“I shall break my journey at Dublin, from which place I will write to you again; but under any circumstances I hope to be talking to you face to face within a fortnight from the present time.”
And having sealed and despatched this letter, Grace, as has been stated, for the first time since her father’s death left behind her the grounds of Bayview, and wended her way towards the Castle Farm.
With a feeling of sick surprise she paused when she reached the top of the divisional road and looked at the fields to right and left. The meadows were still uncut; acres of long rich grass had been laid by the rain, trampled by the cattle. The potato blossoms had flowered and faded; the potato apples were beginning to turn brown on the stems, but not a spade had been put in to dig the roots out of the ground.
In the other lands lying around she saw hayricks; she beheld men busy at work; she heard the voices of the women and children who were almost playing at their labour, so rejoiced were all hearts to find the heavy crop the upturned earth disclosed; but at the Castle Farm there was no sign of toil or of gladness.
There was a dead stillness about the place which told Grace the beginning of the end had begun. Spite of the rich grass thick with clover, spite of the wealth lying buried in the broad ridges of the potato fields, spite of the luxuriance of the ripening corn, she knew ruin was sitting by the once hospitable hearth, stealthily biding its time till it should turn husband and wife and children out of house and home upon the world.
No active signs of grief—no outbreak of sorrow could have affected Grace like the dumb testimony which gave evidence of the crisis that had come.
When before, in hay-time, had Amos and his boys and his men not been up at the first streak of light, in order to get well on with their labour before the sun gaining power—and the dews drying off the grass—made mowing weary work?
When had the potatoes ever lain in the ground as they were lying now? when had not all needful tasks been expedited and got well out of hand before the time came for the ingathering of the corn?
Miss Moffat’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the deserted fields that had borne their increase only to point more forcibly the ruin which was come to the Castle Farm.
If she had seen a sale going on in the place; had she beheld a crowd of strangers in the yard, and heard a babel of tongues in the air; had the horses and the cows and the busy fussing hens, and the fat well-to-do pigs been taken away while she looked, the scene could scarcely have struck her with the numb dread that for a time paralysed her steps.