“And don’t you think anything about me?” he said with a breaking voice. “Are you ready to throw me overboard just because he’s in trouble, when you know he doesn’t care for you a tenth part as much as I do? Do you mean to tell me that you want me to go away, and say good-bye to you for ever? If you do, I’ll go, and if you hear I’ve gone to the devil, you’ll know who sent me.”
The naïve selfishness of this argument was not perceived by either. Hawkins felt his position to be almost noble, and did not in the least realise what he was asking Francie to sacrifice for him. He had even forgotten the idea that had occurred to him last night, that to go to New Zealand would be a pleasanter way of escaping from his creditors than marrying Miss Coppard. Certainly Francie had no thought of his selfishness or of her own sacrifice. She was giddy with struggle; right and wrong had lost their meaning and changed places elusively; the only things that she saw clearly were the beautiful future that had been offered to her, and the look in Roddy’s face when she had told him that wherever he had to go she would go with him.
The horses had moved staidly on, while these two lives stood still and wrestled with their fate, and the summit was slowly reached of the long hill on which Lambert had once pointed out to her the hoof-prints of Hawkins’ pony. The white road and the grey rock country stretched out before them, colourless and discouraging under the colourless sky, and Hawkins still waited for his answer. Coming towards them up the tedious slope was a string of half-a-dozen carts, with a few people walking on either side; an unremarkable procession, that might have meant a wedding, or merely a neighbourly return from market, but for a long, yellow coffin that lay, hemmed in between old women, in the midmost cart. Francie felt a superstitious thrill as she saw it; a country funeral, with its barbarous and yet fitting crudity, always seemed to bring death nearer to her than the plumed conventionalities of the hearses and mourning coaches that she was accustomed to. She had once been to the funeral of a fellow Sunday-school child in Dublin, and the first verse of the hymn that they had sung then, came back, and began to weave itself in with the beat of the mare’s hoofs.
“Brief life is here our portion,
Brief sorrow, short-lived care,
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life is there.”
“Francie, are you going to answer me? Come away with me this very day. We could catch the six o’clock train before any one knew—dearest, if you love me—” His roughened, unsteady voice seemed to come to her from a distance, and yet was like a whisper in her own heart.
“Wait till we are past the funeral,” she said, catching, in her agony, at the chance of a minute’s respite.
At the same moment an old man, who had been standing by the side of the road, leaning on his stick, turned towards the riders, and Francie recognised in him Charlotte’s retainer, Billy Grainy. His always bloodshot eyes were redder than ever, his mouth dribbled like a baby’s, and the smell of whisky poisoned the air all around him.
“I’m waitin’ on thim here this half-hour,” he began, in a loud drunken mumble, hobbling to Francie’s side, and moving along beside the mare, “as long as they were taking her back the road to cry her at her own gate. Owld bones is wake, asthore, owld bones is wake!” He caught at the hem of Francie’s habit to steady himself; “be cripes! Miss Duffy was a fine woman, Lord ha’ maircy on her. And a great woman! And divil blasht thim that threw her out of her farm to die in the Union—the dom ruffins.”
As on the day, now very long ago, when she had first ridden to Gurthnamuckla, Francie tried to shake his hand off her habit; he released it stupidly, and staggering to the side of the road, went on grumbling and cursing. The first cart, creaking and rattling under its load of mourners, was beside them by this time, and Billy, for the benefit of its occupants, broke into a howl of lamentation.
“Thanks be to God Almighty, and thanks be to His Mother, the crayture had thim belonging to her that would bury her like a Christian.” He shook his fist at Francie. “Ah—ha! go home to himself and owld Charlotte, though it’s little thim regards you—” He burst into drunken laughter, bending and tottering over his stick.