Where the Atlantic meets the land

by H. Caldwell Lipsett

When he entered the house one of the maids was already down, and was cleaning the kitchen window, kneeling upon the table, with her back to him. He went up to her, and to attract her attention laid his hand upon her ankle. He felt a sudden tremor run through her, and at the contact a flood of fire pulsed through his own veins, for the glamour of the night was still over all his senses.

She turned and looked at him with a wanton twinkle in her eye; they were bold, black eyes in a gypsy face, and he wondered he had never noticed before how pretty she was. Something in her gaze struck him. He looked at her shiftily. He wanted to take her in his arms, to ask her to kiss him, and he opened his mouth to do so; but, after all those years, the hinges of his tongue worked creakingly, the thought of taking decided action of any kind out of his ordinary groove daunted him, from long disuse his executive faculties were no longer under the control of his will, and the words that issued from his mouth were quite different from what he had intended, they were dictated by habit; he jerked out with parched lips,—

'Where's the key of the byre, Cassy?'

'Troth, sir, you have it hangin' on yer little fing-er,' she replied, with a glance that showed understanding and a spice of contempt for his weakness of purpose.

'Oh, ay, so it is,' he answered, and turning, shuffled hastily out in confusion.

But he couldn't settle down to his work, and soon gave it up, and started for a walk in the cool morning air, hoping thus to allay the fever of his blood. All the way he was arguing with himself, despising himself for the failure of his overtures, and yet frightened at the idea of their succeeding. He tried to persuade himself that it was respect for his sister that had withheld him, but even he could not sink to such self-deception as that.

It was haytime, most of the mowing was already over, and nothing further could be done with the grass until the sun and wind had had time to dry the dew of the night. Few people, therefore, were yet stirring, no smoke rose out of the cottage chimneys, not a sound was to be heard but the croak of the corn-crake running before him in the meadow, the juicy swish of a distant scythe through the wet grass, or the strident sound of the whetstone upon the blade. Crossing a field, he met the daughter of one of his tenants carrying two pails of foaming milk—a pretty, fair girl with a sun-tanned face. She was not the least like the other, but again the same mad longing came over him, checked by the same infirmity. He wanted to ask her to put down her pails and to give him a kiss, but, unready as ever, all he could force his lips to stammer out was,—

'Good-morning, Mary.'

'Good-morning, surr,' she answered, with a courtesy, and passed on to tell her mother that 'big Misther Vaughan' knew her Christian name—a depth of interest of which she had never suspected him before.

For some days afterwards every time he met Cassy about the house she looked at him, and every time she looked at him he made up his mind to kiss her the next. At last he met her on the stairs early one morning, and did kiss her. She made a slight scuffle, and, more from his nervousness than her resistance, the kiss only fell on the tip of her ear, and she scuttled downstairs laughing. But nevertheless he felt uplifted in his own esteem all that day; he actually had achieved the task he had set himself.