The two pairs of grey eyes turned, not so much in bewilderment or dread as in knowledge, as if they did not need to be told anything. "Paddy?" asked Fee in a voice not like her own. "Yes. And Stu."
Neither of her sons could look at her.
"Stu? Stu! What do you mean, Stu? Oh, God, what is it, what's happened? Not both of them-no!"
"Daddy got caught in the fire; he's dead. Stu must have disturbed a boar, and it charged him. He shot it, but it fell on him as it was dying and smothered him. He's dead too, Mum."
Meggie screamed and struggled, trying to break free of Jack's hands, but Fee stood between Bob's grimy,bloody ones as if turned to stone, her eyes as glassy as a gazing-ball. "It is too much," she said at last, and looked up at Bob with the rain running down her face and her hair in straggling wisps around her neck like golden runnels. "Let me go to them, Bob. I am the wife of one and the mother of one. You can't keep me away-you have no right to keep me away. Let me go to them."
Meggie had quietened, and stood within Jack's arms with her head on his shoulder. As Fee began to walk across the ruins with Bob's arm around her waist, Meggie looked after them, but she made no move to follow. Hughie appeared out of the dimming rain; Jack nodded toward his mother and Bob. "Go after them, Hughie, stay with them. Meggie and I are going back to Drogheda, to bring the dray." He let Meggie go, and helped her onto the chestnut mare. "Come on, Meggie; it's nearly dark. We can't leave them out all night in this, and they won't go until we get back."
It was impossible to put the dray or anything else wheeled upon the mud; in the end Jack and old Tom chained a sheet of corrugated iron behind two draft horses, Tom leading the team on a stock horse while Jack rode ahead with the biggest lamp Drogheda possessed.
Meggie stayed at the homestead and sat in front of the drawing room fire while Mrs. Smith tried to persuade her to eat, tears running down her face to see the girl's still, silent shock, the way she did not weep. At the sound of the front door knocker she turned and went to answer it, wondering who on earth had managed to get through the mud, and as always astonished at the speed with which news traveled the lonely miles between the far-flung homesteads.
Father Ralph was standing on the veranda, wet and muddy, in riding clothes and oilskins.
"May I come in, Mrs. Smith?"
"Oh, Father, Father!" she cried, and threw herself into his astounded arms. "How did you know?"
"Mrs. Cleary telegrammed me, a manager-to-owner courtesy I appreciated very much. I got leave to come from Archbishop di Contini-Verchese. What a mouth- ful! Would you believe I have to say it a hundred times a day? I flew up. The plane bogged as it landed and pitched on its nose, so I knew what the ground was like before I so much as stepped on it. Dear, beautiful Gilly! I left my suitcase with Father Watty at the presbytery and cadged a horse from the Imperial publican, who thought I was crazy and bet me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label I'd never get through the mud. Oh, Mrs. Smith, don't cry so! My dear, the world hasn't come to an end because of a fire, no matter how big and nasty it was!" he said, smiling and patting her heaving shoulders. "Here am I doing my best to make light of it, and you're just not doing your best to respond. Don't cry so, please."
"Then you don't know," she sobbed.
"What? Know what? What is it-what's happened?" "Mr. Cleary and Stuart are dead."
His face drained of color; his hands pushed the housekeeper away. "Where's Meggie?" he barked.
"In the drawing room. Mrs. Cleary's still out in the paddock with the bodies. Jack and Tom have gone to bring them in. Oh, Father, sometimes in spite of my faith I can't help thinking God is too cruel! Why did He have to take both of them?"
But all Father Ralph had stayed to hear was where Meggie was; he had gone into the drawing room shedding his oilskins as he went, trailing muddy water behind him.
"Meggie!" he said, coming to her and kneeling at one side of her chair, taking her cold hands in his wet ones firmly.
She slipped from the chair and crawled into his arms, pillowed her head on his dripping shirt and closed her eyes, so happy in spite of her pain and grief that she never wanted the moment to end. He had come, it was a vindication of her power over him, she hadn't failed.
"I'm wet, darling Meggie; you'll get soaked," he whispered, his cheek on her hair.
"It doesn't matter. You've come."
"Yes, I've come. I wanted to be sure you were safe, I had a feeling I was needed, I had to see for myself. Oh, Meggie, your father and Stu! How did it happen?"
"Daddy was caught in the fire, and Stu found him. He was killed by a boar; it fell on him after he shot it. Jack and Tom have gone out to bring them in."
He said no more, but held her and rocked her as if she were a baby until the heat of the fire partially dried his shirt and hair and he felt some of the stiffness drain from her. Then he put his hand beneath her chin, tilted her head until she looked up at him, and without thinking kissed her. It was a confused impulse not rooted in desire, just something he instinctively offered when he saw what lay in the grey eyes. Something apart, a different kind of sacrament. Her arms slid up under his to meet across his back; he could not stop himself flinching, suppress the exclamation of pain. She drew back a little. "What's the matter?"
"I must have bruised my ribs when the plane came in. We bogged to the fuselage in good old Gilly mud, so it was a pretty rough landing. I wound up balanced on the back of the seat in front of me."
"Here, let me see."
Fingers steady, she unbuttoned the damp shirt and peeled it off his arms, pulled it free of his breeches. Under the surface of the smooth brown skin a purpling ugly patch extended from one side clear across to the other below the rib cage; her breath caught.
"Oh, Ralph! You rode all the way from Gilly with this? How it must have hurt! Do you feel all right? No faintness? You might have ruptured something inside!"