The Gambler Part 97

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 a.s.shlin--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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 m.u.f.fled 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 a.s.shlin 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 a.s.shlin 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 pa.s.sed since that gay, reckless presence had filled the old room; dice and duelling were gone out of fas.h.i.+on; but human nature was unchanged--there were still a.s.shlins of Orristown!

"O G.o.d----" she said aloud; then she stopped. "There is no G.o.d!" she added wildly--"there is no G.o.d!"

At the sudden sound of her voice, Mick rose from the corner where he had been crouching. The sight of him calmed her; she pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ning beach with its margin of dark wreckage--looked at the cl.u.s.tering 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 a.s.sailed her the night before. She was conscious of nothing but a black despair--a despair such as Denis a.s.shlin 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 a.s.sured herself. Nance would forget. In vain the remembrance of her faithful loyalty rose to make the a.s.surance 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s at the edge of the abyss to the dark water, from the water back again to the gra.s.s.