Viola! And where is she now? Sure, if she's in this place, I misdoubt it's the one I took it for, after all!'
'She is over among the ruins, and she seems to have fainted. I found her all buried in grass. She mustn't be left alone another instant. Have you any whisky or brandy about you?'
'I have not-bad luck to me!'
Disappointed, but still hopeful, Drayton led the way, eagerly followed by his friend. The sun had sunk till it glowed like the half of a great, round, red lantern above the horizon's rim. Drayton was wondering what they should do if they failed to revive Viola before night came on; but this anxiety was wasted.
As they crossed the grass-grown court a little figure in blue dashed suddenly from behind a shattered column and flung itself bodily into the arms of Trenmore.
'Terry-oh, Terry, my dear!'
'Little Viola! There, there now. Is it crying you are? And for what?'
'Just for joy, Terry, dear. Don't mind me. There, I'll not cry any more. I waked up-all alone-in the shadow. And Terry, darling, I'd been dreaming that we both were dead!'
CHAPTER 5: THE WEAVER OF THE YEARS
WHEN the marvelous oversteps the bounds of known possibility there are three ways of meeting it. Trenmore and his sister, after a grave discussion of certain contingencies connected with the Catholic religion and a dismissal of them on grounds too utterly Celtic and dogmatic for Drayton to follow, took the first way. From that time on they faced every wonder as a fact by itself, to be accepted as such and let go at that.
Drayton, though all his life he had unconsciously so viewed such accustomed marvels as electricity or the phenomenon of his own life, could not here follow his Irish friends. He compromised on the second way, and accepted with a mental reservation, as 'I see you now, but I am not at all sure that you are there or that I really believe in you!'
Fortunately there was not one of the three so lacking in mental elasticity as to discover the third way, which is madness.
'And what we should be thinking of,' declared Viola presently, 'is not how did we come here, but how are we to find our way home?'
This was a truism too obvious for dispute. And yet, to Drayton at least, it seemed that no amount of thinking or action either was likely to be of great service. They were without food or water. Without weapons or compass. Without the faintest glimmering of knowledge as to their actual geographic position upon the earth.
Drayton strained his eyes toward the hills, already purple in the sun's last rays. What hope was there among those desolate heights, more than was offered by the empty flatness of the plain?
How many miles could be traversed by this frail-looking sister of Trenmore's before those dainty, high-heeled pumps of hers were worn to rags? Before she dropped exhausted? How many more miles could he and Trenmore carry her if they found neither food nor water?
'We'll find food as we go,' said Terence as if interpreting and answering the thought. 'I never did see a green country like this and no sort of food in it. Viola, 'tis a plucky lass you've always been. I've often promised that some day you'd go wandering with me. Let's be starting. And, Bobby, lad, don't look so down-hearted. There's a way out of everything, and aren't we just the three ones to find it, wherever we are?'
Drayton realized that his gloomy countenance must be anything but encouraging to Viola. Determined that henceforth he would be a model adventurer at any cost, he smiled.
'I wasn't really worrying, old man. I was merely thinking-'
But what innocent fabrication he would have devised to account for his despondency they never discovered. His sentence ended abruptly, and the forced smile vanished.
The attention of all three had been caught by a strange, deep, moaning sound. Reaching for his sister, Trenmore drew her close to his side. They all stood very still and listened.
The moaning, which began at first faintly and in a low key, seemed to emanate from a source immediately beneath their feet. Swiftly, however, this source widened and spread outward, extending itself beneath the empty plain and under the hills toward the mountain peaks. As it spread the note rose in key and in volume until it was more than anything else like the sound which might be thrown out by an immense top, whirling with planetary speed.
The intense vibration became agonizing. The listeners clapped their hands over their ears in a vain effort to shut it out. Drayton, for his part, felt that in one more instant either his eardrums or his brain must give way.
Even as he thought it, however, the last segment of the sun's red periphery sank out of sight beneath the horizon. The terrible humming died away, melting into the universal silence in which it had found birth. With scarcely an intervening moment of twilight night swept down.
At first it seemed absolute as blindness, or the end of all created things. Then, as his pupils expanded, Drayton began dimly to perceive his companions, while, on looking upward, he beheld a sky powdered thick with clear, brilliant stars.
He drew a long breath, and heard it echoed by the others.
'They have a strange nightfall in this land,' muttered Trenmore, 'and they do make a great noise over it!'
'Yes,' replied Drayton, the observant, 'but those stars look familiar enough.'
'Right as usual, Bobby. It's the same old stars they're using. Look, Viola! There's the old bear and her cub!'
'And the Milky Way,' said Viola.
Somehow, in spite of all that had occurred, the sight of those familiar stars and constellations brought a feeling of almost-security, of at-homeness and actuality.
'Your talk of Purgatory,' laughed Drayton, 'and that abominable noise just now sent a few unearthly shivers down my back. Those stars tell a different story. We are surely somewhere on earth. Different longitude, perhaps, but in our own latitude, or nearly, even though night did shut down with such tropical suddenness. If we were in the tropics we should see a sky different from this-'
His astronomical observations were cut short by a low cry from Viola. Dimly he glimpsed her arm, stiffly outstretched and pointing.
'And if this is our own earth,' she cried, 'is that our own moon? And if it is, what is the moon doing over there? Will you tell me that?'
There was pertinence in her question. From the exact point where the sun had descended five minutes earlier the silver rim of a great white moon was rising. Already the wide plain before it was invaded and dimly illuminated by the flood of its elfin radiance. It was as if, when the sun went down, the moon had been waiting there, and had now slipped past to take his place in the sky.
'Surely a very singular moonrise-in the west!' murmured the ex-lawyer. Inwardly he was more shocked by this apparent misplacement of the lunar orb than by anything which had yet occurred. If the stars had reassured him surely the moon had been prompt to undo their work.
'Is that thing a rock or an animal?'
Again it was Viola who spoke, and again her companions stared where the girl was pointing. Fifteen feet to the right of them was a large, dark object. It lay half in the black shadow of the ruined arch, half in the steadily increasing moonlight.
'That is only a part of the old gateway,' began Drayton in a quiet, reassuring tone.
Even as he spoke, however, the dark thing seemed to rear itself slightly from the ground.
Trenmore made a quick movement; but Viola caught his arm.
'Don't go! Don't go near it, Terry! It may be some savage wild beast that's been hiding there!'
'And d'ye think I fear it then?' growled Trenmore.
'Don't be a fool, Trenmore!' Drayton spoke with a brusqueness born of mingled horror and amazement. That uncanny, half-glimpsed thing now appeared to be stretching itself upward, higher and higher in the partial shadow where it stood. 'Think of your sister,' he cried, 'and help me get her away from this unspeakable place before it's too late. Look-look there at that wall!'
