The Tragic Bride

by Francis Brett Young

He told her that it was not at all unlikely that the Pennant would some day put into Galway, and she warmed at once to the idea. "How splendid!" she said. "I shall expect you. Don't forget to bring a gun with you."

They walked up and down Kildare Street making plans of what they might do. "But in a week you'll have forgotten all about it," she said. "Nobody ever comes to Roscarna."

"Do you think that I could possibly forget you?" he protested.

This time she did not laugh at him. "No… I don't think you will," she said, and then, after an awkward silence, "Please don't take any notice of what I said this evening. I don't really understand that sort of thing." Then they said good-bye. It was a queer unsatisfactory ending for him, but her last words had reassured him. Thinking it over in the train on the way to Kingstown he decided that she had been honestly and quite naturally amused at the conventional phrases of a modern lover, and the realisation of this only made her more unusual and more desirable. It would be a strange experience to meet her in her proper setting, and if the Pennant should give him the opportunity he determined not to miss it. Next morning the ship left Kingstown for Bermuda.

It was not in Radway's nature to take these things lightly. At a distance the memory of Gabrielle gained a good deal by imagination. It seemed to him that she was far too precious to lose, and the fact that she was a cousin of the exclusive Halbertons settled any social scruples that might have worried him. He forgot his repulse at Howth in the memory of the sweeter moment when they had parted. After all there was no hurry. She was only a child, as her behaviour had shown him so often. At the same time he was anxious that she should not forget him, and for this reason he wrote her a number of letters from Bermuda, from Jamaica and Barbadoes and other ports on the Atlantic station. They were not love letters in any sense of the word; but they served to keep him in her mind, and, few as they were, made an immense breach in the zone of isolation that surrounded Roscarna.

They were the first letters of any kind that Gabrielle had received. The postman from Oughterard did not visit Roscarna twenty times in the year, and since his arrival was something of an event, entailing a meal and endless gossip with Biddy Joyce, Sir Jocelyn soon became aware of his daughter's correspondence. He questioned her about it, and she, without the least demur, handed him Radway's letters. He sniffed at them. If that was all the fellow had to say it struck him as a waste of time and paper. Who was he, anyhow? Gabrielle explained that he had dined with them at the Halbertons, and Jocelyn, who naturally had no recollection of the event, was satisfied with these credentials. "I asked him to come and shoot here," said Gabrielle. Jocelyn stared at her with wrinkled eyes. "The devil you did!" said he.

Radway's letters had exactly the effect on her that he had intended. They were an excitement, and she read them over and over again till she almost knew them by heart. They were the first outside interest that had ever entered her life. With Considine's help she looked up the ports at which they were posted on a big map in the library and thinking of their romantic names and the wonders that they suggested, she also thought a good deal of the writer.

So it was, almost unconsciously, that Radway began to fill a considerable place in her thoughts. His impression had fallen on an extraordinarily virginal mind that the thought of love-making had never disturbed. Physically, she hadn't responded to him in the least; but the long silences of Roscarna and particularly those of the following winter, when Slieveannilaun loomed above the woods like an immense and snowy ghost, and the lake was frozen until the cold spell broke and snow-broth swirled desolately under the Palladian bridge, gave her time for reflection in which her fancy began to dwell on the problems of ideal love. In this dead season the letters of Radway were more than ever an excitement. They stirred her imagination with pictures of burning seas and lurid tropical sunsets, and with this pageantry the memory of him would invade the dank gloom of the library where she and Considine pursued the acquisition of knowledge.

It was inevitable that she should have found some outlet of the kind, for in the curious circumstances of her upbringing she had missed that sentimental stage which is the measles of puberty. She had never trembled with adoration of a schoolmistress and Considine was an unthinkable substitute. In Dublin she had learned for the first time that she was beautiful, and that her country clothes did not show her at her best. This, together with Radway's attentions, had revealed to her the fact that she was a woman, and therefore made to love and be loved.

She loved Roscarna passionately, but in this neither Roscarna nor its inhabitants could help her. Under the most romantic circumstances in the world she could find no romance. Her new-born instinct revealed itself in a curious, almost maternal devotion to her father and the current litter of puppies. Jocelyn found its expression unusual but not unpleasant: the attentions of this charming daughter flattered him; and the puppies liked it, too, licking her face when she smothered them with motherly caresses. But these things were not enough for her, and it came as a great relief when she discovered another outlet in the contents of the library bookshelves.