know that?'
'I'm not likely to forget it, am I?' she said, pointing to the children. 'Maybe it's time I wore a cap in the house, and gave up running about the grounds the way I do. They say that the tenth year of married life is the most difficult.'
'Do they now? And in what way would it be difficult?'
'Why, the husband becomes weary of seeing the same face every night on his pillow, and he looks around him to see if he might do better.'
'How do you know I have not done so already, and cannot find one?'
'Because you are too lazy, dearest one, andwiththe side-whiskers on your face there's not a woman would look at you.'
'I am not so lazy as you suppose. In fact, I propose taking a step one day this week that will astonish you when you hear of it.'
'And what would that be?'
'I'll not tell you. You shall plague me as you will, but I shall keep my secret.'
The truth was that John was determined after all to go down to the village to see Sam Donovan, and make an attempt to bury the hatchet of nearly two hundred years. It mattered little for himself, but for his children's sake he felt that it must be done. Why should Johnnie, and Henry, and Edward, and Herbert, and Fanny, be landed with ridiculous squabbles in the years to come? So a week after the poisoning of the greyhounds John set off one afternoon on foot for Doonhaven, having reluctantly refused to accompany Fanny-Rosa and the children on a picnic.
'There'll be picnics a-plenty in the days to come,' he told them. 'For once in my life I am going to do a piece of work.'
'Don't let it kill you,' laughed Fanny-Rosa.
'It certainly shan't do that,' said her husband.
It was pleasant walking in the October sunshine.
The path through the woods was crisp with fallen leaves, and the old herons rose from their nests in the trees and flapped away at his approach. The tide was making in the creek. Some of the men were burning leaves up in the park. The good bitter wood smell came floating down to him on the wind. Soon the cock would be in, and he would persuade his father to take a day off from the mines with his gun. They might get a few snipe up in the bog at Kileen, and have another day with the hares on Doon Island. He would suggest to Fanny-Rosa that they stayed on at Clonmere until Christmas. Five small children seemed like ten at Lletharrog. If they went on as they were doing at present he would have to give the farm-house back to his father and take something larger. It was close and sultry down in Doonhaven, more like summer than autumn in the market-square, and the place seemed deserted, as it always did in the afternoon.
He went down to the quay, and along to Sam Donovan's shop. It was closed, and the shutter was up at the window. He knocked on the door, and presently it was opened by Sam's wife, a thin, tired-looking woman, who was wiping her hands on a dirty apron. A girl of ten or eleven, with a mop of fair hair and light blue eyes like all the Donovans, peered over her mother's shoulder.
'Is Sam at home?' asked John, aware that his voice sounded a shade too hearty to be natural.
'He is not,' said the woman, gazing at him suspiciously.
'Oh, I am sorry for that,' said John. 'I came down to speak to him most particularly.'
The woman made no reply, and after waiting a moment, John turned away. Perhaps he had bungled the business after all. He heard the child whisper to her mother, and then she ran out on to the quay.
'My father is staying with my uncle Denny, on account of the sickness,' she said. 'If you want to speak to him you will find him there. Mother and I have not seen him these two weeks.'
John thanked the child, and went back along the quay. Having come down to Doonhaven for the purpose, it was something of an anti-climax to find Sam was not at home, and his good effort made for nothing. The church clock struck four. It was too late to join the others for their picnic. No, he had set himself to the task, and the task might as well be done. He would walk over to Denny Donovan's, and see both brothers at the same time. There was nothing like doing the business thoroughly, now he had made up his mind to it. It was an ideal day for a walk too, the air up on the road to Denmare would be grand after the village.
Once again he left Doonhaven behind him, and the gate-house, and the park, and struck up westward on the road across the moors. His father had won his way, and the road had been widened in places, and now ran straight through to the Denmare river, but John did not notice that much good had been done by it, only that more people came down from the country to Doonhaven on market days and Saints' days. Denny Donovan's public-house-it was hardly more than a shack-was some three miles along the road, a dirty, tumbled-down place, with a few bedraggled hens scratching in the yard behind. Denny's cart was put up in the shed beside the house, and his pony was turned loose on the moor beside the road.
'At any rate,' thought John, 'he is at home, if Sam is not.'
He saw the figure of a woman looking down at him from behind a blind in the upstairs bedroom, and believed that he recognised Mary Kelly, the widow of the unfortunate man who had been shot. His courage began to fail him. Perhaps it was nothing but quixotic foolishness after all that had led him here.
The door of the public entrance was shut, with a bar across it, and John went round the yard to the back. It was odd of Denny Donovan to close his door against possible customers. More likely than not he had run out of liquor, and had been unable to go into Mundy to replenish his store.
John knocked on the door, and, gaining no response, boldly lifted the latch and walked in. There was nobody below, but he could hear sounds of movement overhead in the bedroom. The public bar had a grey, neglected air about it. There was dust everywhere, and on the bar itself two or three unwashed glasses that looked as if they had stood there for days. He thumped on the bar with his fist, and after a moment or two he heard footsteps coming down the rickety stairs, and Sam Donovan stood before him. He was wearing a night-shirt stuffed into a pair of breeches, and was unshaven. He stood staring at his visitor, and began scratching his ear and half smiling in the old fawning way that was his mannerism.
'Good-day, Sam,' said John, holding out his hand, which the other took, after a moment's hesitation.
'I've thought for some time I should like a talk with you, and so I went down to your shop this afternoon, but your wife sent me on here. I gathered you had not been well.'
'Ah, it's nothing much that ails me, Mr.
Brodrick, it's Denny that has had the sickness, and Mary and I came out here to nurse him, They say he caught it from drinking bad water up at Mundy, when we were witnessing there at the Assizes.'
'I'm sorry for that.'
'Would you come up and speak to him? Sure, he's in bed, but that's no matter, and he can speak now the fever has left him.'
John followed Sam Donovan upstairs, and was shown into a small, stuffy bedroom, the same at which Mary Kelly had been standing when he arrived. The windows were tightly closed, and the air was appalling.
Sam's brother Denny was lying in bed, and his widowed sister was sitting beside him. She had a black lace cap on her head, which John could swear she was not wearing when he saw her at the window. Denny Donovan looked thin and wretched. Whatever was the truth of the story about the bad water of Mundy, at least he had drunk something that had not agreed with him.
'You're in a poor way, I hear, Denny,' said John.
'I'm easier now than I was, Mr.
John,' said the man, watching him over the bed-clothes, 'but the fever had me racked for days and it's a surprise to me that I am here at all, after what I have suffered. And poor Mary here, having just put her dear husband in the grave, thinks nothing of the infection, nor Sam either, but both of them come out here to tend me. There is affection for you, between brother and brother.'
'Yes, indeed,' said John, remembering how some few years ago he had seen Sam belabouring Denny on New Year's Day, calling him a rogue and a devil, both brothers having celebrated too freely the passing of the year. 'And since we are on the subject of affection, I must tell you what I have come to see you about. First of all, I am sorry for that wretched accident where your husband was killed, Mrs. Kelly, and I want you to believe it.'
'He was a fine man,' said the widow. 'You would not see another the same, not this side of Paradise.'
'It was a sad business,' said Sam. 'Here's poor Mary likely to starve, and she with no sons to support her.
