After she had failed to take her tea Rebecca walked the valley road many times, passing and repassing their usual meeting place. But no sign of Ulick did she find. She peered longingly into the sea of white fog, but he did not come.... What in the world was happening to him at all? Never before had he missed this night of the week.... She did not care to return so early, for she feared that Mrs. McGoldrick might come with that awful look of scrutiny she detested. Just to pass the time she wandered down The Road of the Dead towards the lake. To-night it seemed so lonely set there amid the sea of white.
It was strange to think that this place could ever have had a fair look about it or given pleasure to any person at all. Yet it was here that John Brennan had loved to walk and dream. She wondered how it was with him now. She began to think of the liking he had shown for her. Maybe he fancied she did not know why he happened to meet her so often upon the road. But well did she know—well. And to think that he had come to look up at her window this evening.
Yet even now she was fearful of acknowledging these things to herself. It appeared as a double sacrilege. It was an attack upon her love for Ulick and it questioned the noble intention of Mrs. Brennan in devoting her son to God. But all chance that it might ever come[Pg 230] to anything was now over. The ending had been effected by herself in the parlor of Tommy Williams, the gombeen-man, and Mrs. Brennan might never be able to guess the hand she had had in it. It was a thing upon which she might well pride herself if there grew in her the roots of pride. But she was not of that sort. And now she was in no frame of delight at all for the thought of him had united her unto the thought of Ulick, and Ulick had not come to her this evening.... She felt herself growing cold in the enveloping mist. The fir trees were like tall ghosts in the surrounding gloom.... But immediately the lake had lost its aspect of terror when she remembered what she had done might have averted the possibility of having John Brennan ever again to wander lonely.... And yes, in spite of any comforting thought, the place would continue to fill her with a nameless dread. She was shivering and expectant.
Suddenly a big pike made a splash among the reeds and Rebecca gave a loud, wild cry. It rang all down the lonely aisle of the fir-trees and united its sound with that of a lone bird crying on the other side of the lake. Then it died upon the banks of mist up against the silent hills.
For a few moments its source seemed to flutter and bubble within her breast, and then it ended in a long, sobbing question to herself—Why had she cried out at all? She might have known it was only a fish or some such harmless thing. And any one within reasonable distance could have heard the cry and thought it was the signal of some terrible thing that had happened here by the lakeside. It was not so far distant from two[Pg 231] roads, and who knew but some one had heard? Yet she could hardly fancy herself behaving in this way if she had not possessed an idea that it was a lonely place and seldom that any one went by in the night-time.
But she hurried away from the feeling of terror she had caused to fill the place and back towards the house of Sergeant McGoldrick. As quickly as possible she got to bed. Here seemed a little comfort. She remembered how this had been her place of refuge as a child, how she felt safe from all ghosts and goblins once her head was hidden beneath the clothes. And the instinct had survived into womanhood.
Again a series of those fitful, half sleeping and waking conditions began to pass over her. Side by side with the most dreadful feelings of impending doom came thronging memories of glad phases of life through which she had passed.... And to think that this life of hers was now narrowing towards this end. Were the valley and its people to behold her final disaster? Was it to be that way with her?
She had intended to tell Ulick if he had come to her this evening, but he had not come, and what was she to do now? In the slough of her torment she could not think of the right thing.... Maybe if she wrote an angry letter upbraiding him.... But how could she write an angry letter to him? Yet she must let him know, and immediately—when the dawn had broken into the room she would write. For there was no use in thinking of sleeping. She could not sleep. Yes, when the dawn had broken into the room she would write surely. But not an angry letter.... Very[Pg 232] slowly she began to notice the corners of the room appearing in the new light before her wide open eyes. And to feel that this was the place she had so fiercely hated from the first moment of setting foot in it, and that it was now about to see her write the acknowledgment of her shame.... The dawn was a great while in breaking.... If he did not—well then, what could her future life hope to be? She began to grow strangely dizzy as she fell to thinking of it. Dizzy and fearful as she drew near in mind to that very great abyss.
The leaping-up of the day did not fill her with any of its gradual delight.... She rose with a weariness numbing her limbs. The putting-on of her few clothes was an immense task.... She went to the table upon which she had written all those letters to her school-companions which described that "there was nothing like a girlfriend." She pulled towards her, with a small, trembling hand, the box of Ancient Irish Vellum, upon which her special letters were always written. Her mind had focussed itself to such small compass that this letter seemed more important than any that had ever before been written in this world.
But for a long time she could not begin. She did not know by what term of endearment to address him now.... They had been so particularly intimate.... And then it was so hard to describe her condition to him in poor words of writing with pen and ink upon paper. If only he had come to her last night it might have been a task of far less difficulty. A few sobs, a gathering of her little troubled body unto him, and a beseeching look up into his face.... But it was so hard to put any single feeling into any separate sentence.
[Pg 233]
After hours, during which the sun had been mounting high and bright, she had the letter finished at last and was reading it over. Some sentences like the following leaped out before her eyes here within this sickly-looking room—Whatever was the matter with him that he could not come to her? Surely he was not so blind, and he with his medical knowledge. He must know what was the matter with her, and that this was scarcely the time to be leaving her alone. His uncle, Myles Shannon, was a very rich man, and did he not remember how often he had told her how his uncle looked with favor upon her? Here she included the very words in which Ulick had many a time described his uncle's opinion of her—"I like that little schoolmistress, Rebecca Kerr!" "It was all so grand, Ulick, our love and meetings; but here comes the paying of the penalty, and surely you will not leave poor little me to pay it in full. You have enjoyed me, have you not, Ulick?" She was more immediately personal now, and this was exactly how the sentences continued: "You know very well what this will mean to me. I'll have to go away from here, and where, I ask you, can I go? Not back to my father's house surely, nor to my aunt's little cottage in Donegal.... I have no money. The poor salary I earn here is barely able to buy me a little food and clothing and keep a roof over my head. Did I not often tell you that when you were away from me there were times when I could hardly afford the price of stamps? If it should happen that this thing become public while I am yet here I could never get another day's teaching, for Father O'Keeffe would warn every manager in Ireland against engaging me. But surely, darling, you[Pg 234] will not allow things to go so far.... You will please come down to see me at 5.30 this evening. You will find me at the old place upon The Road of the Dead. Don't you remember that it was there we had our first talk, Ulick?"
Great as the torture of writing it had been, the torture of reading it was still greater. Some of the lines seemed to lash out and strike her and to fill her eyes with tears, and there were some that seemed so hard upon him that she struck them out, not wishing, as ever, to hurt her dearest Ulick at all. At one moment she felt a curious desire to tear it into pieces and let her fate come to her as it had been ordained from the beginning.... But there was little Euphemia McGoldrick knocking at the door to be allowed to enter with the breakfast. Who would ever imagine that it was so late?
She had written a great deal. Why it filled pages and pages. She hurriedly thrust it into a large envelope that she had bought for the purpose of sending a card of greeting to John Brennan at Christmas, thinking better of it only at the last moment. It was useful now, for the many sheets were bulky.
"The breakfast, miss!" announced Euphemia as she left the room.
This was the third meal in twenty-four hours that Rebecca could make no attempt to take, but, to avert suspicion, she wrapped up the sliced and buttered bread in a few leaves from the novelette from which she had read those desperate passages on the previous evening. The tea she threw out into the garden. It fell in a shining shower down over the bright green vegetables.... She put on her dust-coat and, stuffing the letter to Ulick[Pg 235] into one pocket and her uneaten breakfast by way of a luncheon she would not eat into the other, hurried out of doors and up the road, for this morning she had important business in the village before going on to the school.
Mrs. McGoldrick was set near the foot of the stairs holding Euphemia and Clementina by the hand, all three in action there to behold the exit of Rebecca. This was a morning custom and something in the nature of a rite. It was the last clout of torture always inflicted by Mrs. McGoldrick.
Rebecca went on into Garradrimna. The village street was deserted save by Thomas James, who held solitary occupation. He was posting the bills for a circus at the market square. She was excited as she went over to speak to him and did not notice the eyes of the bespectacled postmistress that were trained upon her from the office window with the relentlessness of howitzers. She asked Thomas James would he take a letter from her to Mr. Ulick Shannon.
"Oh yes, miss; O Lord, yes!"
She slipped the letter into his hand when she thought that no one was looking. She had adopted this mode of caution in preference to sending it through the Post Office. She was evidently anxious that it should be delivered quickly and unread by any other person.
"O Lord, yes, miss; just as soon as I have an auction bill posted after this. You know, miss, that Mickeen Connellan, the auctioneer, is one of my best patrons. He doesn't pay as well as the circus people, but he pays oftener."
That was in the nature of a very broad hint, but[Pg 236] Rebecca had anticipated it and had the shilling already prepared and ready to slip into his other hand.
"Thanks, miss!"
With remarkable alacrity Thomas James had "downed tools" and disappeared into Brannagan's. Rebecca could hear the swish of his pint as she went by the door after having remained a few moments looking at the lurid circus-bills. Inside, Mrs. Brannagan, the publican and victualler's wife, took notice that he possessed the air of a man bent upon business.
"Ah, it's how I'm going to do a little message for the assistant schoolmistress," he said, taking his matutinal pinch of salt, for this was his first pint and one could never tell what might happen.
"Is that so?"
"Aye, indeed; a letter to young Shannon."
"Well now? And why for wouldn't it do to send it by the post?"
"Ah, mebbe that way wouldn't be grand enough for her. Mebbe it is what it would be too chape—a penny, you know, for the stamp, and this costs a shilling for the porter. Give us another volume of ............