Part 5 (2/2)
”Oh, but he can!” Honor persists, with a laugh. ”We all can, for that matter; indeed, and it's my opinion there is not a susceptible heart in the whole family.”
”Probably not. I don't believe in susceptible hearts myself.”
A faint smile stirs her lips as she listens. It was not true, then, that pa.s.sionate declaration that has rung in her ears since she first heard it:
”Heavens, child, how I love you!”
”How would it have been with me now if I had believed him?” she asks herself. She can quite believe that the loss of this man's love--after once believing in it--might prove a source of very keen regret to any girl; but fortunately she had never believed in it; and now it could never be anything--true or false, faithful or unfaithful--since she has given her plighted word to Power Magill.
”I wish Launce would go back to Dublin,” Brian says after a pause. ”He is only getting himself and other people into mischief down here. Can't the _pater_ see that?”
”My father can see no fault in Launce--neither can I, for that matter.
I really don't see what harm the poor fellow is doing.”
”He is doing harm, Honor--take my word for it! He would be best away.”
”We do not think so,” she says coldly; and there the matter ends.
It is getting dark as the little party--Honor, her two brothers, and young Jack Delorme--turn in at the gates of Donaghmore. They have been talking and laughing merrily; Honor is in good spirits to-night, or pretends to be; but as they pa.s.s inside the gate a silence falls upon them.
Launce is walking on the gra.s.s, well under the trees, Jack Delorme in the very middle of the gravel path, swinging a light stick, while Honor and Horace are a little in advance. As they reach the ruins Jack stops.
”I wonder if the old abbot is above ground to-night, Launce,” he says.
”It would be only polite of us to pay him a visit if he is.”
As the mocking words pa.s.s his lips, Honor turns to gaze at the gray pile, which looks very rugged in the dusk. She stops instantly.
Is she dreaming, she asks herself with a gasp of surprise, or is that a shape moving slowly between her and the doorless s.p.a.ce that leads into the old quadrangle?
Horace sees it at the same instant; and the solo he is whistling--”My Queen”--with variations more or less ear-piercing, not to say distracting, dies away on his lips. He is little better than a lad, and his scorn of the supernatural is not by any means real.
”Oh, Honor,” he exclaims, drawing close to her, ”what can it be? Don't you see something over there?”
”It is a shadow of some branch, dear; it can be nothing else! Wait and see if the others notice it.”
”Honor, I dare not stay!” the boy says nervously. ”It is cowardly of me, I know, but there is a terror on me, and I--oh, what is that?”
A sudden shriek--so long, so shrill, so blood-chilling that the hearers stand aghast--breaks out upon the still air. A second later it is followed by an imprecation and a rapid rush of feet, as Launce and Jack Delorme spring, with one impulse, toward the ruins.
Honor neither stirs nor cries out. She holds her brother's hand tightly in both her own, and prays in an incoherent fas.h.i.+on; and all the time a strange unreal feeling is creeping over her.
”Can these things be?” she is asking herself. ”Are spirits allowed to come back and torture the living?”--for this fear is the keenest torture her vigorous young life has ever known.
It is all over in a few minutes, though it seems to her that they have been standing there a long time, and then her brother and Jack Delorme come up to them.
”By George, we nearly had the fellow!” Launce says panting. ”Never saw a nearer shave than he had in my life! I could have sworn he was within reach of my fist; yet when I struck out, the brute was gone!”
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