Part 20 (1/2)

”Coming!” he called. ”Coming!”

Having found the garment, he crossed the room stumblingly, thrusting his arms into the sleeves as he went.

Opening the door, he realised the situation with a sick sinking of the heart. Clodagh stood in the corridor with a blanched face, holding a candle in her shaking hand.

”Oh, come, please!” she exclaimed. ”Come quick!”

Without a word he stepped forward, and the two hurried down the pa.s.sage.

In the sick-room the fire was glowing and additional candles had been lighted. For a second Milbanke paused at the door; then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the access of light, the scene became clear to him.

On the bed lay a.s.shlin, his head partly propped up by pillows, his eyes wide, his breath coming in slow, difficult gasps; Gallagher was moving about the room with more quickness and deftness than the Englishman could have believed possible; Mrs. a.s.shlin, unnerved, and yet fascinated, leaned upon the end of the bed; while Nance--crying silently--followed the nurse to and fro in dazed, half-comprehending fear; and Hannah, the household factotum, crouched behind the door, weeping and murmuring inarticulate prayers.

The picture turned Milbanke cold. With an instinctive gesture he paused, with the intention of s.h.i.+elding it from Clodagh's sight. But at the very moment that he turned towards her, a convulsion shook the dying man. He half-lifted himself in bed, his eyes staring wildly; as Gallagher rushed forward, a faint sound escaped him, his head fell forward, and his body collapsed in the doctor's arms.

There was a breathless, appalled silence--a silence that seemed to extend over years. At last Gallagher looked up.

”It's all over,” he said in a hushed voice.

For a minute no one spoke, no one moved. It seemed as if the whole room was petrified. Then Gallagher quietly laid the body back upon the pillows, and as though the action broke the spell, Clodagh gave a sudden sharp cry and ran forward to the bed.

CHAPTER V

The three days that followed a.s.shlin's death resolved themselves into so many hours of gloom and confusion, that found their culmination in the funeral ceremony.

To Irishmen of every cla.s.s, a funeral is invested with an almost symbolic importance, and a solemn consideration is bestowed upon its most minute details. And Milbanke, deeply imbued with the horror and suddenness of the whole disaster, was filled with a growing astonishment at the numberless preliminaries--the amount of precedence and prestige requiring consideration--before one poor human body could be hidden away. But he rose dutifully to the occasion and proved himself unfailingly patient and conscientious in every emergency, from the first repugnant interview with the undertaker to the woeful breakfast, partaken of in the early hours of the funeral morning, with the curtains drawn across the dining-room windows and the candles in the ma.s.sive silver sconces shedding an unnatural light upon the table laden with eatables.

The guests who partook of this meal were men of varied and interesting types; but whatever their characteristic differences, it was remarkable that the same air of responsibility and solemnity inspired them all. It did not matter that many of them had been personal enemies of the dead man; that many, with that jealous distrust of unconventionality that reigns in Ireland, had markedly drawn away from him in the last ten years of his life; death had obliterated everything. a.s.shlin's eccentricities, his lawlessness, his contempt for the little world in which he lived were all forgotten. He was one of themselves--deserving, in death at least, the same consideration that the county had bestowed upon his father, his grandfather, and those who had gone before them.

The faces of these men were unfamiliar to Milbanke, though each on entering the dining-room shook him cordially and sympathetically by the hand. The meal was partaken of almost in silence; and it was with obvious relief that, one after another, the members of the party rose from table and pa.s.sed into the darkened hall, and from thence to the sweep of gravelled drive that fronted the house, where the less privileged of those who had come to do a.s.shlin honour lounged singly or in groups.

The funeral was timed to start at nine; but the concourse of mourners--well accustomed to the delays inevitable on such an occasion--evinced no sigh of impatience when half-past nine, and then ten arrived, and no move had yet been made.

But all things come to those who understand the art of patience. At a quarter past ten a thrill galvanised the lethargic crowd; and with the recognition of the great moment for which they waited, the men began to jostle each other and push forward towards the house, while all hats were respectively removed.

A faint murmur of admiration and awe went up from the gathering as the great bra.s.s-bound coffin was borne solemnly through the door and laid upon the open bier. In silence Milbanke and young Laurence a.s.shlin took their places as chief mourners, and with the inevitable confusion and uncertainty of such a moment, the crowd of men and vehicles formed up behind them, the horses under the bier moved slowly forward, and the body of Denis a.s.shlin pa.s.sed for the last time down the avenue and through the gates of Orristown.

The funeral over, Milbanke walked back from Carrigmore alone. The servants, who had followed their master to his resting-place in the old graveyard, had remained in the village to enjoy the importance that the occasion lent them; young a.s.shlin had disappeared at the conclusion of the burial service; while the daughters and sister-in-law of the dead man--in accordance with the custom of the country--had remained secluded in their own rooms at Orristown, appearing neither at the breakfast nor the funeral.

In a house of death, the hours that succeed the burial are, if possible, even more melancholy than those that precede it. The sensations of awe and responsibility have been dispersed, but as yet it is impossible to resume the commonplace routine of life. As Milbanke pa.s.sed through the gateway and walked up the drive, ploughed into new furrows by the long procession of cars that had followed the coffin, he was deeply sensitive to this impression; and it fell upon him afresh with a chill of desolation as he entered the door, still standing open, and moved slowly across the deserted hall.

In the dining-room the curtains had been drawn back and the candles extinguished; but the daylight seemed to fall tardily and unnaturally upon the room after its three days' exclusion. He stood for a moment looking at the debris of the breakfast that had not yet been removed, at the disarray of the chairs that had been hurriedly vacated; then, with a fresh and poignant sense of loss and loneliness, he turned hastily and walked out of the room.

In the hall he attempted to pause afresh; but the sound of m.u.f.fled sobbing from the upper portion of the house sent him incontinently forth into the open. With an overwhelming desire for human fellows.h.i.+p--for any companions.h.i.+p in this abode of desolation, he pa.s.sed without consideration of his dignity round the corner of the house in the direction of the stable-yard.

He walked calmly, but there was a pucker of anxiety on his usually placid brow--an expression of concern, apart from actual sorrow, in his tightly set lips. To the most casual observer it would have been obvious that something weighed upon his mind.

Still moving with his habitual precision, he entered the yard by the arched gateway, picking his way between the scattered array of rubbish, food, and implements that enc.u.mbered the ground.