Many were the conjectures that evening at the forge as to the meaning of this new move. Terry had been sounded on the subject, and told all he knew. He went with Bella to Enniskillen, and gave notice to the priest. Then they were overtaken by old Peggy, who spoke to her daughter privately for a few minutes. Bella came out from the conversation and said she had changed her mind and would not marry him after all. He raved and stormed, but all to no purpose: Bella was indifferent and her mother sphinx-like, he could get nothing further out of either, and he could not marry the girl in spite of herself. She went away and slept with her mother that night, and returned home by the first train in the morning. He could no nothing but follow her by the second.—Those were the facts, but as to the explanation of them he was entirely at a loss.
While they were still discussing this strange story, Terry himself passed the forge, switching moodily with his ash-plant at the 'boughaleen bwees,' the yellow rag-weed, that fringed the roadside.
When he came opposite the group at the doorway his cousin Owen called out to him jeeringly, 'Well, Terry, so yous are home again wid wan han' as long as the other. Didn't oul' Peggy think yous good enough for her dahter?'
Terry halted and looked up at them with a mild, wistful expression in his oxlike eyes, the look of a wounded animal, and said simply, 'Shure I'm not good enough for her.'
Somehow the laugh that had begun died away immediately, and Owen withdrew behind his companions, and began to light his pipe in a dark corner of the forge. His pipe was already alight. But Terry went upon his way pondering these, the first rough words of outside criticism that had fallen upon his ears. His mind was slow to move, and needed a jog from another hand to start it: but once stirred it moved deeply, and entertaining few ideas it was all the more tenacious of those which did manage to effect an entrance. His fancy for Bella, at first a young man's liking for a maid, had been fanned by opposition till now it had become a slow fire consuming his marrow. He thought of her all day, and in the night he lay awake biting his pillows, to prevent himself crying aloud for very loneliness of spirit. Bella remained at home with her mother, and he never saw her now, but her picture was too indelibly printed on his imagination for propinquity to add to her charms: absence but idealized them. He went about his work brooding eternally over his loss, and for the first time no one ventured to intrude upon his solitude. They laughed at him behind his back for a soft who had been jilted at the altar: but he had acquired a fresh dignity, which saved him from open ridicule or unsolicited advances. In those days when his trouble lay heavy upon him he shunned human creatures and found companionship only in the society of his horses. Their large calm soothed his fevered nerves. They grew to know his step, and whinnied when they heard him coming: and they would caress him with their tender muzzles as he rubbed them down with the soft hissing noise that they loved. For in sorrow animals are our most comforting companions: they are so silent and placid and self-contained, 'not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.'
But at the end of six months a fresh shock convulsed the neighborhood. As on the first occasion it was Hannah that brought the news to the forge, but this time it was the morning, and there was nobody there but the blacksmith and his wife.
'Have ye heerd tell what's come to oul' Peggy's Bella,' she asked, standing breathlessly in the doorway, and added without waiting for a reply, 'she had a child last night.'
'You don't tell me,' cried Mrs. Mac in amazement.
'They had the oul' wumman from the Poorhouse there ahl night, an' I just seen the dishpensary docther lave the dure this minute wid me own two eyes.'
'An' her such a soft-spoken crathur,' continued Mrs. Mac; 'ye'd think that butther wudn't melt in her mouth, but it's ahlways them soort that goes wrong.'