by Sara Seale
"Well, Mark won't put up a penny for you, so you may as well get it out of your head," said Gina shortly.
Sebastian flared up. "And if you hadn't been such a selfish beast you'd have married him and seen that he did help me," he cried.
She stared at him, and went a little white, thinking of her letter to Mark now irrevocably in the post. If Sebastian knew what was in that letter, he 'and Doyle would already be taking Mark's support for granted. Well, he would have to know soon, and then her misery would begin.
"You do say the most rotten things, sometimes," was all she said.
Doyle, suddenly aware that there had been some sort of romance going on in the English household, opened his eyes widely and looked much interested.
"Sure, that's a great shame. There might have been pickings for us all," he remarked cheerfully.
Sebastian smiled suddenly, his green eyes apologetic. "I'm sorry. Forget it, Ginny, please," he said easily.
Sebastian said no more to her, which she took to be a bad sign, and once, during supper, he remarked irrelevantly:
"If I stayed over here and worked they couldn't drive me to Oxford."
Gina was woken at half-past five the next morning by Sebastian sitting on her bed in his pyjamas and shaking her.
"Ginny, get up! It's going to be a grand day, and we must climb Fand's Hill," he cried. "It's the first morning it hasn't rained."
She sat up, blinking sleepily at him, and looked out of the window. It was only just light, and the distant hills were still wrapped in mist, but no rain was falling, and the sky was a smooth cloudless silver.
"But why so frightfully early?" she objected, opening her pink mouth in a wide yawn.
"So that we'll see the sunrise from the top," he replied. "We'd never get there in time."
"Well, what do we care? It's the best time of the day on a mountain, anyway. Come on, Ginny, stir yourself."
Mrs. Casey gave them a cup of tea, before they started, and a great hunk of smoky bacon. "It's the grand view you'll get this day," she said briskly. "An' mind now, don't forget to wish when you get to the top. Herself will be listening to carry your wishes to the Sidhe. G'Wan wid yous now, and don't let me get a taste of yous all day."
They crossed the road, their mackintoshes rolled and strapped to their backs, and plunged into the coarse grass and heather. Before them, Fand's Hill raised its lovely outline, and lost its peak in mist. It took them nearly an hour to reach the foot, and their feet were soaked with bog-water when they finally paused and rested before tackling the hill.
"It's going to be lovely!" exclaimed Gina, looking back the way they had come. "It's nearly seven o'clock now. How long do you think the climb will take us?"
"About three hours up, and two down—perhaps less," Sebastian said vaguely. "Let's start."
It was hardly more than a rough scramble really. The little mountain was a hill of about two thousand five hundred feet, and its side was much worn with the feet of many generations who had climbed to the top to wish. Gina and Sebastian reached the summit in under three hours, and the mist had lifted, and now lay in wraith-like wisps below them, waiting for the sun to break through.
"The grandest view in Wicklow!" said Gina with satisfaction. "And it is. Look ! That must be Glendalough down there—that little valley. You can see the lakes and the tower in the trees."
"And look at Ballyskillen over there," cried Sebastian, pointing away to the right. "How minute it looks. That train seems like a little grub, 'and yet we aren't so very high."
For miles the wild country stretched away beneath them with its grim chains of little hills, the brown bog patches, and here and there the steely flash of lake water. Far below, they could see one of the blue and orange wooden carts being loaded up with peat and moving slowly across the heather like a tiny painted toy. Plovers wheeled, cutting through the few delicate fronds of mist that remained, and crying as they flew. Gina suddenly shivered. "It's terribly lonely," she said, huddling nearer to Sebastian on the mossy boulder where they sat resting. She felt suddenly desolate and a little frightened. "Ireland is unfriendly somehow."
"Unfriendly? You're crazy, Ginny!" laughed Sebastian. "It's the one friendly country in the world. You can do what you like, know who you like, and get a welcome anywhere."
"Yes. That wasn't really what I meant," she said, and gave herself a little shake.
"We must wish," said Sebastian seriously. "What did old mother Casey say? Herself would carry our wishes to the fairies. Come on, Ginny, stand up and concentrate."
They stood together hand-in-hand in the unbroken silence, and Gina wished with passionate intensity that she had done the right thing in accepting Mark.
Sebastian flung out his arms with a great shout that startled echoes out of the hills.
"I wished for money!" he cried. "Lovely silver money! What was yours?"
"Oh, you mustn't tell!" Gina exclaimed seriously. "You won't get your wish, Sebastian, you've broken the rules!"
"Oh, well, what do I care?" he returned carelessly.
"Other people's money is as good as your own. Better—they have the bother of it and you have the fun."
Gina's spirit wavered for a moment, then she said quietly. "I might as well tell you now, Sebastian. I've decided to marry Mark after all."
"What? Have you really and honestly? Ginny, you little darling!" cried Sebastian, delighted. "It's all definitely fixed up?"
"I wrote to Mark yesterday. I shan't back out, if that's what you mean."
"Oh, darling—marvellous! Now we've no more cares in the whole world. You see, Ginny, I am getting my wish after all. Perhaps Mark will listen to Doyle's scheme now."
He burst into a flood of excited sentences, punctuated with hugs for Gina. He clearly thought she had done this solely to oblige him. Should she try and tell him what Mark actually meant to her, she wondered, and decided against it. Not now, when his mind was filled with so many other things.
"Sebastian—will you do something for me?" she asked on impulse.
"Of course, Ginny darling. Anything in the world!" he replied joyously.
"Will you promise not to—to take advantage of Mark, through me?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well—you'll go to Oxford and do what he wants you to, won't you? I mean—give him some return for his money."
Sebastian's eyes tilted in sudden mirth. "I mustn't be a little sponger is what you really mean," he grinned. "Poor Ginny—I won't muck your chances again, darting. I'll be a holy saint of God, and I'll pay the Judge back, what's more—that's if I ever have any money that isn't his. Because it wouldn't be much compliment to him to hand him back his own cash with a noble gesture, would it?"
She laughed suddenly, and hugged him. "It's no use ever talking to you," she said. "Let's start down again, it's cold up here. What did old Casey say?—Come down the side beyant and step aisy on the grass."
They began the descent, which was rather steep, and Sebastian, who was now in high spirits, started to compose comic songs as he went along. They were obliged to stop several times and lean against a boulder, too weak with laughter to proceed. Once or twice Gina slipped, and had to clutch at coarse tufts of grass to prevent herself from sliding with the loose shale which rattled down the hill as it was disturbed. Once they had to be really careful in rounding an overhanging piece of rock, but for the most part their path was easy enough, and presently they came to the shoulder of the little mountain, where, on this side, short slippery grass sloped sharply away to their right, ending in a sheer drop to the boggy ground below.
"Step aisy on the grass!" laughed Gina. "This is where we toboggan, if we aren't jolly careful."
"It's damn slippery," agreed Sebastian as he followed her cautiously down the rough path.
Gina turned round to watch him. He had started on another song, standing still and gesturing fantastically.
"I said to the chap: 'My good feller,
Your breeks are atrociously cut—' "
He flung out his arms at the last words, lost his balance and slipped over the edge of the path on to the steep grassy slope, which became like glass beneath his feet.
"Ginny!—Oh, God!" he screamed, and began to slide, his increasing pace unchecked by his frantic efforts to sustain a foothold. Stiff with horror, she watched him reach the edge, and heard his agonized voice.
"Ginny. . . . Ginny. . . ." She saw him slip into space, and became aware of a vast unbroken stillness which beat upon her ears in waves. . . .
She didn't know how long afterwards it was that she took off her boots and crawled, sobbing painfully, down that treacherous grass slope, digging her toes and fingers into the soft earth for support. But when she looked over the edge, there was nothing living to be seen, but the blue and orange cart returning slowly fox its fresh load.
IV
Gina stood on the little rise in the boggy turf where she and Sebastian had first looked across to the low-lying hills and found Ballyskillen so beautiful. It was still beautiful, but she hoped never to see it again, and she knew that in leaving for England today, she was turning her back on Ireland for ever. Mark was taking her home, and glancing over her shoulder at the sound of a footstep squelching in the peat, she saw him coming towards her through the grass.
He stood beside her, and put an arm round her shoulders. "We must be getting back soon, sweetheart. Our train goes in another hour," he said.
Before them, in the distance, Fand's Hill rose, dark and lovely, and Gina shivered violently.
"Let's go now," she said. But she didn't move at once, and presently added inconsequently, "Of course it was a faery hill."
His arm tightened about her, and she began to speak abruptly:
"Mark—I want to say before we go that I'm terribly glad I wrote you that letter before—before—do you understand?"
"I understand," he said gently. "I feel just the same, Gina—I haven't told you yet how wonderful your letter was to me. Can you bear to think of me a little?" She turned to him swiftly.
"I think of you all the time," she said in a low voice. "All the time, even when I remember. . . . Mark—is it wicked to care so much when someone you've loved all your life is dead? Does it matter looking ahead and wanting to be happy?"
He took her into his arms, shielding her gaze from the distant hills.
"No, of course not, child," he said a little roughly. "It's the only way to sanity. No one wants to forget, but memory must be calm, not tortured. You can only achieve that by being happy."
"I love you so terribly, Mark. I loved Sebastian, but if it had been you—"
He held her gently, protectively, that cry that other women had made before her, sweet in his ears, ". . . if it had been you . . ." He turned her face up to his and kissed her, and as she saw the expression in his tired eyes, she flung her arms round his neck with the generous gesture he loved so well.
"Let's go," she said at last.
It began to rain as they reached the village—the soft fine rain of Ireland, which makes scarcely a sound—and Gina turned, impelled by some hidden impulse to look back.
But a thick curtain of mist had fallen, blotting out the hills, and there was nothing to see.
