And in the prosaic London cab, with her eyes fixed resolutely on the heavy copper-coloured sky that hung above the housetops, Nance performed her second act of love. While Gore sat silent, she poured forth the whole mistaken tale of Clodagh's life, from the days in Venice to the hour of her departure for Ireland. She omitted nothing; she extenuated nothing. With a strange instinct towards choice of the right weapons, she fought for her sister's future. Everything was told—Lady Frances Hope's poisoning of Clodagh's mind against Gore himself—the scene with Serracauld in the card-room—all the temptations, all the follies, confessed in the darkness of the nights at Tuffnell, and in Clodagh's own bedroom on the night she visited Deerehurst. It was the moment for speech; and she spoke. Her own shyness, her own natural reticence, were swept aside by the great need of one who was infinitely dear. The scene at Carlton House Terrace she described without flinching; for candour and innocence move boldly where lesser virtues fail and falter. She told the story with a simple truth that was more dignified than any hesitancy.
When at last she had finished, Gore sat for a space, very silent and with bent head; then abruptly, as if inspired by a sudden resolution, he put up his hand to the trap in the roof.
"The nearest telegraph office!" he called, as the cabman looked down.
The man whipped up his horse. But Nance turned sharply.
"What are you going to do?"
"To wire to Clodagh."
"To Clodagh?"
"Yes."
"But Clodagh doesn't know? Walter, you haven't told Clodagh! Walter!"
Gore bent his head. "I wrote to her the night I saw Frances Hope," he said. "She had my letter this morning."
"This morning?" It was impossible to fathom the pain and alarm in Nance's voice. "What did you write?"
"Very little. Just that I knew about Deerehurst—that I thought it better we should not marry."
"And she got that letter this morning? She has been hours and hours alone, believing that you don't love her—that she is left utterly by herself? Oh!"
"Nance, don't! I'm sufficiently ashamed."
Nance put her hands over her eyes.
"I'm not thinking of you!" she said cruelly.
"I know. But remember, there's the wire. We can still wire. I shall tell her that you and I are coming for her to Ireland—that she will never be alone again."
Nance's hand dropped.
"But you don't understand!" she cried. "No telegram can reach her to-night. It will only get to Carrigmore to-morrow morning—and from there to Orristown. If we were to give everything we have in the world—if we were to die for it—we could not save her from the blackness, the loneliness and horror of to-night!"
CHAPTER XX
Early on the morning that followed the storm, Clodagh stepped from the hall door of Orristown. As she stood on the gravelled pathway in the clear, strong daylight, she looked like one who has fought some terrible battle in the watches of the night, and who has been worsted in the encounter. She was pale and fragile, with a frightened query in her eyes, as though she had propounded some enormous question, to which Fate had as yet made no answer. For a time she stood in a helpless attitude, looking toward the green hill, crowned with sparsely foliaged trees, that fronted the house; then, seeming to take some vague resolution, she walked slowly forward towards the avenue, pausing where the gravelled pathway joined the fields.
There was a curious look upon the land and sea that morning, as though both were lying exhausted by the tumult of the night. All around beneath the avenue trees lay twigs and short splintered branches, to which the limp leaves, whipped to untimely death by the vehemence of the storm, still hung. Across the bay, as far as Carrigmore, the sea lay like a sleeping tiger that has prowled and harried through the dark hours of night, and now lies at rest. A wonderful pearly blue was upon the waters—long, rippling lines spread from headland to headland, like faintly pencilled shadows; but massed in a dark fringe along the curve of yellow strand was a ridge of packed seaweed, that held within its meshes a thousand evidences of the strife that had been, in twists of straw, pieces of broken cork, and long black chunks of driftwood.
She stood for an indefinite space, looking at this significant dark line standing out against the smoothness of the sand, until, half unconsciously, her attention was attracted by a sound that made itself audible from the direction of the gate, growing in volume as it advanced—the swish, swish of bare feet on soft ground. She turned from the vision of the sleeping sea, to behold a small peasant child in torn dress and dirty apron speeding up the drive.
The child neared her; then swerved away as if in fear, and continued her flight towards the house.
A sudden impulse seized Clodagh.
"Come here!" she called. "Where are you going?"
For an instant the child looked too frightened to speak; then her lips parted.
"Misther Asshlin—beyant at Carrigmore!" she said inarticulately; and, turning, she fled onward to the house.
Clodagh stood still for a moment; then she also turned, and recrossed the gravelled pathway.
She walked forward, scarcely feeling the ground beneath her feet. Her heart beat fast; a cold premonition ran through her, chilling her blood. Something was about to happen! The inertia that lay upon her mind was to be shattered! Something was about to happen!
As she reached the hall door, she saw the child vanish into the stable-yard by the small latched door in the great wooden gate; and saw Mick, escaped from confinement, come careering towards her. But for once she took no heed of his manifestations. Scarcely even noticing that he followed her, she passed into the hall, and from thence to the dining-room. There she stood for a long time listening—listening intently. At last the sound she instinctively waited for reached her—the sound of a sharp, wailing cry. With a frightened gesture she put her hands over her face; then let them drop to the back of a chair that stood beside the centre table.
She stood holding weakly to this chair, her limbs trembling, her face white, while the wailing sound drew nearer, growing more spasmodic as it approached. At last the door was thrust wide open, and Hannah burst into the room, her face blanched, tears streaming from her eyes, her whole air demoralised.
"Miss Clodagh, Masther Larry!" she muttered inarticulately—"Masther Larry!"
Clodagh held to the back of the chair.
"What is it?"
"Gone! Drownded!"
Clodagh swayed a little.
"Drowned!" she echoed in a faint voice.
"He nivver went home at all last night. And to-day mornin' they found the little boat capsized beyant at the head. O God, help the poor mother! What'll the poor woman do at all?"
"Drowned!" Clodagh said again—"drowned! Larry drowned!"
Hannah stepped forward, as though she expected her to fall; but she motioned her away.
"How did it happen?" she asked in a vague, thin voice.
"'Twas the storm! Sure, 'twas the storm!"
"But Larry was the best sailor in Carrigmore!"
She said the words involuntarily; but as they left her lips, they brought into being a new thought. She stood upright, and by a strange, slow process of suggestion, her eyes travelled to the mantelpiece, where the bundle of notes still protruded from under the clock.
What if Larry had quailed before the thought of confessing his losses to the querulous mother, who could so ill spare the money he had squandered? What if Larry had not fought the storm last night as it might have been fought? She suddenly contemplated last night's play from Larry's point of view—contemplated Larry's losses by light of the hard monetary straits that Ireland breeds.
Her blood seemed to turn to water; she felt like one beyond the pale of human emotion or superhuman help.
"Leave me to myself, Hannah!" she said faintly. "I want to be alone."
"Lave you? But, my darlin'——"
"I must be alone."
Hannah looked at her in agonised concern.
"Miss Clodagh——" she began. But something in Clodagh's stony quiet daunted her. She gave a muffled sob, and moved slowly across the room.
Clodagh was conscious of the wailing sounds of grief for several minutes after she had disappeared; then gradually they faded, as she descended into the lower regions, to share the appalling and yet grimly fascinating news with Burke and the farm-labourers; and silence reigned in the lonely room.
When full consciousness that she was alone came to Clodagh, she let her hands drop from the back of the chair; and, moving stiffly, crossed the room to the fireplace.
She made no attempt to touch the notes that lay as Asshlin had placed them; but she looked at them for long with a species of horror. And at last, as though the thought of them had begotten other thoughts, she raised her eyes to the picture hanging above them—the picture of Anthony Asshlin in his lace ruffles and black satin coat, with his powdered hair, his gallant bearing, and dark eager face.
The eyes of the picture seemed to look into hers with an almost human smile of satire. Time had passed since that gay, reckless presence had filled the old room; dice and duelling were gone out of fashion; but human nature was unchanged—there were still Asshlins of Orristown!
"O God——" she said aloud; then she stopped. "There is no God!" she added wildly—"there is no God!"
At the sudden sound of her voice, Mick rose from the corner where he had been crouching. The sight of him calmed her; she passed her hand once or twice across her eyes, then walked quite steadily across the room.
The dog followed her closely; but at the door she stopped and looked at him.
"No, Mick! You cannot come!"
By some extraordinary sagacity the animal whimpered, and pressed closer to her skirt.
With an almost fierce impulse she stooped, kissed him once; then, holding him back, slipped through the door and closed it.
He gave a frantic bark of misery, but she did not pause, she did not even look back. Walking rapidly, she passed across the hall and out into the open.
Turning to the right, she skirted the stable-yard and the orchard, and, hurrying past the spot where years ago Milbanke had asked her to be his wife, took the path to the Orristown cliffs.
Her thoughts trooped up like living things as she stumbled forward along the uneven track. She was conscious of no fear, only of a desolating loneliness—an enormous sense of futility, of finality. Last night she had looked into the eyes of Fate, propounding the question of how she was to carry on her life, and to-day she had read the answer in the face of the portrait.
She hurried on unseeingly, covering the same track that her father had covered on the night he had ridden out and met death on the dark headland.
From time to time she stopped and looked at the sea—looked at the long curve of shining beach with its margin of dark wreckage—looked at the clustering cottages of Carrigmore, and marvelled in a dumb way at the tragedy that could underlie so calm a scene.
She had none of the nervous panic that had assailed her the night before. She was conscious of nothing but a black despair—a despair such as Denis Asshlin had been wont to drown in drink and cards. She had lived her life; she had had her chance; and the end was failure. She had tangled the thread of her existence; and the one hand that could have unravelled the tangle was closed against her.
One thought alone she rigorously refused to harbour—the thought of Nance. Nance would have her husband—Nance would have her home, she assured herself. Nance would forget. In vain the remembrance of her faithful loyalty rose to make the assurance doubtful. As she had closed the door upon Mick, so she closed her heart to the knowledge.
There were certain hours in every life, she told herself, when the soul judged the body—judged and forgave, or judged and condemned! Her shaken mind drove her feet faster along the rugged track—faster—faster, as though Nemesis pursued her. Terrible visions rose from the sea, creeping over the cliff's edge—visions of Larry, stiff and dead, as she had seen her father, as she had seen Milbanke—visions of the cottage at Carrigmore, of her aunt's dark room, filled with the sound of lamentation.
Before she was aware of it, she turned a bend in the path, and came full upon the scene of her father's accident. She paused, gave a faint gasp, and involuntarily put her hand to her throat. Her destination was nearer than she had thought.
In a vague, startled way her eyes scanned the place, roving from the chasm in the cliff to the sweep of short grass, with its tufting of hardy flowers that throve in the strong, salt air. It was also still—so extraordinarily still! Fifty yards away a goat browsed on the cliff, and the quiet, cropping sound of its eating came to her distinctly; overhead in the pale blue sky a hawk was poised, seemingly motionless; down below her, three hundred feet away, the sea made a curious sucking noise, as it filled and receded from some invisible fissure in the rocks.
Still with her hand to her throat, she tip-toed forward to the edge of the chasm. Then suddenly she drew back, trembling and giddy. Beneath her, at what looked an incredible distance, the clear green waters formed a narrow estuary, shadowed by the towering rocks. They were like a grave, those waters—so secret, so full of mystery! Again she forced herself to look, compelling her unwilling eyes to travel up and down the great sweep of red sandstone, from the grass at the edge of the abyss to the dark water, from the water back again to the grass.
She could not be a coward in this last moment! She had never been a physical coward!
She stepped back; she took one dazed look at the world that, until yesterday, had been so very fair; she drew one long, tense, shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and went forward.
But at her first step something or some one came rushing down the cliff behind her. She gave a terrified cry, opened her eyes, and recoiled from the chasm. A moment later she had turned, trembling, crying, utterly unnerved, to find Mick leaping round her.
"Mick!" she said tremulously—"Mick!" Then a voice called to her; and, looking up, she saw Hannah, her hair dishevelled, her eyes still streaming, the yellow envelope of a telegram held in the corner of her apron.
"The fright you gave me, Miss Clodagh!" she began. "Sure, I'd nivver find you at all, only for the dog!"
Then she stopped, looking sharply at her mistress.
"Miss Clodagh, what is it all? Come home!—come home, my lamb!" Her voice, husky from tears, dropped suddenly.
But Clodagh still stood white and shaking. She had been too near the verge to be easily recalled.
"Sure, God's ways are quare, but 'tisn't for us to be judgin'; maybe He's saved worse, Miss Clodagh! Keep thinkin' that! Maybe He's saved worse!"
Clodagh covered her eyes.
"But here's somethin' for you. God help us! I was forgettin'! Will you be seein' what is in it?" She came slowly forward, extending her arm.
Clodagh took the telegram. Without thought or interest she tore it open, and her eyes passed mechanically over the written words. Then suddenly it slipped from between her fingers, blew a little way across the close grass, and fluttered down over the edge of the chasm.
As it disappeared, she turned. Her face was entirely without colour; her eyes had the dazed look of one who is confronted with a great light.
"Hannah!" she cried—"Hannah! there is a God after all!—there is a God!" She swayed suddenly; and the old servant, rushing forward, caught her in her arms.
THE END