by John Collier
Ringwood looked at her, and as she came slowly through the dusk she raised her eyes and looked at Ringwood. He at once forgot the little girl with the cows. In fact, he forgot everything else in the world.
The horse came nearer, and still the girl looked, and Ringwood looked, and it was not a mere exchange of glances, it was wooing and a marriage, all complete and perfect in a mingling of the eyes.
Next moment the horse had carried her past him, and, quickening its pace a little, it left him standing on the road. He could hardly run after it, or shout; in any case he was too overcome to do anything but stand and stare.
He watched the horse and rider go on through the wintry twilight, and he saw her turn in at a broken gateway just a little way along the road. Just as she passed through, she turned her head and whistled, and Ringwood noticed that her dog had stopped by him, and was sniffing about his legs. For a moment he thought it was a smallish wolfhound, but then he saw it was just a tall, lean, hairy lurcher. He watched it run limping after her, with its tail down, and it struck him that the poor creature had had an appalling thrashing not so long ago; he had noticed the marks where the hair was thin on its ribs.
However, he had little thought to spare for the dog. As soon as he got over his first excitement, he moved on in the direction of the gateway. The girl was already out of sight when he got there, but he recognized the neglected avenue which led up to the battered tower on the shoulder of the hill.
Ringwood thought that was enough for the day, so made his way back to the inn. Bates was still absent, but that was just as well. Ringwood wanted the evening to himself in order to work out a plan of campaign.
«That horse never cost two ten-pound notes of anybody's money,» said he to himself. «So she's not so rich. So much the better! Besides, she wasn't dressed up much; I don't know what she had on — a sort of cloak or something. Nothing out of Bond Street, anyway. And lives in that old tower! I should have thought it was all tumbled down. Still, I suppose there's a room or two left at the bottom. Poverty Hall! One of the old school, blue blood and no money, pining away in this God-forsaken hole, miles away from everybody. Probably she doesn't see a man from one year's end to another. No wonder she gave me a look. God! if I was sure she was there by herself, I wouldn't need much of an introduction. Still, there might be a father or a brother or somebody. Never mind, I'll manage it.»
When the landlady brought in the lamp: «Tell me,» said he. «Who's the young lady who rides the cobby-looking, old-fashioned-looking grey?»
«A young lady, sir?» said the landlady doubtfully. «On a grey?»
«Yes,» said he. «She passed me in the lane up there. She turned in on the old avenue, going up to the tower.»
«Oh, Mary bless and keep you!» said the good woman. «That's the beautiful Murrough lady you must have seen.»
«Murrough?» said he. «Is that the name? Well! Well! Well! That's a fine old name in the west here.»
«It is so, indeed,» said the landlady. «For they were kings and queens in Connaught before the Saxon came. And herself, sir, has the face of a queen, they tell me.»
«They're right,» said Ringwood. «Perhaps you'll bring me in the whiskey and water, Mrs. Doyle, and I shall be comfortable.»
He had an impulse to ask if the beautiful Miss Murrough had anything in the shape of a father or a brother at the tower, but his principle was, «least said soonest mended,» especially in little affairs of this sort. So he sat by the fire, recapturing and savouring the look the girl had given him, and he decided he needed only the barest excuse to present himself at the tower.
Ringwood had never any shortage of excuses, so the next afternoon he spruced himself up and set out in the direction of the old avenue. He turned in at the gate, and went along under the forlorn and dripping trees, which were so ivied and overgrown that the darkness was already thickening under them. He looked ahead for a sight of the tower, but the avenue took a turn at the end, and it was still hidden among the clustering trees.
Just as he got to the end, he saw someone standing there, and he looked again, and it was the girl herself, standing as if she was waiting for him.
«Good afternoon, Miss Murrough,» said he, as soon as he got into earshot. «Hope I'm not intruding. The fact is, I think I had the pleasure of meeting a relation of yours down in Cork, only last month … .» By this time he had got close enough to see the look in her eyes again, and all this nonsense died away in his mouth, for this was something beyond any nonsense of that sort.
«I thought you would come,» said she.
«My God!» said he. «I had to. Tell me — are you all by yourself here?»
«All by myself,» said she, and she put out her hand as if to lead him along with her.
Ringwood, blessing his lucky stars, was about to take it, when her lean dog bounded between them and nearly knocked him over.
«Down!» cried she, lifting her hand. «Get back!» The dog cowered and whimpered, and slunk behind her, creeping almost on its belly. «He's not a dog to be trusted,» she said.
«He's all right,» said Ringwood. «He looks a knowing old fellow. I like a lurcher. Clever dogs. What? Are you trying to talk to me, old boy?»
Ringwood always paid a compliment to a lady's dog, and in fact the creature really was whining and whimpering in the most extraordinary fashion.
«Be quiet!» said the girl, raising her hand again, and the dog was silent.
«A cur,» said she to Ringwood. «Did you come here to sing the praises of a half-breed cur?» With that she gave him her eyes again, and he forgot the wretched dog, and she gave him her hand, and this time he took it and they walked toward the tower.
Ringwood was in the seventh heaven. «What luck!» thought he. «I might at this moment be fondling that little farm wench in some damp and smelly cowshed. And ten to one she'd be snivelling and crying and running home to tell her mammy. This is something different.»
At that moment, the girl pushed open a heavy door, and, bidding the dog lie down, she led our friend through a wide, bare, stone-flagged hall and into a small vaulted room which certainly had no resemblance to a cowshed except perhaps it smelt a little damp and mouldy, as these old stone places so often do. All the same, there were logs burning on the open hearth, and a broad, low couch before the fire-place. For the rest, the room was furnished with the greatest simplicity, and very much in the antique style. «A touch of the Kathleen ni Houlihan,» thought Ringwood. «Well, well! Sitting in the Celtic twilight, dreaming of love. She certainly doesn't make much bones about it.»
The girl sat down on the couch and motioned him down beside her. Neither of them said anything; there was no sound but the wind outside, and the dog scratching and whimpering timidly at the door of the chamber.
At last the girl spoke. «You are of the Saxon,» said she gravely.
«Don't hold it against me,» said Ringwood. «My people came here in 1656. Of course, that's yesterday to the Gaelic League, but still I think we can say we have a stake in the country.»
«Yes, through its heart,» said she.
«Is it politics we're going to talk?» said he, putting an Irish turn to his tongue. «You and I, sitting here in the firelight?»
«It's love you'd rather be talking of,» said she with a smile. «But you're the man to make a blunder and a mockery of the poor girls of Eire.»
«You misjudge me entirely,» said Ringwood. «I'm the man to live alone and sorrowful, waiting for the one love, though it seemed something beyond hoping for.»
«Yes,» said she. «But yesterday you were looking at one of the Connell girls as she drove her kine along the lane.»
«Looking at her? I'll go so far as to say I did,» said he. «But when I saw you I forgot her entirely.»
«That was my wish,» said she, giving him both her hands. «Will you stay with me here?»
«Ah, that I will!» cried he in a rapture.
«Always?» said she.
«Always,» cried Ringwood. «Always and forever!�
� for he felt it better to be guilty of a slight exaggeration than to be lacking in courtesy to a lady. But as he spoke she fixed her eyes on him, looking so much as if she believed him that he positively believed himself.
«Ah,» he cried. «You bewitch me!» And he took her in his arms.
He pressed his lips to hers, and at once he was over the brink. Usually he prided himself on being a pretty cool hand, but this was an intoxication too strong for him; his mind seemed to dissolve in sweetness and fire, and at last the fire was gone, and his senses went with it. As they failed he heard her saying «For ever! For ever!» and then everything was gone and he fell asleep.
He must have slept some time. It seemed he was wakened by the heavy opening and closing of a door. For a moment he was all confused and hardly knew where he was.
The room was now quite dark, and the fire had sunk to a dim glow. He blinked, and shook his ears, trying to shake some sense into his head. Suddenly he heard Bates talking to him, muttering as if he, too, was half asleep, or half drunk more likely. «You would come here,» said Bates. «I tried hard enough to stop you.»
«Hullo!» said Ringwood, thinking he must have dozed off by the fire in the inn parlor. «Bates? God, I must have slept heavy! I feel queer. Damn it — so it was all a dream! Strike a light, old boy. It must be late. I'll yell for supper.»
«Don't, for Heaven's sake,» said Bates, in his altered voice. «Don't yell. She'll thrash us if you do.»
«What's that?» said Ringwood. «Thrash us? What the hell are you talking about?»
At that moment a log rolled on the hearth, and a little flame flickered up, and he saw his long and hairy forelegs, and he knew.
INCIDENT ON A LAKE
Mr. Beaseley, while shaving on the day after his fiftieth birthday, eyed his reflection, and admitted his remarkable resemblance to a mouse. «Cheep, cheep!» he said to himself, with a shrug. «What do I care? At least, I wouldn't except for Maria. I remember I thought her kittenish at the time of our marriage. How she has matured!»
He knotted his thread-like necktie and hurried downstairs, scared out of his life at the thought of being late for breakfast. Immediately afterwards he had to open his drugstore, which then, in its small-town way, would keep him unprofitably busy till ten o'clock at night. At intervals during the day, Maria would drop in to supervise, pointing out his mistakes and weaknesses regardless of the customers.
He found a brief solace every morning when, unfolding the newspaper, he turned first of all to the engaging feature originated by Mr. Ripley. On Fridays he had a greater treat: he then received his copy of his favourite magazine, Nature Science Marvels. This reading provided, so to speak, a hole in his otherwise hopeless existence, through which he escaped from the intolerable into the incredible.
On this particular morning the incredible was kind enough to come to Mr. Beaseley. It came in a long envelope and on the handsome note paper of a prominent law firm. «Believe it or not, my dear,» Mr. Beaseley said to his wife, «but I have been left four hundred thousand dollars.»
«Where? Let me see!» cried Mrs. Beaseley. «Don't hog the letter to yourself in that fashion.»
«Go on,» said he. «Read it. Stick your nose in it. Much good may it do you!»
«Oh! Oh!» said she. «So you are already uppish!»
«Yes,» said he, picking his teeth. «I have been left four hundred thousand dollars.»
«We shall be able,» said his wife, «to have an apartment in New York or a little house in Miami.»
«You may have half the money and do what you like with it,» said Mr. Beaseley. «For my part, I intend to travel.»
Mrs. Beaseley heard this remark with the consternation she always felt at the prospect of losing anything that belonged to her, however old and valueless. «So you would desert me,» she said, «to go chasing about after some native woman? I thought you were past all that.»
«The only native women I am interested in,» said he, «are those that Ripley had a picture of — those with lips big enough to have dinner plates set in them. In the Nature Science Marvels Magazine they had some with necks like giraffes. I should like to see those, and pygmies, and birds of paradise, and the temples of Yucatan. I offered to give you half the money because I know you like city life and high society. I prefer to travel. If you want to, I suppose you can come along.»
«I will,» said she. «And don't forget I'm doing it for your sake, to keep you on the right path. And when you get tired of gawking and rubbering around, we'll have an apartment in New York and a little house in Miami.»
So Mrs. Beaseley went resentfully along, prepared to endure Hell herself if she could deprive her husband of a little of his Heaven. Their journeys took them into profound forests, where, from their bare bedroom, whose walls, floor, and ceiling were austerely fashioned of raw pine, they could see framed in every window a perfect little Cezanne, with the slanting light cubing bluely among the perpendiculars of pine trees or exploding on the new green of a floating spray. In the high Andes, on the other hand, their window was a square of burning azure, with sometimes a small, snow-white cloud like a tight roll of cotton in a lower corner. In the beach huts on tropical islands, they found that the tide, like an original and tasteful hôtelier, deposited a little gift at their door every morning: a skeleton fan of violet seaweed, a starfish, or a shell. Mrs. Beaseley, being one of the vulgar, would have preferred a bottle of Grade A and a copy of The Examiner. She sighed incessantly for an apartment in New York and a house in Miami, and she sought endlessly to punish the poor man for depriving her of them.
If a bird of paradise settled on a limb above her husband's head, she was careful to let out a raucous cry and drive the interesting creature away before Mr. Beaseley had time to examine it. She told him the wrong hour for the start of the trip to the temples of Yucatan, and she diverted his attention from an armadillo by pretending she had something in her eye. At the sight of a bevy of the celebrated bosoms of Bali, clustered almost like grapes upon the quay, she just turned around and went straight up the gangplank again, driving her protesting husband before her.
She insisted they should stay a long time in Buenos Aires so that she could get a permanent wave, a facial, some smart clothes, and go to the races. Mr. Beaseley humoured her, for he wanted to be fair, and they took a suite in a comfortable hotel. One afternoon when his wife was at the races, our friend struck up an acquaintance with a little Portuguese doctor in the lounge, and before long they were talking vivaciously of hoatzins, anacondas, and axolotls. «As to that,» said the little Portuguese, «I have recently returned from the headwaters of the Amazon, where the swamps and lakes are terrific. In one of those lakes, according to the Indians, there is a creature entirely unknown to science: a creature of tremendous size, something like an alligator, something like a turtle, armour-plated, with a long neck, and teeth like sabres.»
«What an interesting creature that must be!» cried Mr. Beaseley in a rapture.
«Yes, yes,» said the Portuguese. «It is certainly interesting.»
«If only I could get there!» cried Mr. Beaseley. «If only I could talk to those Indians! If only I could see the creature itself! Are you by any chance at liberty? Could you be persuaded to join a little expedition?»
The Portuguese was willing, and soon everything was arranged. Mrs. Beaseley returned from the races, and had the mortification of hearing that they were to start almost immediately for a trip up the Amazon and a sojourn on the unknown lake in the dysgenic society of Indians. She insulted the Portuguese, who did nothing but bow, for he had an agreeable financial understanding with Mr. Beaseley.
Mrs. Beaseley berated her husband all the way up the river, harping on the idea that there was no such creature as he sought, and that he was the credulous victim of a confidence man. Inured as he was to her usual flow of complaints, this one made him wince and humiliated him before the Portuguese. Her voice, also, was so loud and shrill that in all the thousands of miles they travelled up the celebrated river h
e saw nothing but the rapidly vanishing hinder parts of tapirs, spider monkeys, and giant ant-eaters, which hurried to secrete themselves in the impenetrable deeps of the jungle.
Finally they arrived at the lake. «How do we know this is the lake he was speaking of?» Mrs. Beaseley said to her husband. «It is probably just any lake. What are those Indians saying to him? You can't understand a word. You take everything on trust. You'll never see a monster. Only a fool would believe in it.»
Mr. Beaseley said nothing. The Portuguese learned, from his conversation with the Indians, of an abandoned grass hut, which in due time and after considerable effort they located. They moved into it. The days passed by. Mr. Beaseley crouched in the reeds with binoculars and was abominably bitten by mosquitoes. There was nothing to be seen.
Mrs. Beaseley succeeded in taking on a note of satisfaction without in the least abating her tone of injury. «I will stand this no longer,» she said to her husband. «I've allowed you to drag me about. I've tried to keep my eye on you. I've travelled hundreds of miles in a canoe with natives. Now I see you wasting our money on a confidence man. We leave for Para in the morning.»
«You may, if you wish,» said he. «I'll write you a check for two hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps you can persuade some native in a passing canoe to take you down the river. But I will not come with you.»
«We will see about that,» said she. She hadn't the faintest intention of leaving her husband alone, for she feared he might enjoy himself. Nevertheless, after he had written out the check and given it to her, she continued to threaten to leave him, for if he surrendered, it would be a triumph, and if he didn't, it would be another little black cross against him.
She happened to rise early one morning and went out to make her ungrateful breakfast on some of the delicious fruits that hung in profusion all around the hut. She had not gone far before she happened to glance at the sandy ground, and there she saw a footprint that was nearly a yard wide, splayed, spurred, and clawed, and the mate to it was ten feet away.
