Part 74 (2/2)
S'long! Bye-bye, Grannie!”
No one answered him. He nodded round the room again and smiled fearfully, crossed to the door with a jaunty roll, and thus launched out of the house with a pretence of unconcern, the dead pipe hanging upside down in his mouth, and his head aside, as if his hat had been tilted rakishly on his uncovered hair.
When he had gone the company looked into each other's faces in surprise and fear, as if a ghost in broad daylight had pa.s.sed among them. Then Black Tom broke the silence.
”Men,” said he, ”that was a d------ lie.”
”Si------” began Caesar, but the protest foundered in his dry throat.
”Something going doing in Ramsey,” Black Tom continued. ”I believe in my heart I'll follow him.”
”I'll be going along with you, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique.
”And I,” said John the Clerk.
”And I”--”And I,” said the others, and in half a minute the room was empty.
”Father,” whimpered Grannie, through the gla.s.s part.i.tion, ”hadn't you better saddle the mare and see if any thing's going wrong with Kirry?”
”I was thinking the same myself, mother.”
”Come, then, away with you. The Lord have mercy on all of us!”
XVIII.
As soon as he was out of earshot Pete began to run. Within half an hour he was back at Elm Cottage. ”She'll be home by this time,” he told himself, but he dared not learn the truth too suddenly. Creeping up to the hall window, he listened at the broken pane. The child was crying, and Nancy Joe was talking to herself, and sobbing as she bathed the little one.
”Bless its precious heart, it's as beautiful as the angels in heaven.
I've bathed her mother on the same knee a hundred times. 'Deed have I, and a thousand times too. Mother, indeed! What sort of mothers are in now at all? She must have a heart-as hard as a stone to lave the like of it. Can't be a drop of nature in her.... Goodness, Nancy, what are saying for all? Kate is it? Your own little Kirry, and you blackening her! Aw, dear!--aw, dear! The bogh!--the bogh!”
Pete could not go in. He crept back to the cabin in the garden and leaned against it to draw his breath and think. Then he noticed that the dog was on the path with its long tongue hanging over its jaw. It stopped its panting to whine woefully, and then it turned towards the darker part of the garden.
”He's telling me something,” thought Pete.
A car rattled down the side road at that moment, and the light of its lamp shot through the bushes to his feet.
”The ould gate must be open,” he thought.
He looked and saw that it was, and then a new light dawned on him.
”She's gone up to Philip's,” he told himself. ”She's gone by Claughbane to Ballure to find me.”
Five minutes afterwards he was knocking at Ballure House. His breath was coming in gusts, perspiration was standing in beads on his face, and his head was still bare, but he was carrying himself bravely as if nothing were amiss. His knock was answered by the maid, a tall girl of cheerful expression, in a black frock, a white ap.r.o.n, and a snow-white cap. Pete nodded and smiled at her.
”Anybody been here for me? No?” he asked.
”No, sir, n--o, I think not,” the girl answered, and as she looked at Pete her face straightened.
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