The chain of incidents that had been forged by Nance to make this departure feasible, as well as possible, had been too minute and complex to make any impression upon Clodagh's mind. Her confession the night before had been more a confession to herself than a conscious unburdening of her soul to other ears; and having made it, she was satisfied to resign herself into any hands that were willing and capable of guiding her actions.

The first incident of the morning had been a visit from Gore. But it had been Nance who had interviewed him first; and a quarter of an hour later, when Clodagh had come into the drawing-room, nervous and guilty, she had found him full of sympathy and solicitude for what he believed to be her sudden recall to Ireland. Then had come the Estcoits; and with their advent, more solicitude and more sympathy. Lunch time had crept upon them almost unawares; and--again on Nance's initiative--the whole party had adjourned to the Hyde Park Hotel, and had partaken of a meal in company.

More than once during the crowded hours of the morning, Clodagh had striven to draw her sister aside; but Nance, animated by an unusual excitement, had evaded every possibility of a _tete-a-tete_.

It was only at the door of the railway carriage, when Gore and Estcoit were superintending the labelling of her luggage, and Mrs. Estcoit and Daisy were buying books and papers for her amus.e.m.e.nt, that at last they had a word in private. Clodagh was standing in the open doorway of the carriage, and Nance was on the step, when quite suddenly the latter put up her hand and pressed a letter between her sister's fingers.

"My proper good-bye is in this letter, darling," she said. "I couldn't say it before everybody. Kiss me, will you?"

Impulsively Clodagh bent forward, and the sisters exchanged a long kiss.

"You have been an angel, Nance! I will thank you when--when----"

"No!--no! There can never be thanks between you and me. We are one.

Remember that always! Always, Clo--always!"

She drew back quickly, as the rest of the party came hurrying to the carriage.

And so the good-byes had all been said, and the train had steamed out of the station; she had watched the platform melt into obscurity, and then had dropped into her seat with that sense of quiet--of flatness--that follows the moments of parting.

The long railway journey and the night crossing to Ireland still lay between her and action. She looked impatiently at her travelling companions, an uninteresting brother and sister who had already buried themselves behind newspapers in their respective corners of the carriage, and almost angrily she turned to the heap of magazines lying beside her; but as she did so, her glance brightened. Nance's letter was still to be read!

In the midst of her perplexities, a tender thought flashed over her mind as she opened the envelope, and her face softened instinctively as she began to read. But gradually, as her glance pa.s.sed from one line to another, her expression changed, she sat upright in her seat, her bearing altered in a sudden, inexplicable manner.

"DARLING, DARLING CLO!" the letter began,

"I must have seemed a wretch last night and to-day! I mean I must have seemed very strange, showing hardly any surprise or sympathy at anything you told me, and taking your going to Ireland as though it were a thing that happened every day. But, Clo, it wasn't because I didn't love and worship you, and feel for you in every tiny thing, but because I was afraid you would guess what was really in my mind--what I was plotting and planning all the time.

"Clo, I wanted you to go to Ireland because--oh, do forgive me for even writing it!--I wanted to get you away.

"Dearest, you are to do no more silly things. At the risk of hurting you, I am saying this. You used to say long ago that I saw more than you, because I looked on instead of doing things myself.

Clo, you are _not_ to raise money on Orristown, because you have no need to do it. Lord Deerehurst has been paid his thousand pounds and you are free--quite free.

"My little sister, imagine that my arms are round your neck so tight that you can't be vexed! When you told me last night that my thousand pounds really belonged to him, my first thought was to say--'Well, let's give him back as much of it as we have left!' But I stopped in time. You were not in the mood last night to take the most loving favour in the world. You wanted to sacrifice yourself; so instead of saying what was in my heart, I locked it up closely and thought about it all night; and before you were awake this morning, I sent for Pierce and asked him to lend me three hundred pounds--the three hundred we had spent out of the thousand.

"Don't say anything, darling! Don't be angry! Don't even think!

Pierce was perfectly sweet; he never asked one question, and at three o'clock to-day, just after we came back from lunch, I sent the thousand pounds in notes to Carlton House Terrace, with a card of yours enclosed.

"Darling, _don't_ be vexed! Don't question it! It is right, I know.

It was a debt of honour, in the fullest sense.

"And now, Clo, it's all finished, all done with, all pa.s.sed, and you can repay me the money slowly in years and years. Be happy! Oh, darling, be happy! Go back to Orristown, as I would have you to go back, with your heart full of all the great, good, true love that Walter and I have for you.

"Ride and walk and swim, and be without one care; and in a week or two, when the hateful thought of last night has been swept away by the splendid strong sea winds, come back to us, a newer, wiser, happier Clodagh.

"Darling, I am, now and always,

"Your true sister,

"NANCE."

Clodagh closed the letter; then suddenly she rose from her seat and stepped from the carriage into the narrow corridor.

The engine was swinging forward at great speed; the train itself was swaying to the swift motion; outside, the pleasant English country seemed to fly past the long line of windows. For a second, she stood by the carriage door; then she stepped forward to the open window and, leaning out, let the strong current of air play upon her face, blowing back the hair from her temples.

How good G.o.d was! How good the world was! The great machinery of the train--the great wheels of life--ground out the same sudden song. She was free! By the unlimited power of love, she had been made free!

CHAPTER XVII

It was eleven o'clock on the day following when Clodagh's train steamed into the little station of Muskeere. Her boat had arrived in Cork in the early hours of the morning; but she had only given herself time to take a hurried breakfast at one of the hotels, before driving to the railway station. Now that she had set foot in Ireland, the racial love of home had awakened in her, making the hours leaden until she found herself at Orristown.

The great lifting of the spirit that Nance's letter had brought into being, had not subsided since the moment she had arisen from her seat in the train, filled with the knowledge that an insupportable burden had been lifted from her. At Reading she had despatched an answering telegram to her sister; and for nearly an hour afterwards, she had sat in the corner of her carriage, covering sheet after sheet of note-paper with hasty pencilling. Two letters were the result,--one to Nance, all love, all spontaneous grat.i.tude; the other to Gore, full of tenderness, of promise, of almost vehement rea.s.surance.

Thus the long and usually monotonous train journey ran itself out; and in the confused darkness of the crowded landing-stage, she went on board the boat at New Milford.

The crossing of the sea had ever been a delight to Clodagh. The love of the sea--the almost mystical knowledge of it--was in her blood. And that night for many hours she had paced the deck, rejoicing after a fashion understood by few in each forward plunge of the vessel--in the sense of exhilaration and action conveyed each time the prow dipped to cut the waves and send the spray flying.

She was going home! There had seemed a curious, thrilling sensation in the knowledge. She was going home! After many experiences, she was returning to the spot where her life had first separated its thread from the great tapestry of existence--the spot where happiness and unhappiness had first presented themselves as differentiated things--where the elemental facts of pain and pleasure had been first demonstrated to her unformed mind. The memory of Orristown had materialised, as she had walked to and fro under the summer sky powdered with faint stars; and she had closed her eyes until the salt sting of the sea had conjured up the square, white house, the green fields, and the long, shelving rocks.

The picture had remained with her long after she retired to her cabin, and had been still before her mind when the first low line of Irish land had broken across her vision in the silvery morning. Then it had been dispersed by more immediate things,--the arrival at Cork--the breakfast--the drive across the town to the Muskeere train; until at last the shrill whistle of the small engine, announcing that her destination was reached, swept everything but the incidents of the moment from her consideration.

As the train stopped, she sprang to her feet and leaned out of the window. How intensely familiar it was!--the narrow platform; the wooden paling, behind which the incursion of summer visitors to Muskeere congregated each day to watch the Cork trains arrive; the slovenly, good-natured porter, absolutely unaltered by the pa.s.sage of time!

Her thoughts swam, as she tried vainly to reconcile her own many experiences with this amazing changelessness. Then all need for such comparison was brushed aside, as a tall figure came striding down the platform, followed by a couple of dogs; and she recognised Laurence a.s.shlin.

Her first conscious thought was, "How fine-looking he has grown!" her second, "How badly his clothes are made!" Then she laughed to herself from happiness, and from that sense of comradeship and clannishness to which the Irish nature is so susceptible.

"Larry!" she cried a moment later, as she threw the carriage door open.

But her dog Mick was the first to gain her side. Leaping forward at sound of her voice, he sprang into the carriage, whimpering with joy.

"Mick!--darling Mick! Oh, you bad thing!" She laughed again delightedly; then she turned, flushed and radiant, to greet her cousin.

"Hold him, Larry! That's better! Now, how are you?" She held out her hand and laid it in a.s.shlin's disengaged one.

Larry flushed with excitement and embarra.s.sment.

"How are you, Clo? You're awfully unchanged! Let me help you out! The trap is waiting!"

As in a dream, she pa.s.sed through the little station that had seemed so large and imposing to her childish eyes in the time when a day's shopping in Cork had represented the acme of adventure and enterprise; but half-way down the narrow platform she paused.

"Oh, the sea, Larry!" she exclaimed, drawing in a long, deep breath--"the heavenly smell of the sea!" Then she suddenly caught sight of Burke, waiting, as he might have waited six years ago, beside the high, old-fashioned trap.

"The same trap!" she said, with a little gasp.