"Let me light you to bed."

He laughed quickly; and, picking up one of the ma.s.sive candlesticks, moved towards the door.

For an instant Milbanke lingered in the dining-room, grown dimmer with the departing lights; then, hearing his name in his host's voice, he hurried after him into the hall.

a.s.shlin was standing at the foot of the stairs, the glowing candles held aloft. Above him, the high ceiling loomed shadowy and indistinct; behind him, the dark wainscoted wall threw his figure into bold relief.

It would have demanded but a slight stretch of fancy to picture him as his satin-coated great-grandfather grown to a dissipated maturity, as he stood there, the master spirit in this house of fallen greatness. As Milbanke reached his side, he laughed once more, precisely as Anthony a.s.shlin might have laughed, standing at the foot of the same staircase nearly a hundred years ago. The taint of heredity seemed to wrap him round--to gleam in his unnaturally bright eyes, to reverberate in his voice.

"Up with you, James!" he cried. "I needn't put your hand on the banister, like I have to do with some of my guests. You never yet drank a swerve into your steps. Well, I don't blame you for it. It's men like you that keep heaven a going concern, while poor devils like me are paving the lower regions. Good-night to you!"

With a fresh laugh he thrust the great candlestick into the other's hand and turned on his heel.

Milbanke remained motionless, while a.s.shlin pa.s.sed across the hall and opened the door, letting in a breath of fresh, damp air that set the candle-flames dancing; then, as the door closed again, he turned and put his hand on the banister.

It was with a feeling of unreality, mingled with the borrowed excitement still at work within him, that he began his ascent of the stairs. The natural fatigue consequent on the day's journey had been temporarily dispelled, and sleep seemed something distant and almost unattractive. As he mounted the creaking steps, moving cautiously out of consideration for the sleeping household, he found himself wishing incontinently that he had offered his company to his host in his stroll towards the sea.

As the desire came to him, he paused. He could still overtake a.s.shlin!

He hesitated, glancing from the closed door of his bedroom to the hall lying below him in a well of shadow. Then suddenly he raised his head, attracted by a sound, subdued and yet distinct, that came to him through the silence of the house--the sound of light, hasty steps on an uncarpeted corridor.

In the wave of surprise that swept over him he forgot his recent excitement, his recent wish for action and fresh air. Lifting the candlestick above his head, he peered along the pa.s.sage that stretched away beyond his own door. But the scrutiny was momentary. Almost at once he lowered the candles and drew back, as he recognised the figure of Clodagh coming towards him out of the gloom. She was wearing a flowing, old-fashioned dressing-gown of some flowered material; one strand of her brown hair had been loosened, and fell across her forehead, shadowing her eyes into something of the beauty they were yet to wear. And as Milbanke looked at her, he realised with a stirring of something like embarra.s.sment, that a touch of promise, very gracious and infinitely feminine, had replaced the first, half-boyish impression that he had received of her.

But if he felt embarra.s.sment, it was evident that she was conscious of none. As she came within a few yards of him she halted for an instant to a.s.sure herself of his ident.i.ty; then, her mind satisfied, she stepped straight onward into the light of the six candles.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she said quickly. "I was afraid for a minute that it was father. I've been waiting up for you," she added hastily. "I couldn't go to sleep till I'd seen you."

Milbanke was confused. Moved by an undefined impulse, he extinguished three of the six candles.

"Indeed!" he said. "But it's very late. You must--you must be tired."

He glanced uncertainly round the landing, as if seeking a chair to offer her. Then an idea struck him.

"Will you come downstairs?" he suggested. "The fire is still alight in the dining-room. You--you must be cold as well as tired."

He looked hesitatingly at her light gown.

But Clodagh shook her head.

"We mustn't go down," she said. "He might come in and find us--and then we'd have a row. He and I of course, I mean," she added politely.

Then, as if impatient of the preamble, she plunged into the subject she had at heart.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said, "will you promise me not to--not to, after to-night----?"

Milbanke's face looked blank.

"Not to what?" he asked.

"Oh, not to encourage him--not to play with him. He's ruining himself and ruining us all. Couldn't you guess it from dinner--from the quarrel we had? Oh, he's so terribly foolish!"

Her voice suddenly trembled.

But he was labouring under the shock her revelation had given him.

"Good heavens!" he stammered. "I had no idea--no idea of such a thing."

"No; I know you hadn't--I was sure you hadn't." Her voice thrilled with quick relief.

"No, no. Certainly not. But tell me about it. Dear me!--dear me! I had no idea of such a thing."

"Oh, it began ages ago--before mother died. Burke says 'twas the life--the quiet life after England. He came home, you know, when his father died, and he found the place in a bad way. He has never been rich enough to live out of the country, and he has never stopped fretting for the things that aren't here. But while mother lived he kept pretty good; 'twas after she died that he seemed not to care.

First he got gloomy and sad, then he got reckless and terrible. People were frightened of him. His friends began to drop away."

She paused for a moment, glancing down into the hall to a.s.sure herself that all was quiet.

"It's been the same ever since. Sometimes he's gloomy and depressed, other times he's wild, like to-night. And when he's wild, he's mad for cards. Oh, you don't know what it's like! It's like being a drunkard--only different--and worse. When he's like that, he'd play with any one--for anything. Last week he had a dreadful man--a horse-dealer from Muskeere--staying here with him for three days. They played cards every night--played till three or four in the morning.

Father lost all the ready money in the house, and nearly emptied the stables."

Milbanke stood before her horrified and absorbed. An understanding of many things, before obscure, had come to him while she was speaking; and with the knowledge, a sudden deep pity for this child of his old friend--a sudden sense of guilt at his own blindness, his own weakness.

"Miss Clodagh," he said quickly, in his stiff, formal voice. Then he paused, as she raised her hand with a sharp gesture of attention.

A heavy step sounded on the gravel outside the house. There was an instant's hesitation; then Clodagh leant forward with swift presence of mind and blew out the three remaining candles.

"You understand now?" she whispered.

"Yes," he murmured, below his breath. "Yes; I understand."

A moment later he heard her flit down the corridor, and heard a.s.shlin open the heavy outer door.

CHAPTER V

Thus it was that James Milbanke entered on his first night at Orristown. The surprise, the excitement, and the culminating incident of the evening would have been disturbing to a man of even more placid temperament; and rebel as he might against the weakness, he lay awake considerably longer than was his wont in the uncomfortable, canopied bed, listening to the numberless infinitesimal sounds that break the silence of a sleeping house--from the faint, occasional cracking of the furniture to the scurrying of a mouse behind the plaster of the walls.

Then gradually, as his ears became accustomed to these minor noises, another sound, unnoticed in the activity of the earlier hours, obtruded itself softly but persistently upon his consciousness--the subdued and regular breaking of the sea on the rocks below the house.

A slight sense of annoyance was his first feeling, for it was many years since he had slept by the sea; then quietly, lingeringly, soothingly the rhythmical persistence of the sound began to tell.

Imperceptibly the confusing ideas of the evening became pleasantly indistinct--the numberless contradictory feelings blurred into one delightful sensation of indifference and repose. With the salt, moist air, borne to him through the open window, and the great untiring lullaby of the ocean rising and falling upon his senses, like the purring of a gigantic cat, he fell asleep.

His first sensation upon waking the next morning was one of pleasure--the placid, unquestioning satisfaction that comes to the untroubled mind with the advent of a fine day. To his simple taste, the sights and sounds that met his waking consciousness were possessed of an unaccustomed charm. With daylight, the room that last night had held grim and even ghostly suggestions, took on a more human and more friendly air. The ancient mahogany furniture seemed anxious to reflect the morning sunshine; the ma.s.sive posts of the bed with their drapery of faded repp no longer glowered upon the intruder. Each object was bathed in, and rejuvenated by, the golden warmth, the incomparable mellow radiance of sea and sky that flowed in at the open window.

For a while he lay in contemplative enjoyment of this early, untainted atmosphere, while the sounds of the awakening day gradually rose above the soft beating of the outgoing tide--falling upon his ears in a pleasant, primitive medley of clacking fowls, joyous, yelping dogs, and stamping horses. For a s.p.a.ce he lay still; then the inevitable wish to take active part in this world created from the darkness and the silence of the night aroused him; and, slipping out of bed, he drew on a dressing-gown and walked to the window.

The sight that met his eyes was one of infinite beauty. The delicacy--the poetry--the subtle, unnameable charm that lie in the hollow of Nature's hand were over land and sky and sea; the warmth and wealth of summer stretched before him, but summer mellowed and softened by a golden autumnal haze.

There are more inspiring countries than Ireland--countries more richly dowered in vegetation; countries more radiant in atmosphere and brilliant in colouring: but there is no land where the Hand of the Maker is more poignantly felt; where the mystic spirit of creation--the wonderful, tender, pathetic sense of the Beginning--has been so strangely preserved. As Milbanke stood at the open window, his eyes travelled without interruption over the wide green fields--neither lawn nor meadow--that spread from the house to the sh.o.r.e, owning no boundary wall beyond the low, shelving rocks of red sandstone that rose a natural barrier against the encroachments of the tide. And from the fields his gaze wandered onward, drawn irresistibly and inevitably to the sea itself--the watchful, tyrannical guardian of the silent land.