Chapter XVII

It was eleven o'clock on the day following when Clodagh's train steamed into the little station of Muskeere. Her boat had arrived in Cork in the early hours of the morning; but she had only given herself time to take a hurried breakfast at one of the hotels, before driving to the railway station. Now that she had set foot in Ireland, the racial love of home had awakened in her, making the hours leaden until she found herself at Orristown.

The great lifting of the spirit that Nance's letter had brought into being, had not subsided since the moment she had arisen from her seat in the train, filled with the knowledge that an insupportable burden had been lifted from her. At Reading she had despatched an answering telegram to her sister; and for nearly an hour afterwards, she had sat in the corner of her carriage, covering sheet after sheet of note-paper with hasty pencilling. Two letters were the result,--one to Nance, all love, all spontaneous gratitude; the other to Gore, full of tenderness, of promise, of almost vehement reassurance.

Thus the long and usually monotonous train journey ran itself out; and in the confused darkness of the crowded landing-stage, she went on board the boat at New Milford.

The crossing of the sea had ever been a delight to Clodagh. The love of the sea--the almost mystical knowledge of it--was in her blood. And that night for many hours she had paced the deck, rejoicing after a fashion understood by few in each forward plunge of the vessel--in the sense of exhilaration and action conveyed each time the prow dipped to cut the waves and send the spray flying.

She was going home! There had seemed a curious, thrilling sensation in the knowledge. She was going home! After many experiences, she was returning to the spot where her life had first separated its thread from the great tapestry of existence--the spot where happiness and unhappiness had first presented themselves as differentiated things--where the elemental facts of pain and pleasure had been first demonstrated to her unformed mind. The memory of Orristown had materialised, as she had walked to and fro under the summer sky powdered with faint stars; and she had closed her eyes until the salt sting of the sea had conjured up the square, white house, the green fields, and the long, shelving rocks.

The picture had remained with her long after she retired to her cabin, and had been still before her mind when the first low line of Irish land had broken across her vision in the silvery morning. Then it had been dispersed by more immediate things,--the arrival at Cork--the breakfast--the drive across the town to the Muskeere train; until at last the shrill whistle of the small engine, announcing that her destination was reached, swept everything but the incidents of the moment from her consideration.

As the train stopped, she sprang to her feet and leaned out of the window. How intensely familiar it was!--the narrow platform; the wooden paling, behind which the incursion of summer visitors to Muskeere congregated each day to watch the Cork trains arrive; the slovenly, good-natured porter, absolutely unaltered by the passage of time!

Her thoughts swam, as she tried vainly to reconcile her own many experiences with this amazing changelessness. Then all need for such comparison was brushed aside, as a tall figure came striding down the platform, followed by a couple of dogs; and she recognised Laurence Asshlin.

Her first conscious thought was, "How fine-looking he has grown!" her second, "How badly his clothes are made!" Then she laughed to herself from happiness, and from that sense of comradeship and clannishness to which the Irish nature is so susceptible.

"Larry!" she cried a moment later, as she threw the carriage door open.

But her dog Mick was the first to gain her side. Leaping forward at sound of her voice, he sprang into the carriage, whimpering with joy.

"Mick!--darling Mick! Oh, you bad thing!" She laughed again delightedly; then she turned, flushed and radiant, to greet her cousin.

"Hold him, Larry! That's better! Now, how are you?" She held out her hand and laid it in Asshlin's disengaged one.

Larry flushed with excitement and embarrassment.

"How are you, Clo? You're awfully unchanged! Let me help you out! The trap is waiting!"

As in a dream, she passed through the little station that had seemed so large and imposing to her childish eyes in the time when a day's shopping in Cork had represented the acme of adventure and enterprise; but half-way down the narrow platform she paused.

"Oh, the sea, Larry!" she exclaimed, drawing in a long, deep breath--"the heavenly smell of the sea!" Then she suddenly caught sight of Burke, waiting, as he might have waited six years ago, beside the high, old-fashioned trap.

"The same trap!" she said, with a little gasp.

Asshlin laughed.

"The same, only for a coat of varnish. But won't you speak to Tim?" He added the last a trifle diffidently, with a shy glance at her costly clothes and her general air of refinement and distinction.

Without a word she went forward.

"Tim!" she said very softly.

The old man turned quickly; then drew back.

But Clodagh held out her hand, regardless of the staring summer visitors.

"Tim! I'm not so changed that you don't know me?"

The old man remained motionless.

"I'd know you if I was under the sod, and the sound of your voice come anear me," he said almost solemnly.

Clodagh felt her throat tighten, as the old horny hand was slowly extended to clasp her own.

"I'm glad to be home, Tim!" she said impulsively--"I'm glad to be home!"

There was a delay of several minutes while the porter extricated her luggage from the van; and during this interval, she found time to admire the young horse, which had been bred at Orristown, and to make friends with the Irish terrier that had been Mick's companion on the run to Muskeere, besides asking a dozen questions concerning people and things at Carrigmore. Then at last, the trunk was deposited under the roomy seat of the trap; and Asshlin stepped forward to help her into her place.

"Larry," she said, pausing with her foot on the step, "may I drive? I'd love to drive."

Asshlin gave a ready assent, and, taking his own seat, handed her the reins, while Burke mounted to the back of the trap.

It was wonderful to Clodagh, that first gathering up of reins rendered hard by long service and Irish rain--that first forward start into the strong, sea-scented air. A sudden joy filled her. She was young; the world was a goodly place, when one studied it in this untainted atmosphere; above all, she was possessor of the great prize--love. Far away, in the tumult and press of the greatest city in the world, the man she set above all others thought of her--waited for her--trusted her.

Out of her own bright confidence, she made the sunny morning brighter, as she drove along the well-remembered roads, halting every mile or so to gaze at some thrice-familiar object that stood now as it had stood in the days of her babyhood.

At last Carrigmore was reached. She saw the clustering pink-and-white cottages of the village; the sleeping ruins guarded by the Round Tower; the long, yellow strand and the glassy bay, on whose farther headland stood the house of Orristown---a square white patch, to be seen for many miles. She looked at it all long and closely.

"Oh, Larry," she said, below her breath, "how wonderfully the same it is! Nance told me, but I couldn't imagine it. Why, there's scarcely a weed changed!"

Asshlin laughed a little.

"We didn't think you'd care much about it, after Italy and places," he said, with a slight touch of shy awkwardness that seemed more than ever to link the present with the past.

"Not care about it? Larry!" Her voice quivered; then she laughed quickly and touched the horse with the whip.

"Shall we go straight to Orristown? or shall I run in and see Aunt Fan?"

Asshlin looked slightly distressed.

"You're tired after the journey," he said. "And, anyway, it's one of her bad days. They come oftener than ever now. To-morrow she'll enjoy seeing you more."

A quick recollection of her aunt on her bad days swept over Clodagh's mind; and she looked up suddenly into Larry's handsome, spirited face.

"Is she often cross now, Larry?" she asked, as she might have asked when they were children.

Asshlin turned at the sound of her voice; his diffidence forsook him; the old comradeship, the old sense of sympathy and understanding, came rushing back.

"She is harder than ever to get on with," he said. "And every day seems worse than the last. Sometimes----" He stopped; but a shadow of discontent, of depression, had darkened his face.

"Poor Larry!" Clodagh said very softly. And without further comment, she turned the horse's head in the direction of Orristown.

The cousins spoke rather less during the drive along the low, flat road lying parallel to the strand; but, despite the silence, each was conscious of an awakened fellowship; and as they descended the sharp hill that led to the gates of Orristown, Clodagh pointed with her whip to where the sky hung low and brooding over the glassy line of the horizon.

"This heat will break in a storm, Larry," she said, aware of having spoken the same words a hundred times in almost the same spot.

Asshlin scanned the sea thoughtfully.

"I believe you're right!" he answered. "But a puff of wind would do no harm. You'd like a scud across the bay, wouldn't you?"

Clodagh's eyes danced.

"Love it!" she substituted enthusiastically. "Come for me at ten to-morrow, Larry, and we'll sail back together to Carrigmore. We'll have a long day there and see everything; and then you'll come back with me to dinner." She flashed a quick smile at him, as she piloted the trap through the rusty gates.

As they swept up the long, narrow drive, she looked eagerly to right and left; then suddenly she gave a little laugh of pleasure, and waved her whip towards a field that skirted the avenue, in which a very old man had paused in the act of digging potatoes, and now stood in an attitude of rigid salutation, a broken felt hat held above his head.

"Look, Larry! It's Pat Foley! Poor old Pat! Isn't it lovely the way every one remembers?"

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, as they passed the last clump of trees and came full upon the old white house; then, as the horse drew up sharply under the well-remembered iron balcony, she gave a little cry and threw the reins to Asshlin.

Hannah had opened the hall door, and stood broad-faced, honest, beaming as of old.

"My darlin'!" she cried--"my darlin'!"

And in an instant, regardless of her dress and of the eyes of Asshlin and Burke, Clodagh sprang to the ground and rushed into the arms that had so often sheltered her.

At eight o'clock on the same evening, Clodagh, with Mick at her feet, sat in a shabby leather arm-chair by the open window of the bedroom that she had shared with Nance for so many years. Outside, the soft beating of the sea against the rocks came to her ears with strange familiarity; by her side stood a small table set out with a homely tea; while in front of her, jealously watchful that she did justice to the meal, stood Hannah.

"An' 'tis a millonaire they tells me the child is goin' to marry?" she asked in one of her tentative, round-about questions. "Glory be to God! an' she only out of the school!"

Clodagh glanced through the window at the golden evening sky.

"You married me before I had been to school, Hannah," she said, below her breath.

The old shrewd light gleamed in Hannah's eyes. She moved awkwardly and yet softly round the tea-table, and laid her broad hand on Clodagh's shoulder.

"Many's the day I do be ponderin' on that match, Miss Clodagh," she said earnestly. "The ways of God are dark; and what I done, I done for the best."

Clodagh, touched by the deep solicitude of the voice, put her own smooth hand over the old rough one.

"I'm sure God did everything as it should be done, Hannah,--because it--it has all come right in the end."

Hannah's hand dropped from her shoulder in sudden excitement.

"Miss Clodagh!" she said breathlessly--"Miss Clodagh, is it a husband you'll be thinkin' to take?"

Again Clodagh's gaze wandered across the sky, melting now from gold to orange.

"There is a man who wants to take me for his wife, Hannah," she corrected, very gently.

"An' you do be puttin' him before everythin' in the world?"

Clodagh turned swiftly and met the small, anxious eyes.

"So much before everything, that if I were to lose him now I should lose"--she paused for an instant, then added--"myself."

Hannah's eyes narrowed in the intensity of her concern.

"An' he do be carin' for you, Miss Clodagh?"

Clodagh learnt forward; and the warm light from the sunset touched and transfigured her face.

"Yes--he cares," she said very slowly.