As I was now fairly launched on the enterprise, I thought it better to lose no time, but arranged to visit the bog early the next morning.
As I was lighting my cigar after dinner that evening Mrs. Keating, my hostess, came in to ask me a favour. She said that there was staying in the house a gentleman who went over every day to Knockcalltecrore, and as she understood that I was going there in the morning, she made bold to ask if I would mind giving a seat on my car to him as he had turned his ancle that day and feared he would not be able to walk. Under the circumstances I could only say “yes,” as it would have been a churlish thing to refuse. Accordingly I gave permission with seeming cheerfulness, but when I was alone my true feelings found vent in muttered grumbling:—“I ought to travel in an ambulance instead of a car.” “I seem never to be able to get near this Shleenanaher without an invalid.” “Once ought to be enough! but it has become the regulation thing now.” “I wish to goodness Andy would hold his infernal tongue—I’d as lief have a detective after me all the time.” “It’s all very well to be a good Samaritan as a luxury—but as a profession it becomes monotonous.” “Confound Andy! I wish I’d never seen him at all.”
This last thought brought me up standing, and set me face to face with my baseless ill-humour. If I had never seen Andy I should never have heard at all of Shleenanaher. I should not have known the legend—I should not have heard Norah’s voice.
“And so,” said I to myself, “this ideal fantasy—this embodiment of a woman’s voice, has a concrete name already. Aye! a concrete name, and a sweet one too.”
And so I took another step on my way to the bog, and lost my ill-humour at the same time. When my cigar was half through and my feelings were proportionately soothed, I strolled into the bar and asked Mrs. Keating as to my companion of the morrow. She told me that he was a young engineer named Sutherland.
“What Sutherland?” I asked. Adding that I had been at school with a Dick Sutherland, who had, I believed, gone into the Irish College of Science.
“Perhaps it’s the same gentleman, sir. This is Mr. Richard Sutherland, and I’ve heerd him say that he was at Stephen’s Green.”
“The same man!” said I, “this is jolly! Tell me, Mrs. Keating, what brings him here?”
“He’s doin’ some work on Knockcalltecrore for Mr. Murdock, some quare thing or another. They do tell me, sir, that it’s a most mystayrious thing, wid poles an’ lines an’ magnets an’ all kinds of divilments. They say that Mr. Murdock is goin’ from off of his head ever since he had the law of poor Phelim Joyce. My! but he’s the decent man, that same Mr. Joyce, an’ the Gombeen has been hard upon him.”
“What was the law suit?” I asked.