets him altogether. The music, now low and sweet, now wild and martial, soothes her and brings back some of her lost nerve.

Brian Beresford, looking and listening, frowns, and then sighs. She is an enigma to him, this stately, contradictory Irish girl, with her moods and her prejudices, and, above all, her reserve. He has met no one quite like her. The women of his world are of a totally different type – he can understand them easily; but Honor he cannot understand.

He feels his heart soften as he looks at her. He is proud, and it has jarred upon his pride terribly that a man like Power Magill should have been preferred to him.

"And the chances are, now the fellow is in disgrace, she will cling to him all the closer," he says to himself bitterly. He does not care to own it, but in his heart he is savagely jealous of Power Magill.

Very softly is Honor playing now – a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every breath a torture to her.

"What if he should be taken to-night?" she is saying to herself. "How do we know that that child is to be trusted? How dare he trust any one when there is such a heavy reward out for him – poor Power?"

The tears come into her eyes as she thinks of him. It grows more bitter to her every moment, the thought of this meeting that is so close at hand now.

"Honor," Brian says gently, "will you not let me help you? You are in some trouble, I know." He has crossed the room and is standing beside her. "You can trust me, surely?"

"I could trust you with my life; but this secret is not my own."

"I know it is not; nevertheless you might trust it to me."

She raises her head and looks at him, and something in his face brings the color into her own. He is very brave and true, a safe shelter in trouble – she has proved that – and her heart yearns for the help he could give her. But it may not be. His sympathies are all on the side of law and order, and she has ranged herself, for this one night at least, among the opposite ranks.

"Don't think me curious, Honor," he says earnestly; "but I am sure you are in need of a friend's help, and I would like you to let me give it."

"No one can help me – not even you," she answers gently, getting up and looking at him with those troubled eyes that move him so strangely.

"And yet you are so good to me always that I should like to tell you my trouble if I might. But it is better not, perhaps."

"Let me say one thing, Honor. If this trouble of yours is connected with Power Magill – and I believe it is – you will not forget that he is a dangerous man, a man not to be trusted."

"I will not forget," she answers with a shiver, as she thinks of the meeting that is drawing nigh so rapidly.

The sun has set, and a cold mist is rising. It is very peaceful but rather dreary outside; and inside, in the familiar pretty room, the shadows are gathering.

Brian Beresford draws a step nearer. He had not meant to say one word of love to her – this willful girl who makes so light of him and his devotion; but, standing so close beside her in this tender gray twilight, impulse masters his judgment.

"Honor, has my love no power to touch you? Must this man forever stand between us even in his – " He is going to say disgrace, but the piteous look on the girl's face stays him.

"Oh, Brian, don't talk to me of love now – I cannot bear it!"

It is the first time she has ever called him Brian, and in her face, as she turns it from him, crimson from brow to chin, in her very attitude, as she stands with clasped hands before him, there is some subtle change that chills him.

"Then promise me that when times are brighter and you are happier you will listen to me, Honor."

"Perhaps," she stammers; and then, with tears in her eyes: "Oh, how cruel I am! I'm not worth loving!" And she is gone before he can say another word.

For so stoical a man, Brian Beresford is strangely excited to-night. Long after Honor has left him he walks up and down the darkening room, and, when the old butler comes in to light the lamps, he goes out on to the terrace and continues his measured tramp to and fro, smoking and thinking, and watching he scarcely knows for what.

Ever since he saw Honor hide away that scrap of paper in her dress he has been tormented with jealous fears.

"If the fellow were once out of the country I should feel all right," he tells himself. But the fellow is not out of the country – nay, may be in the immediate neighborhood for all he can tell, and in consequence he is racked with anxiety.

From the terrace he can see the ruins clearly at first; then the mist partly blots them out, and presently he can only guess at their position. But he has no interest in the ruins. He is not in the least superstitious; and certainly he does not believe in the old abbot.

He has reached the end of the walk and turned to go back, when the sight of a tall slight figure, coming rapidly down the steps not many yards away, brings him to a sudden halt.

"Ah!" he says, as he recognizes Honor. "Then it was not without cause that I've been so uneasy! A warning, these people would call it, I suppose."

It is a terrible blow to him, striking to the very root of his love. He hates mystery; and to find this girl, whom he had thought perfect in her maidenly pride and purity, stealing out in the dark from her father's house fills him with dismay.

For an instant he feels tempted to follow and speak to her, then he turns back. He can hardly control himself so far as to speak calmly, and every faint far-away noise makes him start.

"She is safe enough," he tells himself a dozen times; but he finds no comfort in his own assertions.

In his heart he feels convinced that she has gone to meet Power Magill; and in his jealous fury he almost hates her for it.

"Where is Honor?" her father asks fretfully; and then, as time goes on and she does not come in, he says again, "Where can Honor be?"

"I will go and find her for you," Brian says at last – he can bear the suspense no longer. "She cannot have strayed very far. I was talking to her a while ago."

He speaks lightly enough, but his heart is not light. A curious depression has come upon him. It seems to him that his love for this girl has died, and that half the brightness of his life has died along with it. He has not the least idea in what direction to begin his search.

The heavy iron gates at the end of the avenue are closed, but not locked, and he opens them and walks out into the high-road. Once, as he passes a narrow lane, he fancies he hears a slight rustle in the bushes that grow close and low at the side of the path; but, when he stops to listen, he can hear nothing, and so sets it down to fancy.

"Surely she has not gone into the village on a night like this," he says to himself at last, daunted by his want of success; and at the bare surmise he feels his face burn hotly.

Turning, he walks rapidly back – for the village lies in the opposite direction, past Donaghmore – and, as he comes near the gates, he is startled to see a car drawn up by the side of the high wall, and evidently waiting for somebody.

The driver has been standing beside his horse, and at the sound of Brian's step he leads the animal slowly forward. Apparently he does not wish to be seen; and indeed he might easily escape the notice of any one less quick of sight than Brian Beresford.

"Hallo!" Brian shouts; but he receives no answer; and, taking a stride or two, he gains the horse's side. The man walks on the other side of the animal, close by the wall; and, what with the darkness and the way his hat is pulled down over his eyes, his own mother might be pardoned for not recognizing him.

"Whose car is this?" Brian demands sternly, "and for whom are you waiting here?"

"Sorrer a sowl I'm waiting for, your honor! The best face in Derry wouldn't tempt me this minute. I'm just dead beat meself – and the baste! It's to Boyne Fair we've been this day, and a terrible time entoirely we've had of it."

Brian looks at the man and stops. He seems to be speaking the truth; and, if he is not, Brian knows the Irish peasant too well by this time to expect to force it from him.

With a short "Good-night," he turns away, and the man looks after him with a scowl.

"It's a bullet in yer skin that I'd give yez this blessed night if I dare take my own way," he mutters savagely.

Very slowly Brian Beresford walks back to Donaghmore. He is not so calm now, not so sure of Honor's safety. His fears are rising with every step he takes through the murky darkness. He feels that, if she is not in the house when he reaches it, he shall be able to keep silence no longer. Even at the risk of betraying her secret the squire must be told.

As he is passing the ruins a faint sound reaches his ear. He stops instantly and listens, his head bent, every sense on the alert. He is not thinking of Honor now – not in his wildest dreams would he connect her in any way with these weird unholy old ruins; but he is anxious – as anxious as ever Launce was – to solve the mystery that attaches to the place. Again it comes, a long-drawn, gasping cry, with this time a ring of fear in it.

"Good heavens, it is a woman!" he says, and goes quickly, but very quietly and cautiously, in the direction of the sound.

He has gained the low-browed gateway leading into the great quadrangle, when a dark figure dashes past him, and the next instant there is a loud report. He feels a sharp pain in his shoulder, and knows that he has been hit; but he does not give a thought to that in his intense excitement. He is conscious of but one thing – Honor's voice calling his name.

"Brian – oh, Brian, come to me!" The shrill clear tones ring through the ghostly silence.