So I sat for quite an hour with my heart half sick with longing, but she never came. Then I thought I heard a step coming up the path at the far side. My heart beat strangely. I sat silent, and did not pretend to hear. She was walking more slowly than usual, and with a firmer tread. She was coming. I heard the steps on the plateau, and a voice came:
“Och! an’ isn’t it a purty view, yer ‘an’r?” I leaped to my feet with a feeling that was positively murderous. The revulsion was too great, and I broke into a burst of semi-hysterical laughter. There stood Andy, with ragged red head and sun-scorched face, in his garb of eternal patches, bleached and discolored by sun and rain into a veritable coat of many colours, gazing at the view with a rapt expression, and yet with one eye half closed in a fixed but unmistakable wink, as though taking the whole majesty of nature into his confidence.
When he heard my burst of laughter he turned to me quizzically:
“Musha! but it’s the merry gentleman yer ‘an’r is this day. Shure, the view here is the laughablest thing I ever see!” and he affected to laugh, but in such a soulless, unspontaneous way that it became a real burlesque. I waited for him to go on. I was naturally very vexed, but I was afraid to say anything lest I might cause him to interfere in this affair — the last thing on earth that I wished for.
He did go on — no one ever found Andy abashed or ill at ease:
“Begor! but yer ‘an’r lepped like a deer when ye heerd me shpake. Did ye think I was goin’ to shoot ye? Faix, an’ I thought that ye wor about to jump from aff iv the mountain into the say, like a shtag.”
“Why, what do you know about stags, Andy? There are none in this part of the country, are there?” I thought I would drag a new subject across his path. The ruse of the red herring drawn across the scent succeeded.
“Phwhat do I know iv shtags? Faix, I know this, that there does be plinty in me lard’s demesne beyant at Wistport. Shure, wan iv thim got out last autumn an’ nigh ruined me garden. He kem in at night an’ ate up all me cabbages an’ all the vigitables I’d got. I frightened him away a lot iv times, but he kem back all the same. At last I could shtand him no longer, and I wint meself an’ complained to the lard. He tould me he was very sorry fur the damage he done, ‘an’,’ sez he, ‘Andy, I think he’s a bankrup’,’ sez he, ‘an’ we must take his body.’ ‘How is that, me lard?’ sez I. Sez he, ‘I give him to ye, Andy. Do what ye like wid him.’ An’ wid that I wint home an’ I med a thrap iv a clothes-line wid a loop in it, an’ I put it betune two threes; and, shure enough in the night I got him.”
“And what did you do with him, Andy?” said I.
“Faith, surr, I shkinned him and ate him.” He said this just in the same tone in which he would speak of the most ordinary occurrence, leaving the impression on one’s mind that the skinning and eating were matters done at the moment and quite off-hand.
I fondly hoped that Andy’s mind was now in quite another state from his usual mental condition; but I hardly knew the man yet. He had the true humorist’s persistence, and before I was ready with another intellectual herring he was off on the original track.
“I thrust I didn’t dishturb yer ‘an’r. I know some gintlemin likes to luk at views and say nothin’. I’m tould that a young gintleman like yer ‘an’r might be up on top iva mountain like this, an’ he’d luk at the view so hard day afther day that he wouldn’t even shpake to a purty girrul — if there was wan forninst him all the time!”
“Then they lied to you, Andy.” I said this quite decisively.
“Faix, yer ‘an’r, an’ it’s glad l am to hear that same, for I wouldn’t like to think that a young gintleman was afraid of a girrul, however purty she might be.”
“But, tell me, Andy,” I said, “what idiot could have started such an idea? And even if it was told to you, how could you be such a fool as to believe it?”
“Me belave it! Surr, I didn’t belave a wurrd iv it — not until I met yer ‘an’r.”
His face was quite grave, and I was not sorry to find him in a sober mood, for I wanted to have a serious chat with him. It struck me that he, having relatives at Knocknacar, might be able to give me some information about my unknown.
“Until you met me, Andy! Surely I never gave you any ground for holding such a ridiculous idea.”
“Begor, yer ‘an’r, but ye did. But p’r’aps I had betther not say anymore — yer ‘an’r mightn’t like it.”
This both surprised and nettled me, and I was determined now to have it out, so I said, “You quite surprise me, Andy. What have I ever done? Do not be afraid; out with it,” for he kept looking at me in a timorous kind of way.
“Well, then, yer ‘an’r, about poor Miss Norah.”
This was a surprise, but I wanted to know more.
“Well, Andy, what about her?”
“Shure, an’ didn’t you refuse to shpake iv her intirely an’ sot on me fur only mintionin’ her — an’ she wan iv the purtiest girruls in the place?”
“My dear Andy,” said I, “I thought I had explained to you last night all about that. I don’t suppose you quite understand; but it might do a girl in her position harm to be spoken about with a — a man like me.”
“Wid a man like you — an’ for why? Isn’t she as good a girrul as iver broke bread?”
“Oh, it’s not that, Andy; people might think harm”
“Think harrum! Phwhat harrum, an’ who’d think it?”
“Oh, you don’t understand; a man in your position can hardly know.”
“But, yer ‘an’r, I don’t git comprehindin’. What harrum could there be, an’ who’d think it? The people here is all somethin’ iv me own position — workin’ people — an’ whin they knows a girrul is a good, dacent girrul, why should they think harrum because a nice young gintleman goes out iv his way to shpake to her? Doesn’t he shpake to the quality like himself, an’ no wan thinks any harrum ivayther iv them?”
Andy’s simple, honest argument made me feel ashamed of the finer sophistries belonging to the more artificial existence of those of my own station.
“Sure, yer ‘an’r, there isn’t a bhoy in Connaught that wouldn’t like to be shpoke of wid Miss Norah. She’s that good, that even the nuns in Galway, where she was at school, loves her and thrates her like wan iv themselves, for all she’s a Protestan’.”
“My dear Andy,” said I, “don’t you think you’re a little hard on me? You’re putting me in the dock, and trying me for a series of offences that I never even thought of committing with regard to her or anyone else. Miss Norah may be an angel in petticoats, and I’m quite prepared to take it for granted that she is so; your word on the subject is quite enough for me. But just please to remember that I never set eyes on her in my life. The only time I was ever in her presence was when you were by yourself, and it was so dark that I could not see her, to help her when she fainted. Why, in the name of common-sense, you should keep holding her up to me, I do not understand.”
“But yer ‘an’r said that it might do her harrum even to mintion her wid you.”
“Oh, well, Andy, I give it up — it’s no use trying to explain. Either you won’t understand, or I am unable to express myself properly.”
“Surr, there can be only one harrum to a girrul from a gintleman” — he laid his hand on my arm, and said this impressively;