Where the Atlantic meets the land

by H. Caldwell Lipsett

They jumped onto the stones and off again in eager rivalry for several minutes. Often there would be a wide gulf between them and the shore, and then the sea would retreat and leave it bare again. But at last they stopped too long: the tide flowed in with a sudden rush and never came back again near their island.

'What will we do?' cried Bella in dismay, when she realized they were altogether surrounded.

'Niver fear,' replied Terry, 'I can carry yous,' and he took off his shoes and stockings well pleased at the success of his stratagem.

He took her up carefully in his arms, like a baby, and carried her ashore: she lay quite still, without a blush or tremor, as he strained her to his breast, and when he kissed her before setting her upon her feet her lips met his frankly but did not return their pressure. Terry knew little of the ways of women, but his instinct told him that either more or less warmth would have been a better augury. He felt 'a bit dashed,' as he himself would say, at her tolerant attitude.

Then he went and put the horse into the cart, which he had borrowed for the day from a neighbor. Bella sat in the bottom upon a lining of hay, and her teeth rattled in her head at every jolt of the springless vehicle behind the rough-trotting plough-horse. Terry sat on the shaft in front, swinging his legs, and got a crick in his neck turning his head to admire her dishevelled hair and the brown shadows beneath her Irish eyes, 'rubbed in with a dirty finger,' as the saying goes.

For the next six months Terry lived upon the memory of that day. It formed the high-water mark of his influence with the girl whom he grew to love the more she disregarded him: for a man's love feeds upon starvation. Upon that day the unfamiliarity of her surroundings had allowed him to appear to an advantage he had never enjoyed before or since. Up to that point in their intercourse she had always been the stronger, and now a new element appeared to have entered her life and ousted him from it. Nothing that he could say or do could touch her interest any longer: he had an impalpable feeling that every day he was more outside of her, more in the cold. When they met about their daily work upon the farm, she merely tolerated his presence as she would tolerate a necessary article of furniture.

Terry racked his brains vainly to guess what cause of offence he had given her, or to imagine a reason for this change in her attitude: but he could find none. It was true that of late 'the misthress' had taken Bella to wait upon herself exclusively with the exception of her work in the dairy: and some of the other maids threw out hints about 'them as is took notice of soon becomes overly cocked up:' but Terry knew her too well to suspect her of such littleness: he rather put down her evident weariness of him to some failure in himself, he was not good enough for her.

One day in especial this came home to him. She had driven into the neighboring town of Lisnamore with her mistress, Mrs. Fenwick, to accompany that lady upon a shopping excursion. He was passing down the opposite side of the street, and saw her sitting upon the side of the car talking with a heightened color to 'the young Masther,' Mrs. Fenwick's eldest son, who was home from Trinity for the vacation, and who was standing with one hand resting carelessly upon the cushion beside her. She did not even notice Terry, and he passed on with a desolate feeling at his heart, nearer to tears than he had been since his babyhood.

On the afternoon that the six months expired he went to find her in the byre at milking time. He had questioned himself long and anxiously if it was worth while going at all, but came to the conclusion 'best give her her chanst.' So though he had already seen her several times that day, he went to his room over the coach-house and put on his Sunday clothes, the clothes he had worn that day upon the rocks at Kilcross, and a flaming scarlet tie that he had bought for this occasion a week afterwards. And in this gala dress with his heart in his boots he went to meet his fate.

He stood with a straw in his mouth leaning against the doorpost of the byre, and never said a word from the moment when the first thin thread of milk spirted into the empty tin porringer with a tinkling sound till the last porringer was emptied into the foaming pails. He walked beside her in solemn silence while she carried the pails to the dairy: but though his heart yearned over her he did not offer to help her: the men of the country do not relieve the women of their burdens. And still in silence he watched her pour the fresh milk through the strainer into the large earthenware crocks to 'set' for cream.