CHAPTER X

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FROM THE NIGHT AND THE STORM.

For some time Pierce's letters had been irregular, and when they came had been the merest scraps, very unsatisfactory to Aline, one could see, though she often said that, moving about so much as he did, Pierce couldn't be expected to write letters like a home-keeping woman.

Then had come a couple of months of silence, during which Aline fretted visibly, at least during the latter portion of the time, for of course she did not begin to worry at once, and there had been the distraction of young De Lacy's accident and convalescence in the house.

It was now April, and blithe, beautiful weather. The smaller trees were all in leaf, and the bigger ones were cloudy with the coming leafage. It was sunny every day, with a touch of east wind, which brought the most beautiful colours on Brandon Hill, bronzes and crimsons and golds, instead of his usual soft azures. The kitchen-garden was a forest of white blossom, and the apple-buds were pushing open a little rosier every day. I was getting rid of my cold, and was out walking every day on the sheltered side of the house, in the gardens, or on the grassy terrace overlooking the rose-garden.

I came on Oona one day in the kitchen-garden picking spinach into her apron.

"Why, Oona," I said, "you are going to give us an early dish. I thought you wouldn't be putting it on the table for a fortnight yet."

"There'll be a stranger to dinner, Miss Hilda. Three nights running I've dreamt of a man dressed in black, but the face of him I couldn't see, coming in over the threshold stone, and this morning there was a stranger in my tea-cup, so there's someone coming over the hill."

"And you've picked the spinach because of your dreams."

"Yes, and killed a pair of chickens. One of them was a pullet, but as she'd learned to crow it couldn't be lucky to keep her. Chickens, an' a bit o' bacon, an' a dish o' spinach is good feeding for anybody, if it was Miss Freda or Master Pierce even."

"Your banshee never came to anything, Oona," I said.

"The year's not out, Miss Hilda," she answered solemnly.

But I was not to be depressed by Oona's superstitions this bright spring morning, so I went off laughing, and left her shaking her old head in its snowy cap-frills.

The day passed without event, and it was late afternoon. Esther was still out, and I had thought I would go a little way to meet her, so after Aline had wrapped me up in a soft old Indian cashmere shawl, and enjoined on me not to go too far, I started off down the avenue. I went farther, perhaps, than I intended, for I expected Esther to come in sight at every turn. Anyhow all at once I felt a little tired, and so sat down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree to wait for her. The evening was rosy now, and translucent yellow, and palest green, and Brandon had flushed rosy pink, and was wearing the evening star in his hair.

"If she doesn't come soon," said I, "I must turn back."

And just at that moment I heard, in the silence, wheels and the trotting of a horse's hoofs on the road. The sound was coming nearer every minute, and was sufficient of a novelty to attract my attention, for, as I have said before, the road to Brandon led nowhere but to Brandon, the only exit from it, after Brandon gates, being a horrible rutty boreen, too narrow for anything but the smallest donkey-cart.

"Hullo!" said I to myself--I have learnt slang from the boys, you see--"Oona's stranger, for a ducat!" and I began to feel rather excited.

With the sensitive hearing of a country-girl, I could follow the sound of the car through its many windings and turnings, and could even catch the murmur of voices when the turning was towards Brandon, and not away from it, or in a hollow.

Presently there was a pause, and I knew the car had stopped at the gate, and that the driver was leading his horse through, for our last lodge-keeper, Larry Hefferman, had been dead two years, and we had not filled his place. Then I heard the car coming on towards me up the avenue.

I listened in strained expectancy, still keeping my place on the log. It came nearer and nearer. Then it turned on to the long straight bit at the other end of which I was sitting. There was one person on it besides the driver--a tall man, much muffled, despite the clemency of the April evening. As they came near me I saw him lean across and speak to the driver. Then the car stopped and he alighted slowly and painfully, and, taking a bag from the seat, came on to where I was sitting, while the car turned round and drove slowly off.

The man came up to me and stopped. I could scarcely see his face, for the muffling and the soft hat. But there was something familiar about it, and yet unfamiliar, which made me jump up, trembling slightly.

"Why, it is little Hilda!" said the man, and with the sound of his voice uncertainty vanished.

"Oh, Pierce," I cried, "Pierce! How glad Aline will be!" And then I added, nearly in the same breath:

"But what have you been doing to yourself? You are not the Pierce that went away. Have you been ill, Pierce?"

He stooped and kissed me and laughed.

"Five years make a difference in a man's looks, little woman;" and then he coughed a hard dry cough, which seemed to be tearing through flesh and bone.

"And how are they all? How is Aline? And you and Essie, and the twins, and the boys, and Freda?"

He pushed the soft hat off his head, drew a long breath, and looked all around him. Five years! Ah! it might have been twenty-five, so great was the difference. This was not our Pierce, this hollow-eyed, gaunt-cheeked, white-lipped stranger. He looked taller too by a head, but that might have been because he was very thin.

"Dear Heaven!" he said, "how sweet it is to be at home! How often I have longed for a sight of old Brandon there, and to smell these delicious woods!"

He patted my hand, which he still held, softly.

"Come along, little girl, let us get home. I've been ill, and am ordered to be out only in the sun. How fortunate that you should have been mooning down here! I didn't want to go in on Aline suddenly, with this sick man's face."

So he did know that he was looking very ill. What matter? Home air and tender nursing and good feeding would soon make him the old Pierce again.

He would have taken up his bag, but I pushed away his hand from it.

"One of the boys will run down for it," said I. "It is as safe till they fetch it as the Bank of Ireland."

There was still no sign of Esther, and we walked on towards the house. We met no one to be surprised at my return with a stranger's arm about me. Poor Pierce! Being so near me, I could hear the painful catching of his breath as he walked, and now and again he had to pause to recover himself.

The hall-door stood open as usual, and I brought him into the drawing-room, which was unoccupied, and to a comfortable chair. He sank into it without a word, but a quivering sigh told me how delicious its restfulness was. "Now rest," said I, "and I will fetch Aline."

"You will tell her, little Hilda?"

"Yes; I will tell her that you have been ill, and have come home to be made well."

But all the way upstairs Oona's story of the banshee would haunt me, though I put out two hands to drive it away.

I found Aline writing labels for the rhubarb and parsnip wine Oona was making. She looked up at me with a questioning smile, and I noticed that she was not looking well. I sat down on the arm of the chair and kissed her ear.

"What is it?" she said. "Have you had a nice walk, and found Essie as you expected?"

"I didn't wait for her. I--I found news."

Her eyes opened wide and startled.

"News!" she repeated after me. "Of Pierce? It could only be of Pierce. What news, Hilda? Not bad news?"

"Good news, darling."

"Oh, Hilda, he is coming home! I know by your face. Tell me. Oh ... he is come!"

"He is come," said I; "but wait, don't rush away like that. He has been ill, and has come home to get well. I was to tell you he was looking ill. You mustn't be startled at the change in him, nor startle him."

But Aline was already on her way to the door, and I followed her as fast as I could. After all, she would have time to get over the shock of his appearance gradually, for now the kindly twilight would soften it down.

She went straight to the drawing-room, and I followed her, with an irrational fear lest she might want me. I saw Pierce stand up and lean on a near table, as if he felt faint. Then Aline put her arms round him with a sharp cry of love and pity, and I went out and closed the door.

Half an hour later Pierce came into the dining-room, and was installed in a big chair by the brisk little wood-fire, which had been lit because the nights turned chilly. He had had a wash and a brush-up, and looked better than when I had seen him first, and because he had been ill there was a little table set beside him, to which we carried the dainty bits of the chicken and the delicacies which Oona had hastily served up.

The young ones, of course, could not see how woefully Pierce was changed, which was a relief to us. Now that the lamp was lit I could mark the changes in his face. He had left us a sunny-hearted, sunny-faced boy. Now some immense trouble had drawn a myriad fine lines on the skin that had been so smooth. When, for a moment, it relaxed into quietness, it wore a curiously tragic expression. More than illness had been at work on that face. I, in my dim corner, wondered and wondered what the years had held for him to change him so greatly.

Aline had taken the shock of his changed looks well. I think her secret fear for him out in the briers and thorns of the world had been so great, that to have him at home was for the time being joy enough. He himself seemed to think that all he needed to get well was Brandon, and she was only too glad to believe him.

And now Oona came to our help with all the knowledge and love that is in her faithful old heart. After a night's rest, Pierce, who seemed overjoyed to be back again, was for all sorts of exertions and expeditions, as if he were a strong man. But Oona put down her foot.

"Breakfast in bed, Miss Aline," she said, "and if the day's fine an' warm you can get down the little sofa Miss Hilda had when her foot was bad, an' when Mr. Pierce is dressed he can lie on it in the verandy. He'll have to be stronger before he goes racketin' an' tearin' round the place like them young colts o' boys."

Aline acquiesced silently, but when she was telling Pierce the arrangements that had been made for him, she added:

"You must rest well, you see, after the fatigue of the voyage, and be patient, and do as Oona bids you."

He laughed with some of his old merriment.

"I have always done as Oona bid me. And though I feel as strong as a horse this morning, she is probably right. I used to think, on the way home, that I should never be able to get rest enough."

After that the days passed, and Pierce seemed to have accepted the invalid's part even gratefully. I would have said he was quite content, except that once or twice he reproached himself for being an expense to us.

"I am a useless beggar, little Hilda," he said to me one day when I was alone with him, "and I am bitterly ashamed to have come home empty-handed. I fought against that as long as I could,--so long that it was near being a case of never coming home at all."

"Oh, Pierce, that would have been the real cruelty and the real wrong!" I cried out.

"I felt that, Hilda. I thought it would be the cruellest wrong of all if I were to die out there, and leave Aline the heritage of that eternal sorrow. I kept hoping that things would be better. Indeed, Hilda, I endured much before I made up my mind to come. Yet I always knew that, in a certain contingency, I would come, and for that I kept my passage-money inviolate, even when I was starving."

"Starving, Pierce?"

"Yes, child, starving,--like many a better man. Privation paved the way for sickness with me. But you will not tell Aline, nor anyone else. I don't want to squirm under my punishment, which I richly deserved. And I would not have Aline's tender heart wrung afterwards to think upon such things."

"She need never know," I said. "We will make you well, Pierce, and Aline will be happy."

Then I saw a light of exaltation break over his face.

"Life and death are in God's hands, little one," he said, "and if it is death for me, I shall not repine. It may happen to a man to save his soul alive in the very gates of death."

I said nothing. With that light on his face I could not talk of death as if it were the last evil.

"I have known worse than death," he went on dreamily, "but the knowledge shall die with me. God knows it is no merit of mine that I did not give my immortal soul for the asking. I have been snatched out of the gates of hell, little Hilda, and shall I be afraid of the Valley of the Shadow? Ah! there are terrible things in the world out there, crueller than wolves, deadlier than serpents."

We were silent for a time. Pierce had turned his face away, and when he looked at me again I could have thought there were tears in his eyes, but perhaps it was because I was crying myself.

"You see, there is nothing to be sad about," he said softly, "even if I am very ill. There is more joy in heaven,--ah, yes! and if there is joy in heaven, is there not cause for joy on earth? Believe me, child, there is no real sadness, no real sorrow on earth, except sin. All else that seems sad to us is because we see as in a glass, darkly."

I never found Pierce in this mood again. And I believe I was the only one to whom he said so much, for he had the tender compassion for Aline that would not leave her the memory of great sorrow.

Only once afterwards did he touch upon those years.

"Desmond would have saved me, Hilda," he said suddenly one day,--"and I would not be saved. When I am gone I want you to write to Desmond, and tell him that I knew at last he was right, and that I died loving and thanking him. You will do that for me, Hilda?"

I said I would do it, and he was satisfied. It was curious that he should have chosen me for his confidant about such things. I know he did not talk to Aline, close as the bond was between them, as if he did not expect to live.

Good old Oona surpassed herself in those days after Pierce came home. I had rather feared her superstitions, the superstitions the peasants love; but if she felt them she did not impart them to me. She was indefatigable in compounding dainty dishes to tempt Pierce's weak appetite, and she brought out of her stores of knowledge wonderful recipes for healing and strengthening.

But as the days turned round to summer, Pierce did not grow stronger.

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