The Tragic Bride

by Francis Brett Young

She was so happy. She passed the cabin of the wake without a shudder. They walked as lovers, arm in arm, and soon a yellow moon, in its third quarter, rose, making Clonderriff beautiful, and flinging their moving shadows upon the pale stones at the roadside. As they breasted the hill, an arm of Corrib burned above the black like a band of sunset cloud, rather than moonlit water. Its beauty overwhelmed them. They clung to each other and kissed again. He told her that she was just as he had seen her first in her white dress, just as he had always imagined her in his days at sea, only more beautiful. She was so pale in the moonlight, and her lips so happy. She was glad that an inspired caprice had made her put on her white dress.

He asked her whether it was very far to Roscarna. "If you could miss the way," he said, "we might go on wandering for ever in the moonlight. There never could be another night like this."

But they had come already to the dark belt of woodland that the first Hewishes had planted, a darkness unvisited by moonlight, where their feet rustled a carpet of dead leaves, and shy, nocturnal creatures made another rustling beside them. At the edge of the wood a bird flew out of a thorn tree. "It's a brown owl," cried Radway; but when its wings caught the moonlight they saw the band of white. "It's a magpie," she said. "One for sorrow …" and smiled.

Roscarna stood before them, the ghost of a great house with many solemn windows for eyes. It looked blank, uninhabited, lifeless. Between the house and the river moonlight smoothed the lawns. The moon made that cold stone phantom imponderable, a grey mirage. Radway could not believe, for a moment, that it was real; but the sense of Gabrielle's cold cheek against his lips, her fingers twined in his, and her soft, unhurried breathing recalled him, telling him that he was a lover, awake and alive.

They crossed the bridge and entered the house by the front doors. The latch clanged to, echoing, and Biddy Joyce appeared in a red petticoat. Gabrielle introduced Radway, and Biddy was not scandalized, being used to the freedoms of Irish hospitality. Jocelyn had been in bed for half an hour or more, she said, and as the state in which he had retired was problematical they thought it better not to disturb him. They gave Radway supper in the dining-room, Gabrielle sitting opposite to him with her chin in the cup of her hands and her face white with candle-light.

In the meantime Biddy had prepared a guest-room for him, a sombre chamber with long windows, so sealed by neglect that they could not be opened, in which a broken pane served for ventilator. In the middle of it stood a bed, painted and gilt, in the manner of the seventeenth century, with panels of crimson brocade, threadbare but still beautiful, although the pattern of their ornament had faded long since. Gabrielle lighted him to his room, stepping softly along the uncarpeted passage. At the door they surrendered themselves to a passionate good-night.

VI

Radway stayed at Roscarna for three days. Irish ways are easy, and Jocelyn did not appear surprised to see his daughter's correspondent at the breakfast-table. He measured Radway shrewdly with his screwed-up eyes and decided that he was a sportsman, which, together with the Halbertons' introduction, was good enough for him. He only regretted that he could not do the sporting honours of the place for their visitor. There was a certain giddiness, he said, that troubled him at unexpected moments and made him disinclined to go too far afield; but he placed his rods and the contents of the gun-room at Radway's disposal and pressed him to stay as long as the place amused him.

Jocelyn, as host, was very much the country gentleman, picking up the thread of courtly hospitality at the point where it had been broken so many years ago, almost without any effort. It is probable that he had begun to realise that things were not well with him, and that since Gabrielle might soon be left alone in the world, it would be wiser to welcome a possible husband for her. Certainly he did his best for Radway, and Radway, no doubt, found him delightful, for Jocelyn had grown milder as he aged and had never been without a good deal of personal charm. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that Radway told him of his intentions with regard to Gabrielle, even though nothing so definite as an engagement was announced. At any rate, the guest settled down happily at Roscarna, and the morning after his arrival the luggage cart was sent in to his hotel at Oughterard to bring back his traps and gun-case.

Of course Gabrielle took possession of him. The terms of their new relation had been fixed miraculously and finally by the character of their moonlit meeting at Clonderriff. No formal words were spoken, but they knew that they were lovers, having arrived at this heavenly state after a whole year of waste. On Gabrielle's side there were never any doubts or questionings. She was his altogether. She wanted him to know all that could be known of her, and since she felt that so much of her was the product of Roscarna, it was necessary that he should know Roscarna first.