With the velvet springiness of turf under his feet, the sense of urge
and strain, as of something inexorably drawing him, relaxed at last;
the blind hurry slackened. Out of the whirl came quiet and ordered
perception, out of the breathless confusion, peace. And the years
which his journey seemed to have consumed ran together and were as a
single night. Between white cloud-fleets, the Irish sky began to show
blue as Mary’s cloak, and the soft May morning was sweet with dripping
green things,—thorn and gorse and heather. Christopher knew from the
well-remembered “feel” of the air that the west wind was due to resume
its hearty music. Almost out of sight above, a lark sang, and he could
see innumerable swallows diving and skimming. At once, the old rhyme
of _The Seven Sleepers_, forgotten these thirty years, rose to his
lips like a bubble to the surface of a stream;—
“The corncrake and the watersnake,
The cuckoo and the swallow,
The bee, the bat, the butterfly—”
All these tiny sleepers were awake to-day; himself awake, too, and
aware, with some super-awareness, of the last stages of his
oft-promised journey home, achieved at length after the long,
oppressive interval of weariness and restraint. This interval was fast
receding now, and he made no effort to recall it, for he was eager to
slough off all memory of that heavy weakness as well as all shackles
of solicitous and hampering devotion. He’d had his will at last,
however, though how he could not well imagine; and here he was, free
of them all,—comely, stylish wife; modern, masterful daughters. They
could spare themselves the pain of drawing long faces over him; he’d
no mind to give up with his visit home unpaid.
A good, dutiful family, no doubt, God have them in his care; but this
was a time when a man must cut free of all bonds of maturer years and
turn to the land that gave him birth,—and to his mother, long
unvisited, but by no means forgotten. Many a money-order had crossed
the counter at the country post-office, and of late, many a cheque.
But the first years had been bitterly hard, and all the years
breathlessly busy. That land over-seas took you and drove you whether
or no; but its rewards were adequate.
Foot-loose on the old sod now, no longer earthbound but light with a
marvellous buoyancy, the reek of peat in his nostrils, the corncrake’s
homely tune in his ears. His eyes strained forward for familiar
landmarks, carrying always before them the expectant image of a white
cot in a green hollow. Uplifted by an exhilaration that seemed
stranger to any possible fatigue, he pressed on again, this time with
a pleasant sense of anticipation in place of the former gnawing
avidity, keenly alive to the delights of this long-desired green
world, brilliant with sunshine yet fresh from frequent rains, and
rocked with the rising wind.
At last the silver stretches of the Shannon appeared, and a certain
well-known white ribbon of road, winding among farms. As he went, the
trees began to take on the look of friendly faces;—tall beeches,
whispering limes, blackthorn bushes, white with blossom. A field of
gorse, ablaze with yellow spikes of bloom, sent out its heavy
bitter-sweet perfume. Grassy hills, lined with grey stone walls,
beckoned him, each with its happy memory.—The brook! where trout hung
under the bank and water-cress wove its green mazes. The sight of its
pebbly bed recalled the chilly prickle of gooseflesh on adventurous
legs. He leaned over the rude railing to watch its spring rush, giving
himself to its cool voice, its freshness on his face. He felt clean
now at last of the dusty breath of cities.—Here, too, were the elder
bushes, all abloom. To think of the “scouting guns” he’d hollowed out
of their pithy stalks, filling them with water by means of a
piston-like wadded stick to discharge on good-natured passersby!
The happy sense of expectancy quickened. He topped a sudden rise, and
there, secure between two steep hillsides, drowsed the object of his
quest; a low, stone cot, whitewashed, with thatched roof and
overhanging eaves. What beds under that cosy roof!—of live-plucked
goose feathers (well he remembered grappling the kicking bird between
his knees!), mounted on heavily “platted” straw, and yielding such
sleep as no bed in the new world could afford. As he looked, the high
wind seemed suddenly stilled, and everything appeared to wait
breathlessly. From the chimney, a thread of smoke crept up, straight
as a string in the quiet air.
Then, along the lane, he suddenly descried a group of children, whom
he knew at once for his youngest sister’s. Impatient of this reminder
of a new day and a new generation, he drew aside till they should have
passed, for he was passionately desirous that, for to-day at least,
everything should seem as it had been. The children charged past,
laughing and calling, fair heads and dark, apple cheeks and clear
eyes, as if there were no stranger within miles of them. And their
heedless youth and vivid life made him all at once an alien and unreal
creature.
Thrusting aside this unwelcome impression, Christopher pressed on to
the house. A little old man with a black cutty between his lips was
taking the sun in the garden, his narrow shoulders humped under a
shiny coat. Christopher cast a careless glance at him; _his_ father,
though not tall, was a personable man, a man of thews and solidity.
This old one would be some charity guest of his mother’s.—“Ye’ll have
us eaten out of house and home with your beggars,” his father used to
protest. “Every tramp between here and Gingleticooch has you covered
with blessings. I wonder we don’t be rolling in gold, the good wishes
we do be enj’ying.”
At the gate, Christopher caught the scent of wild hedge-roses, of
sweet-briar and hawthorn, spilling a fragrance as of honeysuckle. At
once the years rolled back, the old boyish yearnings kindled. His
mother!—her arms would be open to him still, despite all delays and
neglect. She was never the one to “fault” him, whatever the blame. As
he neared the low doorway, he glimpsed the blue ware on the dark oak
dresser, the black, shining kettle on the hob, the long table spread
with homespun white linen. On the trimly swept hearth, turf glowed,
and beside it, his mother sat in her high-backed chair, bending over
her heavy prayer-book.
Through all the years he had thought of her as a tall woman still in
the prime of her days, though he knew well she was long past seventy,
and though she had reported herself in laborious letters as “growing
down like a cow’s tail.” All images of her had flaunted a blue and
yellow print, French calico, which had delighted his childhood; blue
as cornflowers and hung with golden chains. To her years he had
conceded grey hair, softly waving under a lacy cap above a face still
fresh and pink.
She wore to-day no chain-decked gown of cornflower blue, no roses in
her withered cheeks. A cap, indeed, did crown her, coarse, but
lily-white, and it shook ceaselessly with the trembling of her head.
Yet, though her face was seamed beyond recognition and her full grey
eyes sunken under lids plucked into innumerable tiny wrinkles, he knew
at once that it was she; and the sight of her shrivelled body caused a
contraction to close about his own frame. Her hands, twisted, spidery,
and corded with blue veins, clutched at his heart. Where were the
strong, firm hands that had so often lifted and soothed him,—dragged
him home howling, too, and soundly smacked him?—He found himself
longing for that heavy hand on his shoulder as for the kiss of his
beloved.
He crossed the flags and spoke her name, holding out eager arms. Just
then, the house-door blew back with a clap and she turned her head and
looked past him unseeingly, shivering a little as at the sharp
mountain wind.
“She does not know me,” he thought, conscience-stricken. “My
fault!—how could she? I’ll not be alarming her with a stranger’s
face.” Then, as she dropped her dim eyes to her book again: “She
cannot see far. ’Tis old and weak her eyes are—she thinks it’s
himself. I’ll go see can I find and prepare him; ’twill be best for
him to break the news.”
So great was the comfort the place bestowed, however, that he must
watch her a few minutes, drawing near behind her chair. The years fell
away and he felt as if he had recovered the very heart of his lost
youth. A little four-legged stool stood close beside her skirts, and
he longed to sit at her knee as he used, leaning his head against her
and staring into the dull glow of the peat. The old ballads she used
to sing to him there!—fresh conned from sheets bought at the fair and
set to tunes of her own adaptation; the stories of “the people” who
steal and change children; the saucer of cream you must set out All
Hallows’ Eve for the fairies; the long Christmas candle of welcome,
which burned before the open door against the coming of the Infant
Saviour. What prayers grew on that hearth-stone!—rosaries for May
nights, litanies. The rigors of fasting and abstinence he had known;
black fasts, too, cheerfully kept. There had been then no timorous
seeking of dispensation.—A question of health? Nonsense; a question
of backsliders and turncoats! Men lived not by bread alone in those
days, but by “the faith,” valiantly.
Drawn to her irresistibly, he looked over her shoulder at the swaying
book, eager to mark her special May devotion to Our Lady.—Would she
be saying, “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Grace,” or reiterating,
“Morning Star, Pray for us; Health of the Weak, Pray for us; Comforter
of the Afflicted——”? He bent his head to the black-marged page. She
was tracing with tremulous finger, “Prayers for the Dead.”
A chill breath touched him and he drew back a little. For whom did her
old eyes read the prayer? Eager to share her mourning, he gently laid
hand on her bony shoulder, but she did not turn at his touch; only
bent her head the lower over her book and let a little rising murmur
escape her moving lips.
At her failure to respond, he shuddered with a sudden uncanny sense of
remoteness. Then a terrible desolation seized him. “She’s not herself
any more, that’s it; childish, and they never told me. I’m too late,
then. She’ll never see me more. And I meant to come, always; God
knows, I meant to come.”
Fearing to alarm the quiet figure with an outburst of the grief that
choked him, he slipped out and sought the old bench under the hedge.
Here the tranquillity of the little farm laid a soothing hand on
him,—the sight of the speckledy hens pecking in the long grass; the
white goats tethered at a safe distance from sheltered heaps of
potatoes; a red cow, deep in the lush grass of the meadow, who swung
her head threateningly at a decrepit setter that limped across her
path. For a moment, looking at the old dog, he thought: “That’ll be
Sojer; he’ll know me.” But at once, with newly swelling heart, he
realized that many springs had drifted the white blossom of the thorn
across old Sojer’s grave. A friendly yearning made him rise and seek
this other dog, so like the companion of barefoot jaunts; a descendant
of the old fellow’s, no doubt,—a bond across the hostile years.
At the touch of his hand, the setter cowered away, shivering in every
limb, his dark soft eyes full of anguished terror. When Christopher
tried to speak reassuringly, the dog set up a sobbing whine, and,
struggling to uncertain feet, hobbled for the house with his
red-feathered tail between his legs.
On Christopher, as he stood there in the sunny morning, a chill dark
descended, and he felt isolated beyond the farthest star. Foreboding
shuddered through him, but he cried obstinately, “No, I’ll not accept
it! It can’t have come to me yet.” But, in spite of his gallant
refusal, he turned, like a child from the night, to his mother, as if
that little, age-worn woman could soothe his terror as of old.
From the door, he saw her still seated on the hearth, which looked
ominously black now and desolate. Her bent finger held the dread place
in her book, and, with her right hand, she caressed the head of the
old setter, who was crowding to her knees and whining woefully. For
the first time, Christopher heard the broken quaver of her voice.
“Eh, Princie, what ails you, doggie?—Are you feeling it, too? There’s
a power of terrible things about, the day. Waking up of me I
mistrusted it sore, and now I’m certain sure, for three times the
kettle’s after dancing on the hearth, and I’ve seen a tall shadow cast
in the full sun.—’Tis our boy, Christy, I’m thinking. He’s gone. A
young man yet, and I to be left sitting here alone. My grief! that
I’ll never see the lad more.—Christy, Christy, the best son!—but
there, every crow thinks her own bird the white one.—Whisht, Princie;
be quiet, let you. I must be reading the prayers for my son.”
And standing there in the sunlit doorway, Christopher knew indeed
that, by this time, it was, as she said, too late. He would never see
her more, as men see one another. Yet no sudden terror, no dread of
things unknown could wholly rob him of the consolation of her
presence, and, even as he felt this dream-scene, too, relentlessly
slip from him, he was able to savor the exquisite satisfaction of
fulfilment, the transcendent solace of release. Rest! and he had been
so harried; completion, and life had been so long! Green hills to blot
out remembrance of dusty cities, fresh winds after the smother of
narrow streets. “I’ll come back one day, be sure of that,” he’d told
her, and through all warring circumstances, he had stood committed to
that promise. Now, freely, triumphantly, he had made good his word.