CHAPTER III.
“I mustown that it has taken away appetite,” I say, with rather a sickly smile, as we sit round the breakfast table. “I assure you that I mean no insult to your fresh eggs and bread-and-butter, but I simplycannoteat.”
“It certainly was an exceptionally dreadful dream,” says Jane, whose colour has returned, and who is a good deal fortified and reassured by the influences of breakfast and of her husband’s scepticism; for a condensed and shortened version of my dream has been told to him, and he has easily laughed it to scorn. “Exceptionally dreadful, chiefly from its extremeconsistency and precision of detail. But still, you know, dear, one has had hideous dreams oneself times out of mind and they never came to anything. I remember once I dreamt that all my teeth came out in my mouth at once—double ones and all; but that was ten years ago, and they still keep their situations, nor did I about that time lose any friend, which they say such a dream is a sign of.”
“You say that some unaccountable instinct told you that the hero of your dream was one of my own men,” says Robin, turning towards me with a covert smile of benevolent contempt for my superstitiousness; “did not I understand you to say so?”
“Yes,” reply I, not in the least shaken by his hardly-veiled disbelief. “I do not know how it came to me, but I was as much persuaded of that, and am so still, as I am of my own identity.”
“I will tell you of a plan then to prove the truth of your vision,” returns he, smiling. “I will take you through the fields this morning and you shall see all my men at work, both the ordinary staff and the harvest casuals, Irish and all. If amongst them you find the counterpart of Jane’s and my murderer” (a smile) “I will promisethen—no, not eventhencan I promise to believe you, for there is such a family likeness between all Irishmen, at all events, between all the Irishmen that one seesoutof Ireland.”
“Take me,” I say, eagerly, jumping up; “now, thisminute! You cannot be more anxious nor half so anxious to prove me a false prophet as I am to be proved one.”
“I am quite at your service,” he answers, “as soon as you please. Jenny, get your hat and come too.”
“And if we donotfind him,” says Jane, smiling playfully—“I think I am growingpretty easy on that head—you will promise to eat a great deal of luncheon and nevermention‘Bradshaw’ again?”
“I promise,” reply I, gravely. “And if, on the other hand, wedofind him, you will promise to put no more obstacles in the way of my going, but will let me depart in peace without taking any offence thereat?”
“It is a bargain,” she says gaily. “Witness, Robin.”
So we set off in the bright dewiness of the morning on our walk over Robin’s farm. It is a grand harvest day, and the whitened sheaves are everywhere drying, drying in the genial sun. We have been walking for an hour and both Jane and I are rather tired. The sun beats with all his late-summer strength on our heads and takes the force and spring out of our hot limbs.
“The hour of triumph is approaching,” says Robin, with a quiet smile, as we draw near anopen gate through which a loaded wain, shedding ripe wheat ears from its abundance as it crawls along, is passing. “And time for it too; it is a quarter past twelve and you have been on your legs for fully an hour. Miss Bellairs, you must make haste and find the murderer, for there is only one more field to do it in.”
“Is not there?” I cry eagerly, “Oh, Iamglad! Thank God, I begin to breathe again.”
We pass through the open gate and begin to tread across the stubble, for almost the last load has gone.
“We must get nearer the hedge,” says Robin, “or you will not see their faces; they are all at dinner.”
We do as he suggests. In the shadow of the hedge we walk close in front of the row of heated labourers, who, sitting or lying on the hedge bank, are eating unattractive looking dinners. I scan one face after another—honest bovine English faces. I have seen ahundred thousand faceslikeeach one of the faces now before me—very like, but the exact counterpart of none. We are getting to the end of the row, I beginning to feel rather ashamed, though infinitely relieved, and to smile at my own expense. I look again, and my heart suddenly stands still and turns to stone within me. He isthere!—not a hand-breadth from me! Great God! how well I have remembered his face, even to the unsightly smallpox seams, the shagged locks, the grinning slit mouth, the little sly base eyes. He is employed in no murderous occupationnow; he is harmlessly cutting hunks of coarse bread and fat cold bacon with a clasp knife, but yet I have no more doubt that it ishe—he whom I saw with the crimsoned sickle in his stained hand—than I have that it is I who am stonily, shiveringly, staring at him.
“Well, Miss Bellairs, who was right?” asks Robin’s cheery voice at my elbow. “Perish‘Bradshaw’ and all his labyrinths! Are you satisfied now? Good heavens!” (catching a sudden sight of my face) “How white you are! Do you mean to say that you have found him at last? Impossible!”
“Yes, I have found him,” I answer in a low and unsteady tone. “I knew I should. Look, there he is!—close to us, the third from the end.”
I turn away my head, unable to bear the hideous recollections and associations that the sight of the man calls up, and I suppose that they both look.
“Are you sure that you are not letting your imagination carry you away?” asks he presently, in a tone of gentle kindly remonstrance. “As I said before these fellows are all so much alike; they have all the same look of debased squalid cunning. Oblige me by looking once again, so as to be quite sure.”
I obey. Reluctantly I look at him once again. Apparently, becoming aware that he is the object of our notice, he lifts his small dull eyes and looks back at me. It is the same face—they are the same eyes that turned from the plundered dressing-table to catch sight of me last night. “There is no mistake,” I answer, shuddering from head to foot. “Take me away, please—as quick as you can—out of the field—home!”
They comply, and over the hot fields and through the hot noon air we step silently homewards. As we reach the cool and ivied porch of the house I speak for the first time. “You believe menow?”
He hesitates. “I was staggered for a moment, I will own,” he answers, with candid gravity; “but I have been thinking it over, and on reflection I have come to the conclusion that the highly excited state of your imagination is answerable for theheightening of the resemblance which exists between all the Irish of that class into an identity with the particular Irishman you dreamed of, and whose face (by your own showing) you only saw dimly reflected in the glass.”
“Notdimly,” repeat I emphatically, “unless I now see that sun dimly” (pointing to him, as he gloriously, blindingly blazes from the sky). “You will not be warned by me then?” I continue passionately, after an interval. “You will run the risk of my dream coming true—you will stay on here in spite of it? Oh, if I could persuade you to go from home—anywhere—anywhere—for a time, until the danger was past!”
“And leave the harvest to itself?” answers he, with a smile of quiet sarcasm; “be a loser of two hundred or three hundred pounds, probably, and a laughing-stock to my acquaintance into the bargain, and all for—what? A dream—a fancy—a nightmare!”
“But do you know anything of the man?—of his antecedents?—of his character?” I persist eagerly.
He shrugs his shoulders.
“Nothing whatever; nothing to his disadvantage, certainly. He came over with a lot of others a fortnight ago, and I engaged him for the harvesting. For anything I have heard to the contrary, he is a simple inoffensive fellow enough.”
I am silenced, but not convinced. I turn to Jane. “You remember your promise: you will now put no more hindrances in the way of my going?”
“You do not mean to say that you are going, really?” says Jane, who is looking rather awed by what she calls the surprising coincidence, but is still a good deal heartened up by her husband’s want of faith.
“I do,” reply I, emphatically. “I should go stark staring mad if I were to sleepanother night in that room. I shall go to Chester to-night, and cross to-morrow from Holyhead.”
I do as I say. I make my maid, to her extreme surprise, repack my just unpacked wardrobe and take an afternoon train to Chester. As I drive away with bag and baggage down the leafy lane, I look back and see my two friends standing at their gate. Jane is leaning her head on her old man’s shoulder, and looking rather wistfully after me: an expression of mingled regret for my departure and vexation at my folly clouding their kind and happy faces. At least my last living recollection of them is a pleasant one.