you're at sea you say: 'Wasn't I the fool to ever leave dry land; and if
I get back and get a job,' says you, 'you'll never see me leave it
again. It's a wee farm for me,' you'll say. And then somehow you'll find
yourself back aboard ship. And you'll be off the Horn, up aloft,
fighting a sail like you'd fight a man for your life, or you'll be in
the horse latitudes, as they call them, and no breeze stirring, and not
a damned thing to do but holystone decks, the like of an old pauper that
does be scrubbing a poorhouse floor. And you say: 'Sure I'd rather be a
tinker traveling the roads, with his ass and cart and dog and woman, nor
a galley-slave to this bastard of a mate that has no more feeling for a
poor sailorman nor a hound has for a rabbit. It's a dog's life,' you
say, 'and when we make port I'm finished.'
"But you make port and you stay awhile, and you find that the woman
you've been thinking of as Queen of Sheba is no more nor a common drab.
And the publican you thought of as the grand generous fellow has no more
use for you and your bit silver gone. It's a queer thing, but they on
land think of nothing but money. And one day you think, and the woman
beside you is pastier nor dough, and the man of the public house is no
more nor a cheap trickster, and you're listening to the conversation of
the timid urban people, and the house you're in is filthier nor a pig's
sty. And you say: 'Is this me that minds the golden women of the
islands, and they with red flowers in their hair? Is this me that fought
side by side with good shipmates in Callao? Am I listening to the
chatter of these mild people, me that's heard grand stories in the
forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was
married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and
they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used
to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up
bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty
eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a
sailing man? A sailor as knows his trade, crafty in trouble, and a
wildcat in danger, and as peaceful as a hare in the long grass?' And
you're off again on the old trade and the old road, where the next port
is the best port, and the morrow is a braver day.... So it's so long,
decent wee fellow! I'm off on it again. It's a dog's life, that's what
it is, the life of a sailing man. But you couldn't change. I suppose
it's the salt in the blood."
"You're off, honest man?"
"Aye, I'm off, wee fellow. And thank you kindly for what you told me,
and for telling me especially the old woman looked so peaceful and her
with the pennies on her eyes."
"But aren't you going up to see the house?"
"I don't think I will, wee lad. I've had a picture in my mind for forty
years of the big house was in it, and the coolth of the well. And maybe
it isn't so at all. I'd rather not know the difference. I'll keep my
picture."
"But the house is yours," wee Shane urged him. "You're not going to
leave it as it is. Aren't you going to sell it and take the money?"
"Och, to hell with that! I've no time," said the sailing man, and he
limped painfully back down the road.
§ 8
His Uncle Robin had gone off to discuss with some Belfast crony the
strange things he used to discuss, like the origin of the Round Tower of
Ireland or the cryptic dialect of the Gaelic masons or whether the Scots
came to Scotland from Ireland or to Ireland from Scotland, all very
important for a member of the Royal Irish Academy. And his mother had
gone off shopping to buy linen for the house at Cushendhu, poplin for
dresses, delft from Holland for the kitchen and glass from Waterford for
the sideboard in the dining-room. And because he was to go to the
boarding-school that night and thereafter would be harsh discipline,
and because his Uncle Robin had known he was on the point of crying, he
had been allowed to wander around Belfast by himself for a few hours
with a silver shilling in his pocket. And wee Shane had made for the
quays....
The four of them had sat in a cold, precise room that morning, his Uncle
Robin, his mother, wee Shane, and the principal, a fat, gray-eyed,
insincere Southerner, with a belly like a Chinese god's, dewlaps like a
hunting hound's, cold, stubby, and very clean hands, and a gown that
gave him a grotesque dignity. And he had eyed wee Shane unctuously. And
wee Shane did not like fat, unctuous men. He liked them lean and active,
as glensmen are.
And the principal had spoken in stilted French to his mother, who had
responded in French that cracked like a whip. And the principal had
licked the ground before Uncle Robin. It was "Yes, Dr. Campbell!" And,
"No, Dr. Campbell!" where the meanest glensman would have said "Aye,
maybe you're right, Robin More," or, "Na, na, you're out there, Robin
Campbell."
"The old hypocrite!" It was the only word wee Shane could describe the
master by, a favorite word of his Uncle Alan's.
And in the corridors he had met some of the scholars, white-faced
fellows; and the masters--they had mean eyes, like the eyes of badgers.
"I dinna want to go!" He blurted out on the quays of Belfast.
"Where dinna you want to go, wee laddie?" A black, curly-headed man with
gray eyes and a laugh like a girl's stopped short. He had blue clothes
and brass buttons and stepped lightly as a cat.
"I dinna want to go to school."
"Sure, all wee caddies go to school."
"I ken that. But I don't want to go to school with a bunch of whey-faced
gets, and masters lean and mean as rats, and a principal puffed out like
a setting hen."
"Oh, for God's sake! is that the way you feel about it? Laddie, you
don't talk like a townsman. Where are you from?"
"I'm from the Glens of Antrim. From Cushendhu."
"I'm a Raghery man myself. _Tha an Gaidhlig agad?_
"_Tha, go direach!_"
"So you've got the Gaidhlig too? Who are your people, wee laddie?"
"I'm a Campbell of Cushendhu."
"For God's sake! you're no' a relation of Alan Campbell's, wha sailed
with Sir John Franklin for the pole?"
"I'm his nephew."
"I've sailed under your Uncle Alan. He's the heart o' corn. And so
they're going to make a scholar out of you, like your Uncle Robin. Oh,
well, oh, well. Would you like to come around with me and see the
ships?"
"I'd like fine to see the ships."
"You'll see all manner of ships here. Square-riggers, fore-and-afters,
hermaphrodites. You'll see Indiamen and packets from Boston. You'll see
ships that do be going to Germany, and some for the Mediterranean ports.
You'll see a whaler that's put in for repairs. You'll see fighting
ships. You'll see fishers of the Dogger Banks, and boats that go to
Newfoundland, where the cod do feed. All manner of sloops and schooners,
barkantines and brigs, but the bonniest of them all lies off
Carrickfergus."
"And who's she, Raghery man?"
"The _Antrim Maid_ is her nomination."
"And do you sail her?"
"I sail in her, laddie. Sail and sail in her. Mine from truck to keelson
she is, and I'm master of her. Father and mother and brother to her, and
husband, too. I'm proud of her." The Rathliner laughed. "You may
notice."
"And why for shouldn't you be? She must be the grand boat surely, man
who sailed with my Uncle Alan."
§ 9
"Raghery man, you who've sailed the high seas and the low seas, did you
ever put into an island that has great coolth to it and great sunshine,
a town quiet as a mouse, a strip of sand like silver, the waves turning
with a curl and chime?"
"Where did you hear tell of that island, wee laddie? Was it in the books
you do be reading at school?"
"I saw it, and it dancing in the sun. From Slievenambanderg I saw it,
and it over the waters of Moyle."
The Rathliner sat on a mooring bitt on the quay and filled his pipe.
"I ken that island," he said. "I ken it well."
"And what name is on it, Raghery man?"
"The name that's on it is Fiddlers' Green."
"Were you ever there, Raghery man?" There was a sinking in wee Shane's
heart.
"I was never there, laddie, never there. Oftentimes I thought I'd
raised it, but it was never there, wee laddie, never there. There's men
as says they've been there, but I could hardly believe them, though
there's queer things past belief on the sea. There's a sea called
Sargasso, and if I told you half the things about it, you'd think me
daft. And there's the ghost of ships at sea, and that's past thinking.
And there's the great serpent, that I've seen with my own eyes....
"Aye, Fiddlers' Green! Where is it, and how do you get there? The
sailormen would give all their years to know."
"Why for do they call it Fiddlers' Green?"
"It's Fiddlers' Green, laddie, because it's the place you come to at the
cool of the day, when the bats are out, and the cummers put by their
spinning. And there's nou't there but sport and music. A lawn like a
golf green, drink that is not ugly, women would wander with you on to
the heather when the moon's rising, and never a thought in their mind of
the money in your pocket, but their eyes melting at you, and they
thinking you're the champion hero of the world.... And all the fiddlers
fiddling the finest of dance music: hornpipes like 'The Birds among the
Trees' and 'The Green Fields of America'; reels like 'The Swallow-tail
Coat' and 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'; slip-jigs would make a
cripple agile as a hare.... And you go asleep with no mate to wake you
in a blow, but the sound of an old piper crooning to you as a cummer
croons. And the birds will wake you with their douce singing.... Aye,
Fiddlers' Green...."
And they were silent for a minute in the soft Ulster sunshine.
"Would you have any use for a lad like myself aboard your ship, Raghery
man?"
"Och, sure, what would you do with the sea, wee fellow?"
"I ken it well already, Raghery man. And I'm no clumsy in a boat. I can
sail a sloop with any man. On a reach or full and by, I'll keep her
there. With the breeze biting her weather bow, I'll hold her snout into
it. Or with the wind behind me, I'll ride her like you'd canter a
horse."
"I might take you to learn you seamanship and navigation, but you'd be
no use as a sailor, wee laddie, and it's not for a Campbell to be a
cabin-boy."
"Take me to learn the trade, then. Take me now."
"I'd like fine, wee fellow, but I couldn't do it. You might be cut out
for a scholar for all you think you're not. Or it might be a soldier
you're meant for. I couldn't interfere with your life. It's an unco
responsibility, interfering with a destiny, a terrible thing."
"Will you talk to my Uncle Robin? Will you?"
"Och, now, how could I talk to your Uncle Robin, him that's written
books, and is counted one of the seven learned men of Ireland? Sure, I
wouldn't understand what he'd be saying, and he'd have no ear for a
common sailing man. If it was your Uncle Alan, now--"
"There's not a person in the world but has the ear of my Uncle Robin.
And there's none easier to talk to, not even the apple woman at the
corner of the quay. Will you come with me and talk to him?"
"I couldn't, laddie. Your Uncle Alan, now--"
"I'll do the talking, then; but will you come?"
"Och, wee fellow, it would be foolish."
"You wouldn't have me think hard of a man of Raghery?"
"No, I wouldn't have any one think hard of the folk of Raghery, so I
suppose I'll have to come. I don't know what your Uncle Robin will say
to me for putting notions in your head. It's awful foolish. But I'll
come."
§ 10
"So there'd never be the making of a scholar in me, Uncle Robin. A ship
on the sea or a new strange person would be always more to me nor a
book. I can read and write and figure; what more do I want? And, och,
sir, the school would be a prison to me, the scholars droning and ink on
their fingers, and the hard-faced masters at the desk. I'd be woe for
the outside, for the sunshine and the water and the bellying winds--"
His Uncle Robin tapped the window-pane of the club and thought hard. The
Rathlin sailor stood by, puzzled.
"But, childeen asthore, sure you don't know now what you want. Your
career, laddie! Think a bit! The church, for instance--"
"Och, Uncle Robin, is it me in the church that must say my prayers by my
lee lone, so loath am I to let the people see what's in me? I'd be the
queer minister, dumb as a fish--"
"You once had a notion for the army, laddie."
"So I had, sir, and fine I'd like the uniforms and the swords and the
horses, but I wouldn't have the heart to kill a man, and me never
seeing him before. If a man did me a wrong, I'd kill him quick as I'd
wash my hands, but never seeing him before, I could na, I just could
na--"
"It's a clean thing, the sea," the Raghery man ventured.
"He's so very young," objected Uncle Robin.
"There's nothing but that or the books for me, Uncle Robin. A sailor or
a scholar--and I don't think I'd make out well with the books."
"The books aren't all they're cracked up to be, wee Shane. I've written
books myself, and who reads them but a wheen of graybeards, and they
drowsing by the fire? Knowledge, laddie, I have that.... And it isn't
even wisdom. Knowledge is like dry twigs you collect with care to make a
bit fire you can warm your shins at, and wisdom is the gift of God
that's like the blossom on the gorse. I've searched books and taken out
the marrow of dead men's brains, and after all, even all my knowledge
may be wrong.... Your father's name will be remembered as long as the
Gaidhlig lasts, for songs that came to him as easily as a woman's kiss.
And your Uncle Alan's footprints are near the pole. And Mungo is
remembered forever because he died with a laugh. Not that I'm saying
anything against them, wee Shane; better men will never be seen. But
Daniel Donelly's name is remembered because he beat Cooper in a fight,
and songs were made about it. And I'll be remembered only when some old
librarian dusts a forgotten book. And I was supposed to be the wise pup
o' the litter, with my books and my study. And all I have now is a
troubled mind in my latter days. Aye, the books!..."
"Shall I go to sea, sir?"
"Is it up to me? And how about your mother, laddie?"
"Oh, there's little warmth within her for me, sir. She's a bitter woman.
She does na like my father's breed."
"Are you your father's breed through, wee caddie? Are you Campbell all?
Here, gi' us a look at your face. Aye, the eyes, the nose, the proud
throw to the head of you. I'm afeared there's little of your mother in
you, laddie; afeared there's none at all."
"I'm no' ashamed o' my kind, sir."
"And you're set on going to sea?"
"I'd like it fine, sir."
"And if it does na turn out the way you thought it would, you're not
going to cry or turn sour?"
"I thought you knew me better nor that, Uncle Robin."
"I do." The big man laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and smiled at
the shipmaster. "Take him, Raghery man!"
§ 11
Though all was wonder to wee Shane, there was so much of it that it
flicked through his head like a dream: the hazy September afternoon; the
long, lean vessel like a greyhound; the sails white as a swan's wing;
the cordage that rattled like wood; the bare-footed, bearded sailors;
the town of Carrickfergus in the offing; the _lap-lap-lap_ of water; the
silent man at the wheel; the sudden transition of the friendly Raghery
man into a firm, authoritative figure, quick as a cat, rapping out
commands like a sergeant-major.
The town of Carrickfergus began to slip by as if drawn by horses. The
mate ran up the ladder of the poop.
"Topsails, McCafferty!" the Raghery man ordered.
"Topsails, sir."
A minute later there came the mate's voice from amidships:
"Sheet home the topsails--and put your backs into it!"
Patter of feet. An accordion began to whine like a tinker. Creak and
strain. Faster lapping of water. A song raised in chorus:
As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street--
Yo-ho! Blow the man down!
As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street--
Give us some time till we blow the man down!
A trim little bumboat I chanced for to meet!
Blow, bullies, blow the man down!
A trim little bumboat I chanced for to meet!
Give us some time till we blow the man down!
She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows!
Yo-ho! Blow the man down!
She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows!
Give us some time till we blow the man down.
Blow the man down!
Blow, bullies! Blow the man down!
PART TWO
THE WAKE AT ARDEE
§ 1
The feeling that was uppermost in him as he sat outside the thatched
cottage in the moonlight, while the wake was within, was not grief at
his wife's death; not a shattered mind that his life, so carefully laid
out not twelve months before, was disoriented; not any self-pity; not
any grievance against God, such as little men might have: but a strange
dumb wonder. There she lay within, in her habit of a Dominican lay
sister, her hands waxy, her face waxy, her eyelids closed. And six
guttering candles were about her, and women droned their prayers with a
droning as of bees. There she lay with her hands clasped on a wooden
crucifix. And no more would the robins wake her, and they fussing in the
great hawthorn-tree over the coming of dawn. No longer would she rake
the ash from the peat and blow the red of it to a little blaze. No
longer would she beat his dog out of the house with the handle of the
broom. No longer would she forgather with the neighbors over a pot of
tea for a pleasant vindictive chat. No longer would she look out to sea
for him with her half-loving, half-inimical eyes. No longer in her
sharpish voice would she recite her rosary and go to bed.
And to-morrow they would bury her--there would be rain to-morrow: the
wind was sou'east,--they would lower her, gently as though she were
alive, into a rectangular slot in the ground, mutter alien prayers in an
alien tongue with business of white magic, pat the mound over as a child
pats his castle of sand on the sea-shore, and leave her there in the
rain.
A month from now they would say a mass for her, a year from now another,
but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of
life: with the fussy, excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that
wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too
much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would
tell in her sharpish voice; with each thing; with everything.
And here was the wonder of it, the strange dumb wonder, that the
snapping of her life meant less in reality to him than the snapping of a
stay aboard ship. The day after to-morrow he would mount the deck of
Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few crisp orders would set out on
the eternal sea, as though she were still alive in her cottage, as
though indeed she had never even lived, and northward he would go past
the purple Mull of Cantyre; past the Clyde, where the Ayrshire sloops
danced like bobbins on the water; past the isles, where overhead drove
the wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle-field; past the
Hebrides, where strange arctic birds whined like hurt dogs; northward
still to where the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black
winter nights; eastward and southward to where the swell of the Dogger
Bank rose, where the fish grazed like kine. Over the great sea he would
go as though nothing had happened, not even the snapping of a stay--down
to the sea, where the crisp winds of dawn were, and the playful, stupid,
short-sighted porpoises; the treacherous sliding icebergs; and the gulls
that cried with the sea's immense melancholy; and the great plum-colored
whales....
§ 2
To his nostrils, sterilized as they were by the salt air of the sea, the
rich scents of Louth came in a rushing profusion. The wild roses of
June were like the high notes of a violin, and there was clover, and
mown hay. In the southeast the clouds were banking, but still the moon
rose high, and the cottage was clear as in daylight, clearer even in the
mind's eye--the whitewashed walls, the thatch like silver, the swallows'
nests beneath the eaves. The hard round sea-cobbles beneath his feet
were clear and individual, and to where he sat in the haggard came a
girl's song from down the road:
"Oh, Holland is a wondrous place and in it grows much green.
It's a wild inhabitation for my young love to be in.
There the sugar-cane grows plentiful, and leaves on every tree,
But the low, lowlands of Holland are between my love and me."
He listened with a cocked ear, and smiled as he thought how easy it
would be to stroll down the road to where the singing girl was, and
accost her pleasantly: "So he's in Holland, is he? That's the queer and
foolish place for him to be, and I here!" There would be banter, quick
and smart as a whip, a scuffle, a clumsily placed kiss, laughter,
another scuffle, and a kiss that found its mark somehow, then a saunter
together down the scented loaning while the June moon rode high and the
crickets sang.
O my God! here he was thinking about love, and his wife lay inside and
she dead!
And a new light wonder sprang up and whirled within the big dumb wonder
that was on him: that here was he, a lad not yet twenty-two, with a dead
wife on his hands, while his shipmates were off with the laughter of
young women in their ears after the silent and tense watches of the sea.
His captain had gone home to Newry to where his wife awaited him, the
tall, graceful woman with the hair like black silk and the black eyes
and the black ear-rings and the slim, white, enigmatic hands. And the
first mate had gone to Rostrevor with a blond, giggling girl, and the
crew were at Sally Bishop's in Dundalk, draining the pints of frothy
porter and making crude material love to Sally Bishop's blowsy brown
girls, some chucking their silver out with a laugh--the laugh of men who
had fought hurricanes, and some bargaining shrewdly.... But here he was,
home, with his wife, and her dead. And if she hadn't been dead, she
would have been half loving, half inimical toward him, her arms and
bosom open, but a great stranger.... He couldn't understand. Well, she
was dead, and ... he didn't know....
A bent, fattish figure in a shawl came toward him through the haggard,
his wife's mother. There was the sweetish, acrid odor of whisky.
"Shane _avick_, are you there all alone, mourning for the pleasant,
beautiful one who's gone?"
"I was just sitting down."
"You wouldn't like a wee drop of consolation?"
"Whisky? No, thanks."
"Just the least taste?"
"No, thanks."
"And I after bringing it out to you in a naggin bottle. Just the wetting
of your lips, _agra_, would cheer you up, and you down to the ground."
"No!"
The old woman sat on the stone ditch beside him and began swaying
backward and forward, and the keening note came into her voice:
"Is it gone? Is it gone you are, Moyra _a sthore_? Sure, 't was the
kindly daughter you were to me, and me old and not worth my salt, a
broken _cailleach_ hobbling on a stick. Never did you refuse me the cup
o' tea so strong a mouse could walk on it. And the butcher's meat o'
Christmas, sure your old ma must have a taste, too. And many's the brown
egg you let me have, and they bringing a high price on the Wednesday
market. And the ha'porth o' snuff--sure you never came home without it,
and you at Dundalk fair. Kindly you were as the rains of April, and my
heart is ashes now you're gone...."
Shane paced off through the haggard. There was the _glug-glug_ of a
bottle, and again the sweetish, acrid odor of whisky. He turned back.
"Only to one were you kinder nor to myself and that was to the lad here,
whose heart is broken for you. Dumb with grief he is, now you're gone.
And all you did for him! You might have married a strong farmer would
have a dozen cows, horses would pull a cart or plow, hens by the dozen,
and flitches of bacon hanging in the kitchen. Or you might have married
a man had a shop and sat at your ease in the back room, like a lady
born. Or you might have married a gager and gone to Dublin and mixed
with the grand quality. And your mother would have a black silk dress,
and shoes with buttons on them. But you married this young fellow goes
to sea, so much was the great love on you for him. Love came to you like
a thunder-storm, and left you trembling like a leaf, and now you're
dead--ochanee! ochanee! ochanee o!"
Her voice changed from the shrill keen to a shrewd whine:
"You'll be leaving me something to remember her by, Shane Oge, and her a
fathom deep beneath me in the cold ground. And a trinket or two, or a
dress, maybe, or a bangle would keep my heart warm?"
"You can have them all."
"All is it? Ah, sure, it's the grand big heart is in you, lad o' the
North. And are they all to be mine, the silver brooch you bought her
from the Dutch city, and the ring with the pearl in it, and the dresses
of silk from France, and the shoes that have buckles? Are they for me,
hinny?"
"Yes, yes. Take them."
"And the wee furnishings of the house, the feather-bed is soft to lie
on, and the dresser with the delft, and the creepy stool beside the
fire, the noble chairs? You wouldn't be selling them to the stranger,
Shane Oge?"
"No, you can have those, too."