Things went steadily on for some time. The men worked well, and I possessed my soul in such patience as I could, and studied the map and the ground most carefully. When dinner-time came the men went off each to his own home, and as soon as the place was free from them I hurried to the top of the mountain. The prospect was the same as yesterday. There was the same stretch of wild moor and rugged coast, of clustering islands and foam-girt rocks—of blue sky laden with such masses of luminous clouds as are only found in Ireland. But all was to me dreary and desolate, for the place was empty and she was not there. I sat down to wait with what patience I could. It was dreary work at best; but at any rate there was hope—and its more immediate kinsman, expectation—and I waited. Somehow the view seemed to tranquillize me in some degree. It may have been that there was some unconscious working of the mind which told me in some imperfect way that in a region quite within my range of vision, nothing could long remain hidden or unknown. Perhaps it was the stilly silence of the place. There was hardly a sound—the country people were all within doors at dinner, and even the sounds of their toil were lacking. From the west came a very faint breeze, just enough to bring the far-off, eternal roar of the surf. There was scarcely a sign of life. The cattle far below were sheltering under trees, or in the shadows of hedges, or standing still knee-deep in the pools of the shallow streams. The only moving thing which I could see, was the car which had left so long before, and was now far off, and was each moment becoming smaller and smaller as it went into the distance.
So I sat for quite an hour with my heart half sick with longing, but she never came. Then I thought I heard a step coming up the path at the far side. My heart beat strangely. I sat silent, and did not pretend to hear. She was walking more slowly than usual, and with a firmer tread. She was coming. I heard the steps on the plateau, and a voice came:—
“Och! an’ isn’t it a purty view, yer ’an’r?” I leaped to my feet with a feeling that was positively murderous. The revulsion was too great, and I broke into a burst of semi-hysterical laughter. There stood Andy—with ragged red head and sun-scorched face—in his garb of eternal patches, bleached and discoloured by sun and rain into a veritable coat of many colours—gazing at the view with a rapt expression, and yet with one eye half-closed in a fixed but unmistakable wink, as though taking the whole majesty of nature into his confidence.
When he heard my burst of laughter he turned to me quizzically:—
“Musha! but it’s the merry gentleman yer ’an’r is this day. Shure the view here is the laughablest thing I ever see!” and he affected to laugh, but in such a soulless, unspontaneous way that it became a real burlesque. I waited for him to go on. I was naturally very vexed, but I was afraid to say anything lest I might cause him to interfere in this affair—the last thing on earth that I wished for.
He did go on; no one ever found Andy abashed or ill at ease:—
“Begor! but yer ’an’r lepped like a deer when ye heerd me shpake. Did ye think I was goin’ to shoot ye? Faix! an’ I thought that ye wor about to jump from aff iv the mountain into the say, like a shtag.”
“Why, what do you know about stags, Andy? There are none in this part of the country, are there?” I thought I would drag a new subject across his path. The ruse of the red herring drawn across the scent succeeded!
“Phwhat do I know iv shtags? Faix, I know this, that there does be plinty in me Lard’s demesne beyant at Wistport. Sure wan iv thim got out last autumn an’ nigh ruined me garden. He kem in at night an’ ate up all me cabbages an’ all the vigitables I’d got. I frightened him away a lot iv times, but he kem back all the same. At last I could shtand him no longer, and I wint meself an’ complained to the Lard. He tould me he was very sorry fur the damage he done, ‘an’,’ sez he, ‘Andy, I think he’s a bankrup,’ sez he, ‘an’ we must take his body.’ ‘How is that, Me Lard?’ sez I. Sez he, ‘I give him to ye, Andy. Do what ye like wid him!’ An’ wid that I wint home an’ I med a thrap iv a clothes line wid a loop in it, an’ I put it betune two threes; and shure enough in the night I got him.”
“And what did you do with him, Andy?” said I.