“They’re neighbours of ours. They live at Clashmore—that’s four miles from us—and they’re very nice people. Nugent, the brother, used to be a great pal of mine—at least, he was till he went to Cambridge, and came back thinking no one fit to speak to but himself.”
Not feeling particularly interested in the O’Neills, I did not pursue the subject; but Willy was full of conversation.
“I’m just after buying a grand little mare in Cork. It was that kept me from going to meet you,” he observed confidentially. “I suppose you learnt to ride at your ranch, Theo? I tell you what! I bought her for the governor, but she’d carry you flying, and you shall hunt her this winter if you like.”
My cousinly feeling for Willy increased perceptibly at this suggestion.
“But,” I said, “if your father buys her, he will want to ride her himself, won’t he?”
“Is it the governor?”—with an intonation of contempt. “You never see him on a horse’s back. He’s always humbugging in the house over papers and books. I believe he used to be a great sportsman and fond of society, but he never goes anywhere now.”
The two ladies who had started from Cork with us had got out a station or two afterwards, and we had the carriage to ourselves. But the extraordinary jolting and rattling of the train were not conducive to conversation, and, seeing that I was not inclined to talk, Willy relapsed into the collar of his ulster and the Cork newspaper, and ended by going unaffectedly to sleep.
It grew slowly darker. I sat watching the endless procession of small fields slipping past the window, until the grey monotony of colour made me dizzy. I leaned back, and, closing my eyes, tried to imagine the life I was going to, and to contrast its probabilities with my past experience. But a strange feeling of remoteness and unreality came upon me. I suppose that the mental exhaustion caused by so many new sights and impressions had dazed me, and I began to doubt that such a person as Theo Sarsfield had ever really existed. Willy, my Uncle Dominick, and my father flitted confusedly through my mind as inconsequently as people in a dream. I myself seemed to have lost touch with the world; my past life had slid away from me, and the future I had not yet grasped. I was a solitary and aimless unit in the dark whirl that surrounded me, and the sleeping figure at the opposite end of the carriage was a trick of imagination, and as unreal as I. I became more and more remote from things actual, and finally fell from all consciousness into a sleep as sound as Willy’s.
My slumbers were at length penetrated by a shriek from the engine. I sat up, and saw that Willy was taking down his parcels from the rack; and in another minute we were in the little station of Moycullen.
A hat with a cockade appeared at the window.