The Gambler Part 10

"Where is your cousin?" he said, as he responded to her gesture.

She flushed momentarily.

"Gone!" she answered laconically. Then, conscious that the reply was curt, she made haste to amend it. "He's gone home to lunch," she added.

"Aunt Fan wanted him back. She's a great invalid and always worrying about him. I suppose invalids are never like other people. Will you please help yourself?"

She smiled and indicated a steaming stew--sufficient to feed ten hungry people--that Hannah, acting in Burke's absence, had planted heavily upon the table.

"We always begin lunch with meat," Clodagh explained; "but we always finish with tea and whatever Hannah will make for us to eat. If you stay long enough you'll be able to tell all Hannah's tempers by what we get at lunch. When she's terribly cross we have bread and jam; when she's middling we get soda bread; but when she's really and truly nice we have currant loaf or griddle cake!"

She glanced round mischievously at the red face of the factotum.

Hannah, who had been wavering between offence and amus.e.m.e.nt, suddenly succ.u.mbed to the look.

"Sure, 'tis a quare notion you'll be givin' him of the place," she said, amicably joining in the conversation without a shade of embarra.s.sment. "If I was you, I wouldn't be tellin' a gintleman that I laves the whole work of the house to wan poor ould woman, an' goes galavantin' over the country mornin', noon, an' night, instead of learnin' meself to be a good housekeeper! So signs, 'tis Miss Nance that'll find the husband first!" With a knowing glance at Milbanke and a shake of the head she left the room, banging the door behind her.

Clodagh laughed. The insinuation in Hannah's words and look pa.s.sed unnoticed by her. She swept them aside unconcernedly, and proceeded with an inborn tact--an inborn sense of the responsibilities of her position--to fill her _role_ of hostess and entertain her guest.

So successful was she in this new aspect, that Milbanke found himself thawing--even growing communicative under her influence as the meal progressed. Long before the appetising griddle cake and the heavy silver teapot had been laid upon the table he had begun to feel at home; to meet Nance's shy, friendly smiles without embarra.s.sment; to talk with freedom and naturalness of his small, personal ambitions, his own unimportant, individual researches in his pet study of antiquity.

A reticent man--when once his reticence has been broken down--makes as egotistical a confidant as any other. Before they rose from the table, he had been beguiled into forgetting that the Celtic zeal for the entertainment of a guest may sometimes be mistaken for something more; that Irish children--with their natural kinship to sun and rain, dogs and horses, men and women--may a.s.sume, but cannot possibly feel, an interest in monuments of wood or stone, no matter how historic or how unique.

This erroneous impression remained with him until the time arrived for Clodagh to pilot him to Carrigmore; and filled with the knowledge of having a sympathetic listener, he harked back to his earliest experiences while he covered the two miles of firm yellow sand with his young hostess walking sedately beside him and half a dozen dogs--setters, retrievers, and sharp-nosed terriers--careering about him in a joyous band. He entered upon minute and technical details of every archaeological discovery of the past decade; he recounted his personal opinion of each; he even unbent to the extent of relating a dry anecdote or two during that delightful walk in the mellow warmth of the afternoon. It was only when the long curve of the strand had at last been traversed and the rocks of Orristown left far behind, that discoveries, opinions, and stories alike faded from his mind in the nearer interest of the Carrigmore ruins.

Even to the pleasure-seeker there is something symbolic and imposing in the tall, grey, symmetrical tower that tops the hill above Carrigmore and faces the great sweep of the Atlantic Ocean; something infinitely ancient and impressive in the crumbling ruins of the church from whose walls the rudely carved figures look down to-day as they looked down in primitive Christian times, when Carrigmore was a centre of learning, and its tower a beacon to the world of Faith. To Milbanke--a student of such things--they were a revelation.

He scarcely spoke as he climbed the steep hill and entered the gra.s.s-grown churchyard; and once within the precincts of the ruin all considerations save the consideration of the moment faded from his thoughts. With the mild enthusiasm that his hobby always awoke in him, he set about a minute examination of the place, hurriedly unstrapping the satchel in which he carried his antiquarian's paraphernalia.

During the first half-hour Clodagh sat dutifully on one of the graves, alternately plaiting gra.s.ses and admonishing or petting her dogs; then her long-tried patience gave out. With a sudden imperative need of action she rose, shook the gra.s.ses from her skirt, and, picking her way between the half-buried headstones, reached Milbanke's side.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said frankly, "would you mind very much if I went away and came back for you in an hour? You see, the ruins aren't quite so new to me as they are to you--people say they've been here since the fourth century."

She laughed, and called to the dogs.

But Milbanke scarcely heard the laugh. There was a flush of delight on his thin cheeks as he peered through his magnifying-gla.s.s into one of the carved stones. He waited a moment before replying; then he answered with bent head.

"Certainly, Miss Clodagh," he said abstractedly--"certainly! But make it two hours, I beg of you, instead of one."

And with another amused laugh Clodagh took advantage of her dismissal.

Milbanke's absorption was so unfeigned that when Clodagh came running back nearly three hours later, full of remorse for her long desertion, he greeted her with something amounting to regret.

Twice she had to remind him that the afternoon was all but spent and the long walk to Orristown still to be reckoned with, before he could desist from the fascinating task of completing the notes he had made.

At last, with a little sigh of amiable regret, he shut up his book, returned the magnifying-gla.s.s to his satchel, and slowly followed her out of the churchyard.

They had covered half a mile of the smooth strand, across which the first long shadows of evening had begun to fall, before the glamour of the past centuries had faded from his consideration, permitting the more material present to obtrude itself.

Then at last, with a little start of compunction, he realised how silent and uninteresting a companion he must seem to the girl walking so staidly beside him; and with something of guilt in the movement, he withdrew his eyes from the long, wet line of sand where the incoming tide was stealthily encroaching.

"Miss Clodagh," he said abruptly, "what are you thinking of?"

With frank spontaneity, she turned and met his gaze.

"I was wondering," she said candidly, "when you'd forget the Round Tower and remember about father."

He started, roused to a fresh sense of guilt.

"You--you mustn't think----" he began stammeringly.

But Clodagh laughed.

"Oh, don't bother about it!" she said easily. "I wasn't really thinking."

For a while he remained silent, watching the noisy dogs as they ineffectually chased the seagulls that wheeled above the unruffled waves; then, at last, urged by his awakened conscience, he half paused and looked again at the girl's bright face.

"Miss Clodagh," he began, "I feel very guilty--I _am_ very guilty."

Clodagh glanced back at him.

"How?" she said simply.

"Because last night I unconsciously did what you disapprove of. I played with your father for high stakes, and I am ashamed to say that I won a large sum of money."

For an instant the brightness left her glance; she looked at him with the serious eyes of the night before.

"Much?" she asked impulsively.

"Twenty pounds." Milbanke felt himself colour. Then he rallied his courage. "But that isn't all," he added quickly. "I have something worse to confess. When I came down to breakfast this morning I found a cheque lying on my plate. I felt intensely remorseful, as you can imagine; and determined to make reparation. After breakfast I broached the subject to Denis; I begged him to allow me to cancel our play by tearing up the cheque. He was furiously angry; and I, instead of showing the courage of my opinion, was actually weak enough to succ.u.mb.

Now, what punishment do you think I deserve?" He paused, looking at her anxiously.

For a while she looked steadily ahead, absorbed in her own thoughts; then slowly she looked back at him with interested, incredulous eyes.

"Don't English people pay when they lose?" she asked after a long pause.

Again he coloured.

"Why, yes," he said hurriedly. "Yes, of course, only----"

"Only what?"

"Nothing--nothing. It was only that I thought you wanted----"

"I wanted you not to encourage him. I never wanted you to think that he isn't a gentleman."

She made the statement with perfect naturalness, as though the subject was one of common, everyday discussion. According to her code of honour, she was justified in putting every possible bar to her father's weakness; but where the bar had proved useless, where the weakness had conquered and the deed she disapproved of had been accomplished, then the matter, to her thinking, had pa.s.sed out of her hands. Her judgment ceased to be individual and became the judgment of her race.

As she looked at Milbanke's perplexed, concerned face, her expression changed, and she smiled. The smile was gracious and rea.s.suring, but below the graciousness lay a tinge of tolerant indulgence.