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THE SECOND DINNER WITH THE EARL.
He went as before, conducted by the butler, and formally announced.
To his surprise, with the earl was lady Arctura. His lordship made
him give her his arm, and followed.
This was to Donal a very different dinner from that of the evening
before. Whether the presence of his niece made the earl rouse
himself to be agreeable, or he had grown better since the morning
and his spirits had risen, certainly he was not like the same man.
He talked in a rather forced-playful way, but told two or three good
stories; described with vivacity some of the adventures of his
youth; spoke of several great men he had met; and in short was all
that could be desired in a host. Donal took no wine during dinner,
the earl as before took very little, and lady Arctura none. She
listened respectfully to her uncle's talk, and was attentive when
Donal spoke; he thought she looked even sympathetic two or three
times; and once he caught the expression as of anxiety he had seen
on her face that same day twice before. It was strange, too, he
thought, that, not seeing her sometimes for a week together, he
should thus meet her three times in one day. When the last of the
dinner was removed and the wine placed on the table, Donal thought
his lordship looked as if he expected his niece to go; but she kept
her place. He asked her which wine she would have, but she declined
any. He filled his glass, and pushed the decanter to Donal. He too
filled his glass, and drank slowly.
The talk revived. But Donal could not help fancying that the eyes of
the lady now and then sought his with a sort of question in
them--almost as if she feared something was going to happen to him.
He attributed this to her having heard that he took too much wine
the night before. The situation was unpleasant. He must, however,
brave it out! When he refused a second glass, which the earl by no
means pressed, he thought he saw her look relieved; but more than
once thereafter he saw, or fancied he saw her glance at him with
that expression of slight anxiety.
In its course the talk fell upon sheep, and Donal was relating some
of his experiences with them and their dogs, greatly interested in
the subject; when all at once, just as before, something seemed to
burst in his head, and immediately, although he knew he was sitting
at table with the earl and lady Arctura, he was uncertain whether he
was not at the same time upon the side of a lonely hill, closed in a
magic night of high summer, his woolly and hairy friends lying all
about him, and a light glimmering faintly on the heather a little
way off, which he knew for the flame that marks for a moment the
footstep of an angel, when he touches ever so lightly the solid
earth. He seemed to be reading the thoughts of his sheep around him,
yet all the time went on talking, and knew he was talking, with the
earl and the lady.
After a while, everything was changed. He was no longer either with
his sheep or his company. He was alone, and walking swiftly through
and beyond the park, in a fierce wind from the north-east, battling
with it, and ruling it like a fiery horse. By and by came a hoarse,
terrible music, which he knew for the thunderous beat of the waves
on the low shore, yet imagined issuing from an indescribable
instrument, gigantic and grotesque. He felt it first--through his
feet, as one feels without hearing the tones of an organ for which
the building is too small to allow scope to their vibration: the
waves made the ground beat against the soles of his feet as he
walked; but soon he heard it like the infinitely prolonged roaring
of a sky-built organ. It was drawing him to the sea, whether in the
body or out of the body he knew not: he was but conscious of forms
of existence: whether those forms had relation to things outside
him, or whether they belonged only to the world within him, he was
unaware. The roaring of the great water-organ grew louder and
louder. He knew every step of the way to the shore--across the
fields and over fences and stiles. He turned this way and that, to
avoid here a ditch, there a deep sandy patch. And still the music
grew louder and louder--and at length came in his face the driving
spray: it was the flying touch of the wings on which the tones went
hurrying past into the depths of awful distance! His feet were now
wading through the bent-tufted sand, with the hard, bare,
wave-beaten sand in front of him. Through the dark he could see the
white fierceness of the hurrying waves as they rushed to the shore,
then leaning, toppling, curling, self-undermined, hurled forth at
once all the sound that was in them in a falling roar of defeat.
Every wave was a complex chord, with winnowed tones feathering it
round. He paced up and down the sand--it seemed for ages. Why he
paced there he did not know--why always he turned and went back
instead of going on.
Suddenly he thought he saw something dark in the hollow of a wave
that swept to its fall. The moon came out as it broke, and the
something was rolled in the surf up the shore. Donal stood watching
it. Why should he move? What was it to him? The next wave would
reclaim it for the ocean! It looked like the body of a man, but what
did it matter! Many such were tossed in the hollows of that music!
But something came back to him out of the ancient years: in the ages
gone by men did what they could! There was a word they used then:
they said men ought to do this or that! This body might not be
dead--or dead, some one might like to have it! He rushed into the
water, and caught it--ere the next wave broke, though hours of
cogitation, ratiocination, recollection, seemed to have intervened.
The breaking wave drenched him from head to foot: he clung to his
prize and dragged it out. A moment's bewilderment, and he came to
himself lying on the sand, his arms round a great lump of net, lost
from some fishing boat.
His illusions were gone. He was sitting in a cold wind, wet to the
skin, on the border of a wild sea. A poor, shivering, altogether
ordinary and uncomfortable mortal, he sat on the shore of the German
Ocean, from which he had rescued a tangled mass of net and seaweed!
He dragged it beyond the reach of the waves, and set out for home.
By the time he reached the castle he was quite warm. His door at the
foot of the tower was open, he crept up, and was soon fast asleep.
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