After that, I suppose I somehow made my way to the drawing-room, as I next remember walking to and fro between the window and the fireplace, with a confused feeling that by doing so I should steady my whirling brain.
He had called me “Owen.” He had mistaken me, in his madness or delirium, for his dead brother—a mistake which my strong likeness to my father made easy to understand; but neither madness nor delirium could account for all he had said. “You were very ill when you came.” “They all think that you’re buried in Cork; but you’re not, you know!” “I declare to God I never did anything to you.” “She asked me to help her to take you—there—out through that window.”
What had all this meant? He certainly believed he was speaking to my father. If I could only think it out quietly! What had Moll Hourihane to say to my father, and what had she done to him that he should be afraid of her?
Then he had spoken of “the old man’s funeral”—my grandfather’s funeral. How, even in his ravings, could he have forgotten that his brother died two or three days before his father? It was no use; I could not think it out. I must wait until my brain was calmer, till my thoughts had ceased to reel and spin. I was only groping in the dark—in a darkness from whose depths one persistent idea was thrusting itself at me like a sword.
The distant sound of wheels on the drive reminded me that it was past the time at which I was to start for Garden Hill. I hastily resolved to wait and see Dr. Kelly before going there, and I rang the bell in order to send a message to that effect out to the yard. No one answered it for some time, but at length the door opened. I was standing by the fire, with my elbows on the mantel-shelf and my forehead in my hands, and, hearing a bashful murmur in Maggie’s voice, I said, without turning round—
“Tell Tom I shall not want the trap until I send for it.”
The door closed, but footsteps advanced into the room.
“Well, what is it?” I said wearily, taking down my arms.
There was no answer, and, turning round, I found myself face to face with Nugent.
I looked at him stupidly, without taking the hand which he had conventionally held out to me. He drew it back quickly.