The ten-year-old Lizette stood by the rail, between her sister and brother, looking upon it all for the first time, her pinched face losing its haunted expression, and the colour coming into her cheeks. The breeze was soft, from the south-west, the sky was full of little fleecy clouds, and the hills were green under the sun.
'There's Andriff Castle, where Grannie was born,' said Hal, pointing to the far distance. 'We have cousins there, I expect Molly will ask them over.
They must be grown up by now, and you see that church, standing in shadow, down by the water's edge- that's Ardmore, where we used to go every Sunday. Mamma is buried there.'
How tiny it looked. How windswept and alone.
Had she lain there all these ten years, with no one belonging to her? Did anyone put flowers on her grave? Hal felt his throat tighten. The past seemed so remote, so long ago.
There was Hungry Hill, lifting his old granite head to the sky, and the mine-workings at the base, the chimney-stacks, the sheds, the tracks, and as the steamer rounded the point the humped back of Doon Island lay before them, the long line of garrison buildings, and the village of Doonhaven, nestling in the shadow of the hills.
'Look there, at the head of the creek across the harbour-that's Clonmere,' said Hal.
They stared in silence, at the home they had deserted as little children. The sun shone in the windows and upon the grey walls. The new wing had mellowed with the years and had become part of it all, but it was still empty, untouched since the builders had left it in 1871. A flag was flying from the old tower. Boats were anchored in the creek.
The tears were running down Kitty's cheeks.
'I know it's idiotic, but I can't help it,' she said, smiling at Hal. 'I thought somehow it would be different, but it's not. It's just the same.'
'There's a fellow in one of the boats,' said Hal. 'I wonder if it's a Sullivan or a Baird? He's probably been after killigs.'
'The herons still live in the trees below the park,' said Kitty. 'Look, Lizette, by the other creek, you can see their big, untidy nests…
There's the harbour wall. It's low tide, the harbour is dry. We shall have to anchor outside and pull ashore.'
'I see Molly and Robert on the quay,' said Lizette, 'and other people with them. The man is dressed as a clergyman. He has a long grey beard.'
'It's Uncle Tom,' shouted Hal. 'He used to be father's best friend. And look, there's Aunt Harriet; she's waving a handkerchief.'
'That must be Jinny with them,' said Kitty. 'Good heavens, she was six when we left. And now I suppose she's sixteen.'
The paddle-steamer thrashed the water and went astern.
The anchor plunged from the bows. And across the dancing water the little boats pulled. Everyone was smiling, and kissing, and shaking hands. Uncle Tom had one hand on Hal's shoulder and the other on Kitty's.
Aunt Harriet had picked Lizette up in her arms and was holding her tight. Jinny looked from one to the other with warm brown eyes.
'God bless you all,' said Uncle Tom, in his deep voice. 'We are so very glad to welcome you home, so thankful and so happy.'
The familiar cobbled stones, the shingle beach, the boats drawn up above the tide. Old Murphy's shop, the chandler's at the corner, the public-house across the square. It was market-day, and the stalls were being put away. A cowman was driving the cattle up the hill. Men stood about the square with straws in their mouths, staring and doing nothing, as they had always done. A woman was scolding a neighbour from her doorway, and a little slatternly child ran out with his finger in his mouth. The priest stood on the step of Murphy's shop, with a cabbage under his arm. Some half-dozen miners, in their working clothes, came singing down the road from Hungry Hill.
'Why did we ever leave?' said Hal. 'Why did father make us go away?' Uncle Tom smiled, and took his arm.
'Never mind about that,' he said. 'You're home once more.' How good it was to see Uncle Tom again, and kiss Aunt Harriet's plump cheek; smell the familiar Rectory smell, of leather chairs, and ferns, and dogs; sit down to an enormous tea, and a fruit cake of Aunt Harriet's own baking.
And memories, happy ones, tumbling over each other.
'Do you still churn the butter, Aunt Harriet, and skim the cream off with a scallop shell?'
'Does Uncle Tom still ride out to Ardmore on Sundays?'
'Do you remember how we played charades after tea, and mamma pretended she could not guess the word, and knew all the time?'
'Have you forgotten the picnic on Kileen moors, and Kitty falling into the bog?'
'And the expedition to the Bule Rock?'
'And the party the garrison gave on Doon Island?' The years in London were as though they had never been. Eton and Oxford existed no longer. Adeline and Lancaster Gate were an evil dream.
Molly had remembered his wish for the tower room, and Hal looked around it that first evening home, his heart too full to speak. The Boles had never used the room, and a damp, unlived-in smell still clung about the walls. The pictures were faded, and some of them green with mould. On the top of an old cupboard was a case of birds' eggs, thick with dust. He had forgotten whom they belonged to. Was it his grandfather, who had won the silver cup for greyhounds? He took them down and cleared away the dust. There were bits and pieces of an old fishing-rod too. Too broken to be of any use.
He was glad the Boles had done nothing with this room. It was intimate, personal, belonging only to the family. Home was the same, unchanged, but a little shabbier, a little more worn. Some of the carpets were threadbare. The curtains in the dining-room were falling to bits. The servants that Molly had brought with her from Robert's home said that the kitchen range was almost useless, and the pump in the stable-yard was broken.
'But what does it matter?' said Molly at dinner. 'We're home again, and if the turkey has to be roasted in front of the dining-room fire on Christmas Day it will taste all the better for it.'
Once more the lapping of water in the creek.
Once more the full moon over Hungry Hill.
There was so much to see, so much to do, and all in a little space of time. It was queer to see none of the old horses in the stables, and the coach-house was empty because the carriage had been sent away to London many years before. Old Tim was dead. The groom that Robert had brought with him lived in Tim's old quarters over the stables. Some of the windows were broken, there was grass growing between the cobbles.
'And it used to be kept so beautifully,' sighed Molly to her husband. 'I remember the boy washing down the yard every morning, before the horses were groomed, and then Tim bringing the carriage round to the front door, if mamma wanted to go down into Doon-haven. Even if the Boles did not bother about the upkeep, you would think the agent would have seen everything was in order.'
'Always the same story when the owner goes away,' said Robert. 'You can't really blame the agent, or anyone. They feel no interest is taken. What's the use, they think, in looking after a place when the man it belongs to doesn't come near it for ten years?
Never mind, Molly, we'll try to get it into-some sort of shape while we are here.'
Hal and his sister went up to visit the cottages at Oakmount, and they came away silent and disheartened, because after the first flood of conversation they felt tongue-tied and out of place.
'Ah, you're the image of your mother,' said Tim's widow to Kitty. 'The same sweet eyes, God rest her soul.' She ran on in this way for several minutes, making them feel welcomed and remembered, but then she started to bewail the times, the hardness of living, her only son and daughter both gone to America, her eyes fixed all the while on Hal.
He gave her all the loose change in his pocket, which she seized greedily, and when they had said goodbye Hal looked over his shoulder and saw her muttering to herself, her face wrinkled, different, and he knew that she had forgotten them already, his mother's memory was a trick to please them; all that mattered to Tim's widow was the loose change in her hands.
They went down to the Rectory, where Uncle Tom and Aunt Harriet soon restored them to cheerfulness.
