the ring of the trowel travelled far on the wind across the heather, a voice of civilization, saying pertinent, unhesitating things to a country where all was loose, and limitless, and inexact. up here, by the shores of lough turc, people had, from all ages, told the time by the sun, and half-an-hour either way made no difference to any one; now—most wondrous of all impossibilities—the winter sunrise was daily heralded by the steely shriek of an engine whirling truckloads of men to their work across the dark and dumb bog-lands. the trout in the lakes no longer glided to safety at the recurrence of the strange tremor and clatter that accompanied the twilights, the wild{101} duck no longer splashed into wing along the water’s surface, and the people scattered among the hillsides already counted as their chiefest landmark the red gable of the new railway-station.
every morning saw a villageful of men shot into it; bricklayers working high up in the gable, stone-cutters dressing limestone blocks with infinite chip and clink, workmen shovelling gravel, and over all the voice of the ganger arising at intervals in earnest, profuse profanity. the dublin artisans worked in silence, except when one or other trolled forth one of the ditties of his class—genteel romance, with a waltz refrain, or obscure vulgarity of the three-penny music-hall, yet representing to the singer the songs of zion in a strange land; while the local gang used every chance of proximity to carry on a low growl of conversation. whether it was the party of twenty whose picks and spades were gradually levelling and filling the unfinished platform, or the two whose voices{102} ascended in irish from the depths of the well that they were sinking, the general topic was the same, and was one that intimately concerned mr. glasgow.
“jim mulloy’s brother told me he seen the paymasther ’ere yestherday in letther kyle,” said a withered little man, who was mixing mortar with extraordinary deliberation. “he was comin’ out o’ the bank, an’ he havin’ the brown bag with him.”
“maybe it’s little chance oursel’ has of it, whether or no,” responded his satellite, a red-faced youth, whose occupation of eternally shaking sand through a sieve might well foster pessimism. “don’t ye know well thim isn’t workin’ for nothin’”—indicating the bricklayers on the gable, and the portly and prosperous stonemasons, chipping away in professional silence. “short thim fellows’d be leggin’ it away to dublin if they wasn’t gettin’ their pay; an’ d——d well glasgow knows it’s the likes of us must be waitin’ on him!{103}”
the man who was supplying the sand tilted his barrow up on end and leaned on the handles, secure in the knowledge that the ganger was engaged at the other side of the station in raining down expletives upon the heads of the sinkers of the well.
“it’s what they’re sayin’ beyond,” he remarked, jerking his head in the direction of the men working at the platform, “that what has him desthroyed is the bog of tully. eight months now they’re sthrivin’ to fill that spot.”
“an’ if they were eight months more,” said the man who was mixing the mortar, “they’ll not fill it.” he took off the tin lid of his pipe and stirred up its embers with a horny fore-finger. “betther for him not to be intherfarin’ with the likes o’ that place.”
the pessimist with the sieve laughed with the superiority of youth, and of a reader of the daily independent.
“there’s wather runnin’ undher the ground there in every place,” went on the{104} same speaker, “me father knew that well—sure the bog itsel’ is only sittin’ on it. there’s holes up in cahirdreen that’s sixty feet deep, and wather runnin’ in the bottom o’ them. ’tis out undher tully that wather goes. sure there was a man had a grand heifer—god knows ye’d sooner be lookin’ at her than atin’ yer dinner—she fell down in one o’ them holes, and went away undher the ground with the wather. as sure as i’m alive, they heard her screeching up through the bog!”
the reader of the independent was half-staggered, and the ganger, who had advanced upon the party with the quietness of a dangerous bull, here broke upon the conversation in gross and fervid oratory.
“they’re gettin’ it in style down there,” said one of the platform party. “by damn, if he comes to talkin’ to me, i’ll throw down the shovel and ax him where is me three weeks’ wages!”
“maybe ye will, mortheen,” rejoined his next-door neighbour, “an’ maybe this time{105} next week ye’ll be afther him axing him to take ye back.”
“is it him?” replied the undaunted mortheen; “little i’d think of breaking his snout for him, or glasgow’s ayther!”
as he spoke, the whistle of an engine, thinned by distance, made itself heard, and away on the horizon the steam cloud blossomed like a silver flower against the sunny sky.
when the engine and its accompanying brake-van drew up at the station, glasgow’s eye could discover no flaw in the exemplary and dead silent industry that prevailed. the shovelfuls flung by mortheen were heavier and more frequent than those of his fellows, and even the spectacle of lady susan emerging in sables from the van and passing among the buckets and heaps of lime, did not seem to be noticed by so much as the lift of an eyelid. it was almost one o’clock, and the ganger, transformed into an official of submissive urbanity, sounded his whistle for the dinner-{106}hour. the clatter of tools died out in the space of two seconds, and the men, swinging themselves into their coats, straggled out into the road, slouching, rolling, hitching, and apparently untouched by the desire of the ordinary human heart to keep step.
their employer’s picnic-party was already established in the newly-roofed kitchen of the new station, by a fire of chips and bits of plank. a luncheon-basket stood on a carpenter’s bench, a champagne-bottle on the window-sill, and lady susan and slaney were sitting on boxes by the fire, eating game pie. lady susan had violets in her toque, and possessed more strikingly than usual that air of being very handsome that is not always given to handsome people. behind her the empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that frittered a myriad sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and the grey and faint purple of the naked wood beyond it. it seemed too great a background for her{107} powdered cheek and her upward glances at her host.
“how far do you want us to walk?” she said, looking over her shoulder at the view, “all the way to that wood there? how silly of you to say the bikes would be no use!”
“i don’t dispute the fact that they would have been of use to you and major bunbury,” replied her host, cutting the wires of the second bottle of champagne.
“it’s so contemptible of you not to learn the bike,” she went on, with a manner half discontented, half brusque. “it’s all prejudice.”
“i’m beginning to cultivate prejudice,” said glasgow, retaining the cork with skill, “it’s so respectable. churchwardens and generals and heads of departments are always prejudiced.”
“i didn’t know that you were so wonderfully addicted to respectability,” said lady susan, with a laugh and a look that made slaney feel rather hot—“since when, may{108} i ask?” lady susan was too careless and too little disposed for the toils of finesse to foster a flirtation for its own sake; when she did find a sufficing motive, these same qualities created a startling directness of method.
“since when?” repeated glasgow. “oh, since i took to church-going, i suppose. perhaps miss morris could tell you!”
slaney had become accustomed to these morsels flung to the memory of a past, but they never failed to remind her of the moment when she had placed herself for ever at a disadvantage.
“i’m not a very good authority,” she said, with a smile as cold as the january wind; “uncle charles has a better memory for things connected with church-going.”
the intention to be unresponsive often makes itself felt more disagreeably than a repartee. it annoyed glasgow, even while he set it down as an indirect tribute to his desertion.
“i refuse to be described as a thing{109} connected with church-going,” he said, looking straight at her and laughing; “i thought i had other associations.”
major bunbury looked up quickly, not at glasgow, but at slaney. her flushed silence was obvious enough for any one, except lady susan, who merely supposed that champagne at luncheon was having its almost inevitable result on the complexion. perhaps it was by contrast that glasgow’s habitual pallor seemed pastiness, and his easy manner something that struck major bunbury as being like bad form.
“i say,” remarked lady susan, “when are we to go on and see this wonderful waterfall, or whatever it is? where are the cigarettes? let’s light up before we start.”
“i think you’d better not,” said glasgow, “the men will be back directly.”
“well, what do they matter?”
“i think you’d better not,” he repeated, in that intimate tone that seemed so uncalled for.{110}
lady susan put up her eyebrows with an expression of petulant inquiry, and something as near a pout as was possible for a person not versed in the habit, but she shut her cigarette-case. major bunbury thought he had never seen her look so foolish.
“is she going to lose her head about him?” was the question that was suddenly driven in upon him. until to-day, he thought she was merely occupying idleness and exhibiting indifferent taste.
he and slaney walked behind her and glasgow along the muddy road, in that double tête-à-tête now become inevitable; the wind blew cold and sweet off the lake and off the bog—cold, and sweet, and inimitably irish, like slaney herself, as major bunbury was at this moment capable of expressing it, if he had known that he was making the comparison. his mind had unconsciously stored up many such impressions of her, to what end it had not occurred to him to inquire. the road crossed a trout-stream, and by the bridge{111} glasgow and lady susan turned off and began to follow the bank of the little river through a stunted and intricate wood. in the track by which they made their way it was not possible to walk side by side; bunbury went first, sometimes holding back a branch, sometimes giving her his hand when the rocks of the river brink thrust their slippery shoulders across the way. they spoke little, and by the gift of imaginative sympathy that was hers for those who interested her, she knew that his silence was vexed with misgiving about lady susan.
the river was brimming full, and, as it raced, the black water and the cold froth washed in deep eddies between the rocks; the sunlit bank opposite was red with withered bracken and sedge; the soft booming of a waterfall came to the ear. passing round the curve they saw the thick and creamy column of water plunge from its edge of low crag to its ruin among the boulders; above it two or three battered fir-{112}trees stood on the high ground, grey and straight and rigid beside the lavish rush and confusion.
lady susan was leaning against one of the fir-trees, smoking her cigarette, and looking fixedly and dreamily at the water; glasgow, with her fur-lined coat on his arm, was standing very close to her, looking as if he had said something to which she had not as yet replied. she did not move when slaney and bunbury joined them, and was unaffectedly uninterested in general conversation. slaney had never thought her so handsome; her eyes seemed to look out of her heart and into a remote place unseen of others, instead of summing up things around her with her wonted practical glance.
it was against all theories of woman-kind, yet the fact remained that slaney liked lady susan.
