Chapter XXXIX

Rusk had known, however, who would bear the tidings, had known it from the moment when, on emerging into the clearing before the stream, he had laid his burden gently on the grass; and the impression of that miserable hour, of the wan, stricken faces of the two women, was destined to be one of the deepest he should ever receive. Above all, the face of May had come back to him again and again, suggesting strange trains of thought, which, taken with her letters, with all they had revealed to him of her love for her brother, had tended more and more to occupy his mind and to fill him with a sense of dissatisfaction and doubt. This feeling of doubt was with him more than ever as he sat gazing out at the blackness of sea and sky, in the murky stillness of the autumn night, listening to the throbbing of the steamer’s engine, and to the footfalls of those more energetic, more wakeful, passengers who continued monotonously to pace the deck.

The lights of the Liverpool docks had long since disappeared, but to Rusk, well wrapped in a heavy overcoat and with his cap pulled down over his eyes, it had not occurred to seek his cabin. That he was returning after a year and a half--a year and nine months, really--to the scenes of a chapter in his life he had at the time believed closed, gave him plenty to consider. It was as if he were taking a plunge back into the past, and already the intervening period, which marked his absence, was receding, while the atmosphere of what he had quitted, of what he was again approaching, seemed to reach out to him mysteriously through the night, like some occult spiritual influence, like a far clear summons from an invisible power. He told himself that if he were returning to Ireland it was because something definite had happened, because it was a case of either now or not at all. He was about to embark on a new career which would take him to the other side of the world, and he had no idea when, if ever, he should be home again. An old and close companion of his father’s youth had come back from Australia after an absence of twenty-five years, and, finding the threads of other relations impossibly lost or broken, had, in the end, sought out and called on his friend’s widow; had called a second and a third time, and, at last, in a kind of odd helplessness, had come to stay for the remainder of his visit.

He had taken a fancy to Rusk and had offered him an opening, a position on his farm, if he cared to accept it, the main condition being that he must make up his mind at once. This condition, fortunately, had been easy to comply with. For Rusk, weary of his present occupation, a more active, more open-air, life had many attractions, and he was still young enough to strike out on a fresh path. The matter had been settled with the head of the preparatory school where he was teaching, and in a fortnight now he was to sail. It had been only then, he told himself, after all arrangements were made, that certain oft-repeated promptings and echoes had found clearer voice, and that he had written to Miss Anna Birch, saying he would like to come over for a day or two. Miss Anna’s prompt reply had expressed the pleasure his proposal gave them, together with a hope that he would stay as long as possible. Rusk, however, could not stay long. His mother, he more than suspected, was a little hurt at his wanting to go at all; and he himself was sure that his letter to the Miss Birches had occasioned quite as much surprise as anything else. But he could not help it. He was surprised himself, perhaps, as he looked over the bulwark into the damp, cloudy night. The sea was extraordinarily calm, and the steamer cut through its oily blackness with a low continuous swish as the water parted in two lines of white foam before the sharp bow.