CHAPTER XXVI
The meetings of Ulick and Rebecca had become less and less frequent. Sometimes she would not see him for days at a stretch, and such periods would appear as desert spaces. She would be driven by them into the life of the valley, where no echo of comfort ever came to her. Even the little children created an irritation with their bright faces continually reminding her of all the prayers they had said for her intentions.... It was curious that she never asked them to say a prayer for her intentions now. And their looks would seem to be beseeching her forever. And yet she could not—she could not ask them now.... Each distinct phase of the day seemed to hold for her its own peculiar tortures. These seemed to have reached their climax and very moment of ecstasy on the days succeeding upon one another when Monica McKeon came in at the recreation hour to take her luncheon in company with Mrs. Wyse.
Monica would be certain to say with the most unfailing regularity and, in fact, with exactly the same intonation upon all occasions: "I wonder when that Ulick Shannon is going away?" To which Mrs. Wyse would reply in a tone which would seem to have comprehended all knowledge: "Ah, sure, he'll never go far!" Presently Monica would begin to let fall from her slyly her usual string of phrases: "Wouldn't you be inclined to say, now, that Ulick Shannon is good-looking?" Talking of some other one, she would describe him as being "Just like Ulick Shannon, don't you know!" And if they happened to be discussing the passage of some small event it would invariably circle around the breathless point of interest—"And who do you think was there only Ulick Shannon?" Then from where she sat supping her tea out of a saucerless cup Mrs. Wyse would give out her full opinion of Ulick Shannon.
"He's the quare sort, just like his father. I don't think I've ever seen a son to take after his father so closely. And he was what you might call a quare character in his day. It was said that a girl as well as lost her good name if she was seen talking twice in succession to Henry Shannon, he was that bad. Like father, like son is surely the case between Henry and Ulick Shannon!"
This seemed at all times the strangest talk for Rebecca to be hearing.... It often caused her to shiver even though spring was well on its way. And they would never let it out of their minds; they would never let it rest. They were always talking at her about Ulick Shannon, for they seemed to know.
But no one knew save herself. It was a grand secret. Not even Ulick knew. She hugged the dear possession of her knowledge to herself. There was the strangest excitement upon her to escape from school in the evenings so that she might enjoy her secret in loneliness.
Even this joy had been dissipated by her certainty of meeting John Brennan somewhere upon the road in the near vicinity of the school.... Now, as she thought of it upon an evening a few days after she had spoken to Mrs. Williams in his favor, she fancied that his lonely admiration for her must have been growing in strength since his return.... There had always been a sense of sudden relief in his presence after the torture of the two women, a feeling of high emancipation like the rushing in of some clean wind.... Only a few words had ever passed between them on those occasions, but now they were to her throbbing brain of blessed and sweet memory. And there had always been the same look upon his face, making her try to puzzle out in what possible way he could look upon her. Could it be in the way she had looked upon him, with a full kindliness working into the most marvelous ways of sympathy? Yet she missed him ever so much, now that he was to be no longer seen upon the road.
It was strange enough, too, as she thought of it, that although the reason of Mrs. Williams in taking a fancy to her was no more than the selfish one of showing her dislike for Master Donnellan, it should have borne good fruit after this fashion. Yet a certain loneliness, a certain feeling of empty sadness was to be her reward because she had done a good thing.... No one at all now to take her mind away as she wandered from torture to torture in the afternoons.... On one of the first evenings of the changed condition of things Mrs. McGoldrick, noticing in her keen mind that Rebecca was a minute or so earlier than usual, said, after the manner of one proud of being able to say it: