After hours, during which the sun had been mounting high and bright, she had the letter finished at last and was reading it over. Some sentences like the following leaped out before her eyes here within this sickly-looking room—Whatever was the matter with him that he could not come to her? Surely he was not so blind, and he with his medical knowledge. He must know what was the matter with her, and that this was scarcely the time to be leaving her alone. His uncle, Myles Shannon, was a very rich man, and did he not remember how often he had told her how his uncle looked with favor upon her? Here she included the very words in which Ulick had many a time described his uncle's opinion of her—"I like that little schoolmistress, Rebecca Kerr!" "It was all so grand, Ulick, our love and meetings; but here comes the paying of the penalty, and surely you will not leave poor little me to pay it in full. You have enjoyed me, have you not, Ulick?" She was more immediately personal now, and this was exactly how the sentences continued: "You know very well what this will mean to me. I'll have to go away from here, and where, I ask you, can I go? Not back to my father's house surely, nor to my aunt's little cottage in Donegal.... I have no money. The poor salary I earn here is barely able to buy me a little food and clothing and keep a roof over my head. Did I not often tell you that when you were away from me there were times when I could hardly afford the price of stamps? If it should happen that this thing become public while I am yet here I could never get another day's teaching, for Father O'Keeffe would warn every manager in Ireland against engaging me. But surely, darling, you will not allow things to go so far.... You will please come down to see me at 5.30 this evening. You will find me at the old place upon The Road of the Dead. Don't you remember that it was there we had our first talk, Ulick?"
Great as the torture of writing it had been, the torture of reading it was still greater. Some of the lines seemed to lash out and strike her and to fill her eyes with tears, and there were some that seemed so hard upon him that she struck them out, not wishing, as ever, to hurt her dearest Ulick at all. At one moment she felt a curious desire to tear it into pieces and let her fate come to her as it had been ordained from the beginning.... But there was little Euphemia McGoldrick knocking at the door to be allowed to enter with the breakfast. Who would ever imagine that it was so late?
She had written a great deal. Why it filled pages and pages. She hurriedly thrust it into a large envelope that she had bought for the purpose of sending a card of greeting to John Brennan at Christmas, thinking better of it only at the last moment. It was useful now, for the many sheets were bulky.
"The breakfast, miss!" announced Euphemia as she left the room.
This was the third meal in twenty-four hours that Rebecca could make no attempt to take, but, to avert suspicion, she wrapped up the sliced and buttered bread in a few leaves from the novelette from which she had read those desperate passages on the previous evening. The tea she threw out into the garden. It fell in a shining shower down over the bright green vegetables.... She put on her dust-coat and, stuffing the letter to Ulick into one pocket and her uneaten breakfast by way of a luncheon she would not eat into the other, hurried out of doors and up the road, for this morning she had important business in the village before going on to the school.
Mrs. McGoldrick was set near the foot of the stairs holding Euphemia and Clementina by the hand, all three in action there to behold the exit of Rebecca. This was a morning custom and something in the nature of a rite. It was the last clout of torture always inflicted by Mrs. McGoldrick.
Rebecca went on into Garradrimna. The village street was deserted save by Thomas James, who held solitary occupation. He was posting the bills for a circus at the market square. She was excited as she went over to speak to him and did not notice the eyes of the bespectacled postmistress that were trained upon her from the office window with the relentlessness of howitzers. She asked Thomas James would he take a letter from her to Mr. Ulick Shannon.
"Oh yes, miss; O Lord, yes!"
She slipped the letter into his hand when she thought that no one was looking. She had adopted this mode of caution in preference to sending it through the Post Office. She was evidently anxious that it should be delivered quickly and unread by any other person.
"O Lord, yes, miss; just as soon as I have an auction bill posted after this. You know, miss, that Mickeen Connellan, the auctioneer, is one of my best patrons. He doesn't pay as well as the circus people, but he pays oftener."