Meanwhile Gabrielle, innocent of all domestic accomplishments, struggled with the complications of her husband's housekeeping, and Considine returned, like a giant refreshed, to the composition of his doctor's thesis.
The estate of matrimony suited Considine. In the soft clean climate of Galway a man ages slowly, and this marriage renewed his youth. It made him full of new energies and enthusiasms, and revealed a boyish aspect in his character that seemed to Gabrielle a little grotesque, or even frightening. He wanted to express himself boisterously, flagrantly, and the proceeding was extraordinary in the case of a man who had always been so self-contained. Lacking any other outlet for these ebullitions he threw himself energetically into his theological writings and worked off his surplus physical steam in the management of the Roscarna estate, for which Jocelyn was gradually becoming more and more unfitted. In this, as in most things that he undertook, Considine showed himself efficient, and Jocelyn began to congratulate himself on the fact that he had secured a son-in-law with a genuine passion for the land that meant so much to him.
During all this time Gabrielle remained the same indefinitely tragic figure. There was nothing physically repulsive in Considine, but even if there had been, I do not suppose that she would have felt it acutely. She had become passive. The abruptness of the first tragedy had numbed her so completely that nothing less than another emotional catastrophe could awaken her to consciousness.
In this expectant hallucinated state she passed through the early months of her married life, faithfully performing her domestic duties, sad, yet almost complacent in her sadness. Autumn swept over the countryside. Mists rising from the Corrib at dawn lapped the feet of the hills on which Clonderriff stood, mingling, at last, with the melancholy vapour of white fog rolling in from sea. Leaves began to fall in the parsonage garden, and the lawn was frosted at daybreak with cold dew. The hint of chilliness in the air only stimulated Considine to fresh energies, sending him out on long tramps with his gun. He seemed to think it strange that Gabrielle, in her new state, should hate the sight, and above all, the sound of firearms. He tried to joke her out of it—he would never treat her as anything but a child—but to her it was not a subject on which jokes could be made.
Biddy was a frequent and puzzled visitor at Clonderriff, puzzled, and a little disappointed because her physiological prophecies did not seem to be approaching fulfilment. By the time that Gabrielle had been married a couple of months it became questionable whether there had been any social necessity for the hurried ceremony; but though she had her own doubts on the subject, Biddy was far too cunning to give this away to her own discredit, and when Jocelyn or Considine consulted her as to how these matters were proceeding, she armed herself with inscrutable feminine mystery trusting to luck and assuring them it was only a question of time. After all, probabilities were on her side, and no doubt it came as a great relief to her when, in due course, the doctor from Galway confirmed her diagnosis. With this vindication of her judgment she became more and more attentive to Gabrielle, walking over two or three times a week to Clonderriff and instructing her in the traditional duties of motherhood as they are taught in the west.
All through the days of autumn Gabrielle sat at her window looking over the misty lawn and making the clothes for her baby. It is not surprising, under the circumstances, that Considine did not show any symptoms of paternal pride. This, it must be confessed, was the most unpleasant condition of his bargain. Still, he had undertaken it deliberately, and meant to go through with it like a man. He looked forward to the time when it should be over and done with. Then they would be able to make a new start; Gabrielle would be wholly his, and Radway, he confidently expected, forgotten.
In the meantime, having, in the flush of marriage completed his theological thesis and sent it off to the university from which he expected a doctor's degree, he determined to enjoy the sporting possibilities of Roscarna to the full. His shooting took him far afield, and he saw very little of Gabrielle in the daytime. He kept away deliberately, for her condition made her strange and irritable at times, and he did not consider that devotion to her in a difficulty for which he had not been responsible was part of his contract. Later, no doubt, his turn would come. For the present, moreover, he felt that he could not quite trust himself, and the fear that his suppressed grudging might make him lose control of his temper made him anxious to avoid the risk. Gabrielle was thankful for this. She never felt unkindly towards him, and yet she was glad when she could feel sure of not seeing him for a time. In the dusk he would return, too drugged with air and exercise to take much notice of her, and for this also she was thankful.
One evening in February, when Gabrielle was sitting in a dream over her turf fire, Considine came home from a day's blackcock shooting in the woods on the edge of the lake. She did not hear him coming, for the garden path was now deep in fallen leaves. As he turned to open the house door Considine saw a small shadow moving under the garden hedge. He thought it was a rabbit, and quickly, without considering, he slipped a cartridge into his gun, aimed at it, and fired. The sound of a shattering report at close quarters broke Gabrielle's dream, recalling an old horror. She jumped to her feet and cried out. Considine, hearing her cry, dropped his gun and ran into the house. He found her standing with her hands pressed to her eyes and trembling violently. She did not see him when he called her name, and then, still shaken like a poplar in a storm, she turned on him with eyes full of hate and let loose on him a flood of language such as she must have learned from the Roscarna stable-boys, words that she couldn't possibly have spoken if she were sane. He apologised for his carelessness and tried to soothe her, and when she had stopped abusing him and broken down into desolate tears he picked her up in his arms, carried her to their bedroom, and sent a messenger riding to Roscarna for Biddy Joyce.
She lay on the bed quivering, and Considine, white and harassed, stayed beside her. He did not dare to leave her alone, even though she would not look at him. By the time that Biddy arrived in a fluster, Gabrielle's child had been prematurely born. There was never any question of independent life. The case remained in Biddy's hands, and whether the child were Radway's or Considine's, nobody in the world but Biddy Joyce and Gabrielle ever knew. There is no doubt that Biddy would have committed herself to any lie rather than lose her reputation as an authority, for Biddy was a Joyce. Personally I cherish the passionate belief that no man but Considine was the father.