Then, whether she prayed most or listened most, or the very intensity of her listening was itself prayer—prayer in its highest form—she never knew; but only that, whenever in the agony of her suspense she raised her head from the chair to hear if there was news, the common sounds of afternoon life in the house and without lashed her with a dreadful irony. The low whirr of a spinning-wheel, a girl's distant chatter, the cluck of a hen in the courtyard, the satisfied grunt of a roving pig, all bore home to her heart the bitter message that, whatever happened, and though nightfall found her lonely in a dishonoured home, life would proceed as usual, the men and the women about her would eat and drink, and the smallest things would stand where they stood now—unchanged, unmoved.
What was that? Only the fall of a spit in the kitchen, or the clatter of a pot-lid. Would they never come? Would she never know? At this moment—what was that? That surely was something. They were returning! In a moment she would know. She rose to her feet and stared with stony eyes at the door. But when she had listened long—it was nothing. Nothing! And then—ah, that surely was something—was news—was the end! They were coming now. In a moment she would know. Yes, they were coming. In a moment she would know. She pressed her hands to her breast.
She might have known already, for, had she gone to the door, she would have seen who came. But she could not go. She could not move.
And he, when he came in, did not look at her. He walked from the threshold to the hearth, and—strange coincidence—he set the unsheathed blade he carried in the self-same angle, beside the fire-back, from which she had once taken a sword to attempt his life. And still he did not look at her, but stood with bowed head.
At last he turned. "God forgive us all," he said.
She broke into wild weeping. And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she hung on him, conveyed.
CHAPTER XXV
PEACE
Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, and the curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow had dressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly looking round the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later to the day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run into months instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explain the change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.