CHAPTER IV

WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA

The remainder of the school term passed quickly over. To Norah's credit it must be recorded that she bore in mind what pleasure it would give Roderick and Anstace if she were proved to have made good progress during her stay at Treherne House, and notwithstanding the intoxication of delight that she was in, she worked away assiduously at her lessons during the time which still remained to her. Accordingly, when the examinations were over, she was found to have won a place very near the top of her class for herself.

The great day of the breaking up of the school arrived at length. The hall was filled with boxes, and cabs drove away from the door with luggage piled upon the roof and happy faces inside. From earliest morning Norah had been the busiest of the busy, helping to carry handbags, and rugs, and parcels of all kinds down-stairs, and receiving the affectionate farewells of the girls as they departed. It was quite wonderful how sorry they all seemed to say good-bye to her, and innumerable parting tokens in the shape of pencil-cases, purses, and such small articles were showered upon her. As for Lily Allardyce, whose parents arrived early in a brougham to carry their darling off to the station from which they were to start for Paris, her joy at seeing them again was quite swallowed up by her grief at parting from Norah. Her eyes were swelled almost past recognition, and her little frame was shaken by sobs when she was at last induced, most unwillingly, to quit her hold of Norah, and to follow her parents to the carriage which waited for them.

Norah was after all to remain at Treherne House and to share Fräulein Glock's solitude for a week, as Roderick and Anstace had been unable to complete their preparations for leaving London any sooner. This appeared a very trifling hardship to her now, however, and in the evening, when she had seen the three Miss Clarksons, who had been the last to leave, drive away in their turn, she settled herself down quite cheerfully by the fire in the empty school-room to keep Fräulein company till bed-time.

Fräulein Glock, for her part, seemed amply contented whilst she had her days to herself and was not required to give her usual dreary round of lessons in German grammar and translation. She was engaged upon a crochet antimacassar of most intricate design, which required an incessant counting of stitches. She had, besides, a friend, a German teacher like herself, who was also spending her holidays in solitude in another school a few streets away, and the two were wont to pass many hours together, exchanging low-voiced confidences with each other. They were very kind to the little girl, who had perforce to make a third in their party, and strove spasmodically to entertain and amuse her. Norah could not but feel, however, that she was more or less an encumbrance to them, and she generally preferred to steal away to a sunny window on the stairs, where she curled herself up on the wide window seat, and let her imagination run riot in happy visions of the future.

Norah had counted on her fingers the number of days that she would have to remain at Treherne House. Beginning with the little finger of her right hand, they reached as far as the forefinger of her left; and each morning when she woke she dug the finger representing the day just begun into her pillow, saying to herself, "We've got as far as you now". And each evening when she went to bed she made another dig with the same finger, saying triumphantly, "There, you're over". Thus the days went by till the forefinger of her left hand was ticked off like the rest; and in the evening Roderick, her tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed brother, arrived to carry her off to Euston station, where Anstace was to meet them. And so the doors of Treherne House closed behind little Norah for good and all.

She was so wild with glee and in such boisterous spirits that Anstace had some difficulty in keeping her within the bounds of due decorum during the quarter of an hour that they had to wait for the departure of their train. More than once indeed Anstace had occasion to remind her of the ancient nursery adage, that "too much laughing ends in crying". The saying was to prove true enough, for a few hours later poor Norah, tossed to and fro in her berth, and enduring all the agonies of sea-sickness, was in truth a vast deal nearer to tears than to laughter, and both she and Anstace presented a very limp and woebegone appearance when they landed next morning in a drizzling rain upon the wharf in Dublin.

Their surroundings were not calculated to raise their spirits. A raw wind blew cheerlessly in their faces, and the tall dark buildings that lined the quays, the forest of masts on either hand, and the air, all seemed dripping with moisture. Roderick alone maintained a cheerful demeanour; the rough crossing appeared to have had rather an exhilarating effect upon him. He had been on deck since daylight, pacing up and down with his cap drawn over his eyes and the skirts of his ulster flapping about his legs, quite regardless how the steamer lurched and rolled under him, whilst he watched the Irish coast coming gradually into view. He exerted himself to the utmost for his sisters' comfort, and carried them off to an hotel, where, however, neither Anstace nor Norah was able to taste the breakfast set before them. Then came long hours of railway travelling, diversified by wearisome delays at junction stations, and at last, in the dusk, they alighted at Ballyfin, the terminus of the railway, and its nearest approach to the wild coast region where their future home was situated.

The drizzle of the morning had developed by this time into a heavy and continuous downpour, and poor Norah, cold, hungry, and tired out, felt more wretched than she had ever done in all her life before, and in her secret soul, I believe, would have been rejoiced could she have found herself back in the deserted school-room of Treherne House, where Fräulein Glock counted her interminable crochet patterns. At any other time she would have been in transports of delight at the novel sights and sounds which greeted her on every side--at the strange, guttural utterances of a group of frieze-coated men and blue-cloaked women, who, regardless of the rain, were talking volubly in Irish; at the scent of peat-smoke, which hung in the air; above all, at the outside-car which, on issuing from the station, they found waiting to carry them the twelve Irish miles which had still to be traversed. Now, however, Norah could only rouse herself to a very faint interest in all these things, and in silence she allowed Roderick to lift her on to the seat beside Anstace.

The little town of Ballyfin, with its market-place and its one long, straggling street, was soon left behind, and they emerged upon a level tract of dreary bog-land, the monotony of which was only broken here and there by a squalid cabin streaked green with damp, or by a few fields fenced in from the road and from each other by walls of loosely-piled gray stones. The leaden sky hung low above their heads, and the mountains were wrapped in mist down to their very base. It was impossible to hold up an umbrella, so fierce and wild were the gusts that swept across the bog. Anstace and Norah sat close to each other, a shawl drawn over their heads and held together in front, while Roderick, on the other side of the car, with the collar of his ulster turned up about his ears and a travelling-rug wrapped round his knees, shielded himself from the weather as best he could. On and on the car sped through the seemingly interminable waste, till at last Norah, who had hardly spoken since they had started on their drive, said, with something that sounded suspiciously like a sob:

"Anstace, I didn't think Ireland was one bit like this. I thought it was the nicest place to live in in the whole world; and ugh! it is so ugly and so miserable."

"You could not expect any place to look well on such a night as this, dear. If it were a beautiful sunny evening it would all have seemed quite different to us," Anstace returned as cheerfully as she could, though her own heart sank within her as she looked out from under the fringe of the shawl at the sodden, treeless plain stretching away till it was lost in the fast-gathering twilight, and wondered if it was indeed in this desolate region that their future home was to be made.

Nine miles were laid behind them thus, and it had become wholly dark, when the car made a sudden bend, branching off apparently upon a cross-road, and a sound which hitherto had mingled indistinctly with the wind and rain--a hoarse, deep murmur, now falling, now swelling out louder--seemed of a sudden to fill all the air. Even Norah roused herself to ask what it was.

"You'll never have that noise out of your ears, little one, while you live here," Roderick answered good-naturedly from the other side of the car. "That's the Atlantic, Norah, two hundred feet below us, singing a song to itself. If it were daylight you would see that the road comes out here just above the cliffs. Another mile will bring us home now."

"Troth, an' if 'twasn't that the wind is off ov the shore, it's not sing-songin' that fashion the say wud be, 'twud be thundher and fury wid it, and dashin' agin the racks as if 'twud swape the whole mortial airth away," the driver struck in. "Whin yer honours has been a winter at Kilshane ye'll have no need to be axin' what sort the roar of th' Atlantic is."

A few minutes more, as Roderick had said, and they turned in at a gate left open in evident anticipation of their coming. With a "Hurroo! stir yerself now!" and a cracking of his whip, the driver urged his steed on to its utmost pace, and they tore up the avenue at such a frantic gallop that Norah, desirous though she was to prove herself a true Irishwoman, and therefore able to sit upon an outside-car as to the manner born, could not refrain from clutching the iron rail beside her with all her might. The trees and shrubs on either hand flitted past like shapeless black phantoms. One long straggling branch which stretched itself out into the roadway struck Anstace and Norah a sudden stinging blow in their faces, sending a shower of cold spray over them from its rain-laden leaves. Before they had recovered themselves and had had time to dash the water out of their eyes, the car rounded a corner and pulled up with a jerk before the house, of which only a vague outline could be distinguished in the darkness.

At the same instant the hall-door was flung wide open, letting a flood of light stream out into the night, and two black figures came hurrying out. One held a sod of blazing turf aloft in a pair of tongs, to light the travellers, and waved it in wild whirls of welcome, regardless how the primitive torch hissed and sputtered as the rain-drops fell on it, while the other, springing forward with an uncouth yell, caught Norah in his arms and bore her in triumph into the hall, exclaiming as he set her down:

"Begorra, an' it's meself that'll carry one of the O'Briens in over the thrashel of their own dure. 'Tis the great day that sees the ould shtock back in Kilshane, an' God an' His saints give them luck an' prosperity, an' blessin's airly an' late--"

"Arrah, whisht wid ye, Tom," commanded the torch-bearer, whom Norah now perceived to be an elderly woman clad in the rough red skirt and cotton bodice common to the country, with a wisp of gray hair coiled up closely at the back of her head; "there's no ind to ye, so there isn't, an' it's frightenin' the little darlint ye'll be wid yer goin's on."

"Not a bit of him, Biddy; only delighting her heart with such a right Irish welcome," said Roderick, as he came into the hall and shook Biddy and Tom heartily by the hand. "And here's a new Miss Anstace for you," he added, drawing forward his sister, who had been so encumbered with wraps and mufflings, and so stiff with cold and the long drive, that she had found some difficulty in descending from the car.

"An' wudn't I have known it widout the tellin'," declared Biddy, as she caught the hand which Anstace held out to her and kissed it fervently. "Sure 'tis the very moral of ould Miss Ansey she is, the darlin' jool. An' who wud she take after, if twasn't her own godmother that she's called for?"

"I'm glad Miss Anstace was so alive to her duties as to have a proper resemblance to her namesake," said Roderick merrily. "And now, Biddy, I hope you're prepared to give us something to eat, for I'm pretty ready for it after travelling all the way from London, and I've no doubt the others are too."

"Yis sure, Masther Roderick, an' I've a fire in the parlour anyway that'll do yer heart good to see. If yer honours'll warm yerselves a weeny minute I'll have the tay wet an' all ready. Musha, go long wid ye, Tom, an' help to carry the luggidge upstairs, i'stead o' stannin' there, not able to take yer eyes out of Miss Norah!"

And with this last authoritative utterance Biddy flung the parlour door open, revealing a cozy interior, heavy curtains closely drawn, a snowy-covered table laid for supper, and at the end of the room the blazing turf fire of which she had spoken. Biddy herself disappeared down the passage leading to the kitchen, where a vigorous hissing and spluttering was presently heard, betokening that preparations for the meal were being pushed forward with all possible speed.

Norah retained but a very confused recollection of the after-events of that evening. The warmth of the parlour made her drowsy; there was a buzzing in her head as if she were still in the train, and at times the floor seemed to heave and stagger under her feet as the steamer had done. She roused herself in some degree when Biddy reappeared with tea and a smoking dish of eggs and bacon, but even during supper her head was nodding forward, and it was with difficulty that she kept her eyes from closing. She was only too glad, as soon as the meal was over, to let Anstace lead her upstairs and help her to undress. And almost before she had stretched her weary little limbs out in the huge four-post bedstead, with faded chintz curtains, which filled half the room, she had sunk into the oblivion of a deep and dreamless sleep.