"It's quite straight, as far as you can see."
"Are you quite sure of that?"
"Certain."
O'Brien then turned the conversation back into local channels again. Soon after he took his leave, having by some strange freak of preoccupation forgotten to drink his beer, although he had smoked his pipe like a man.
It was pitch dark. There was not a star in the heavens; no lights in the village, save here and there the thin ray of a rushlight shining through the wet window of some cottage. No phosphorescent gleam came from the sea, but a mournful, ghostly sound of wailing, as its waves, reduced by their passage up the bay, broke in diminished force against the flat, uneventful sand. Here were none of the grand organ tones heard near the lonely Black Rock, with its deadly legends, hideous Hole, and irresistible monster.
But O'Brien did not want to hear the sea now, either in its tame and civilised musing or in its insane roar when it flung itself unimpeded against the barriers of its dominions. He was thinking of the Black Rock, and of his sick friend, Alfred Paulton; and of O'Hanlon, and of the fate of Mike Fahey, and of Mr. Davenport, and of Tom Blake, and of--of Madge--his Madge, as he called her to himself, now that it was dark and no one was near. His Madge!
All around him was dark, cold, vacuous; all within him was full of light and warmth, and rich with figures in motion. He could not keep his great company of players in order at first. They hustled and jostled one another in his mind--all except Madge--his Madge! She moved apart from all the others, and the moment she appeared all the others fled as though abashed before her unstudied perfections.
Up to this he had never seriously concerned himself about anything. He had always been in fairly comfortable circumstances, although never rich. He had been brought up in the belief that he need never take much more trouble about the present or the future than an occasional glance at his salmon weirs on the river, and here he was now threatened with the loss of those weirs, which formed the backbone of his income--at a time, too, when this income meant the one thing he held dearest in the future--Madge! He had never been really in love before; there had been a few trifling affairs, but up to this he had never made up his mind to marry. That was the great test. Then look at the way he was mixed up in the Paulton and Davenport affair! Alfred, Madge's brother, succours Mrs. Davenport, and falls in love with the widow. He, Jerry O'Brien, causes a relapse in Alfred's case by some indiscreet words spoken by him of Mrs. Davenport. Then the Fishery Commissioners (whom may perdition lay hold of and keep for ever!) come howling to him about those weirs, and O'Hanlon tells him he must come over to Ireland post-haste, or he'll be picked dry as a bone by the Fishery Commissioners (whom may perdition--as before!); and no sooner does he set his foot in Kilbarry than O'Hanlon placidly confesses there is not so much need for haste for a day or two, or perhaps more, and that his (O'Hanlon's) real reason for sending for him was because of the ghost, or the ghost of a ghost, of one Mike Fahey, who had been connected with the Davenports ten or eleven years ago, and had jumped into the Hole in the Black Rock. A pretty complication, truly, for a man to get into in a fortnight or three weeks!
A pretty complication to get into, no doubt; but how would it all end? Except for poor Alfred's illness and the Fishery Commissioners (whom-- as before!), upon the whole he rather liked it.
And now he must go back to O'Hanlon, who would think him lost.