“No doubt this had been extremely amusing,” I said, “but I am going to buckle the reins as low down on this bit as they will go.”
And I did so. I hate people who do nothing but laugh on an emergency, simply because they think it looks brave.
As I turned Sibbie round I saw, nearly a quarter of a mile away, a child standing by a telegraph post, holding in its hand a white disc that I knew must be my hat, and I also saw with much pleasure that the other children, with the cows and the donkey, had left the road, and were climbing up the hillside. So, with hearts overflowing with a great thanksgiving that “Earl Percy,” i.e., the mail-car and its English tourists, had not “seen our fall,” we drove back again at a cautious jog, Sibbie obviously as much on the look-out as we were for anything that she could reasonably shy at. The girl with the hat was regarded by her with an anguish of suspicion, only allayed by my getting out of the cart while the hat was smuggled in, and leading her—a process which always suggests taking a child by the hand to give it confidence.
It was a long way, about six Irish miles, back to the turn that we had been instructed would take us to Letterfrack, and the invalid sunshine had already swaddled itself again in cotton wool and retired for the night. If my second cousin has a failing, it is that she believes herself to possess “an eye for country,” a gift fraught with peril to its possessor. Unfortunately, she had, before starting, studied on a map the relative positions of Ballinahinch, Recess, and Letterfrack, and now that she was face to face with the situation her eye for country flashed fire at the idea of having to traverse two sides of a triangle instead of one, which was pretty much what we were called upon to do.
“It is absurd,” she said, hotly, “to go back almost to Recess to go by that ‘new line’ to Letterfrack, when I am almost sure I remember seeing on the Ordnance Map a dear little roadeen that would take us through the mountains somehow on to the Kylemore road.”
From the use of the affectionate diminutive “roadeen,” I knew that my cousin was trying to engage my sympathies, and though I tried to steel my heart against the suggestion, there certainly was something attractive in the thought of a short cut.
“It ought to be a little further on,” she continued, “by a little lake; and you know it’s getting pretty late now.”
I now recognise that this was the moment at which to have stamped upon the scheme, and to have made the time-honoured remark that we had no time for short cuts. But I let it slide by me, and when we reached a narrow, but to all appearance sufficient mountain road, bending plausibly away to the left, we mutually succumbed to its fascinations. For a mile or so it was really very fair. It certainly did occur to me that it might be awkward if we met anything larger than a wheelbarrow, as the governess-cart easily monopolised the space between the usual bog-ditches, but as, so far, the district seemed quite uninhabited, we did not trouble ourselves on that account. The road became steeper and stonier as we advanced, but Sibbie toiled on gallantly, the pride of having run away clearly still working in her and encouraging her in a way no mere whip could have done. The cotton-wool into which the sun had retreated had now covered all the sky, and was wrapping up the mountain tops as if they were jewellery, which, as they were armoured from head to foot in sheets of grey rock, seemed to us unnecessary care. We were getting deeper and deeper into the hills, and the higher we got the heavier the rain became. It felt as though some important heavenly pipe had burst, and we were getting near the scene of the explosion. The three shilling umbrella did its best; it humped its back against the torrent like an old cab-horse, and really kept my second cousin fairly dry. But things were going very badly with the luncheon basket, and, though we did not mention it to each other, the belief in the short cut was dying in us.
The road ahead was narrowing in a way not to be accounted for by the laws of perspective; it was becoming suspiciously grassy, and rocks of a size usually met with only in the highest Druidical circles lay about so near to the track that steering was becoming a difficulty. A wild-looking woman, wearing a coarse white flannel petticoat over her red hair instead of a cloak, came paddling along with barefooted indifference to the wet, and stopped to stare at us with a frank and open-mouthed amazement which was not reassuring.
“Shall we ask her the way?” I suggested.