lay her gray hairs? Couldn't you fix the house, too?"
"The house is not mine, and I can't afford to buy it."
"But 't is you you are the rich Protestant family. Your uncles and your
mother, hinny. Rotten with gold they are, and me just a poor old
_cailleach_ that gave you the white lamb o' the flock."
"We'll look after you. My uncle Alan Campbell will be here in a day or
so and fix everything. But I'm afraid the house is out of the question."
"Oh, sure it would be a noble thing to have the house, and they around
me dying with envy of my state and grandeur. At fair or at wake great
respect they would pay me, and the priests of God would be always
calling. The house, fine lad, give me the house!"
"You'll have to speak to my Uncle Alan."
"Alan Campbell is a hard Northern man."
"Nevertheless, you'll have to speak to him."
"_A mhic mheirdrighe!_" Her mouth hissed. "O son of a harlot!"
Shane wheeled like a sloop coming about.
"You forget I've got the Gaelic myself, old woman."
"Oh, sure, what did I say, fine lad, but _avick machree_, son of my
heart? _Avick machree_, I said. O son of my heart, that's what you are.
You wouldn't take wrong meaning from what an old woman said, and her
with her teeth gone, and under the black clouds of sorrow!"
A glint in the moonlight caught Shane's eyes. He gripped her right hand.
"Is that Moyra's wedding-ring you have on? Did you--did you--take
it--from her hand?"
"Oh, sure, what use would she have for it, and she in the sods of
Ballymaroo? And the grand Australian gold is in it, worth a mint of
money. And what use would you have for it, and you in strange parts,
where a passionate foreign woman would be giving you love, maybe? The
fine lad you are, will draw the heart of many. But it's drawing back
coldly they'd be, and they seeing that on your finger, or on a ribbon
around your neck. Drawing back they'd be, and giving the love was yours
to another fellow. A sin to waste the fine Australian gold it is. And
you wouldn't begrudge me the price of a couple o' heifers would grow
into grand cows? You wouldn't, fine lad--"
He flung her hand from him so savagely that she fell, and he went
swiftly toward the house where the dead woman was. Back of him in the
haggard came the _glug-glug_ of the naggin bottle, and from down the
loaning came the rich, untrained contralto of the singing girl:
"Nor shoe nor stocking will I put on, nor comb go in my hair.
And neither coal nor candle-light shine in my chamber fair.
Nor will I wed with any young man until the day I die,
Since the low lowlands of Holland are between my love and me."
§ 3
As he paused at the half-door, the laughter and the chatter in the
kitchen ceased, and he was aware of the blur of faces around the room,
white faces of men and women and alien eyes. Over the peat fire--there
was a fire even in June--the great black kettle sang on the crane, to
make tea for the mourners. Here and there were bunches of new clay pipes
scattered, and long rolls of twisted tobacco, for the men to smoke, and
saucers full of snuff for both men and women. A great paraffin lamp
threw broad, opaque shadows, making the whole a strange blur in the
kitchen, while in the bedroom opening off it, where the tense, dead
woman lay, was a glare of candles as from footlights, and there gathered
the old women of the neighborhood, discussing everything in hushed,
vindictive whispers--the price of cows, morbid diseases, the new wife
some man had, and whether such a girl was with child.... And the dead
woman, who had loved talk such as this, as a drunkard loves the glass,
gave no heed.... Strange!... And every hour or so they would flash to
their knees, like some quick instinctive movement of birds, and now
carelessly, now over-solemnly they would say a rosary for the dead
woman's soul:
"_Ar n-Athair, ta ar neamh_--" they would gabble. "Our Father, Who art
in Heaven--" and then a long suspiration: "'_Se do bheatha, 'Mhuire_!"
"Hail, Mary! Full of grace!"
But in the kitchen they would be laughing, chatting, playing crude
forfeits, telling grotesque stories, giving riddles, and now, to the
muted sound of a melodeon, a man would dance a hornpipe.... And men
would sneak out to the byre in twos and threes for a surreptitious glass
of whisky.... And suddenly they would rush in and join in the rosary:
"_Ar n-Athair, ta ar neamh_.... _Se do bheatha, 'Mhuire!_ ..."
It was all so grotesque, so empty, so play-actor-like--so inharmonious
with Death! Death was very terrible or very peaceful, thought Shane
Campbell of the sea and the Antrim Glens. "Down from your horse when
Death or the King goes by," went the Antrim old word. But here the house
of death was a booth of Punchinello.
[Illustration]
More aware even than of the indignity of it all was he of the hatred
about him. They hated him for his alien race, his alien faith. Not
one of the men but would have killed him had they had courage,
because his head was high, his step firm. The women hated him because he
had chosen one from among them and given her honor and gifts. And his
wife's mother hated him with the venomous, nauseous hatred that old
women bear. And yet they'd have loved him if he'd given way to
hysterical, unprofound grief, or become ... drunk! They'd have
understood him. But all they had for him was hatred now. Even the dead
woman on the bed hated him.... Ah, well, only a day or so more, and he'd
come about. A leg to leeward, and he'd shake them off as a great ship
leaves behind it the troublesome traders' bumboats.
There came to him the shrill keening of the old woman as some one
brought her toward the house:
"Ochanee! Ochanee! Ochanee o! the Shepherd's lamb! She's gone from us!
The high branch on the pleasant little tree! And what's to become of me
in my latter days! Me that thought I'd have the beautiful house to live
in, and a horse and cart, and a wake would be the envy of many, and not
the curate, but the parish priest himself, to be at the head of the
funeral. And now I'm to be thrown against the great cruelty of the harsh
Northern men! Nine black curses against them and theirs, and on my bare
knees I say it. Och, white gull o' the harbor, why did you die? Ochanee!
Ochanee!"
The gabbled rosary, the low laughter in the kitchen, the clink of
glasses, the howling of the _cailleach_--all these noises repulsed him
like a forefront of battle. So he did not go into the house, but took
his hand from the half-door and returned to the haggard, to the grave,
understanding silence of the moon.
§ 4
Because he was so young, and thought he knew so much when in reality he
knew so little, young Shane had thought, when he met Moyra Dolan, that
he had discovered the morning star. Five and a half years at sea, as
apprentice and navigator, had shown his eyes much and his heart little.
He knew Bermuda and the harbor of Kingston. He had beaten up the China
Seas. He had seen the clouds over Table Mountain. He knew Baltimore. He
had seen the bowsprits of the great Indiamen thrust over the quays of
Poplar parish like muskets leveled over a barricade. And to him it was
just a wonder, a strange spectacle. The streets were strange as in a
dream, and the folk were strange as in a play. One wandered down an
avenue, seeing the queer commodities in the shops and booths. One
wandered to the right. One wandered to the left. And there was great
delight to finding a street one had seen before, maybe only five minutes
ago, and one felt one was getting somewhere, was understanding the new
country.
But one never did understand the new country. All the people were
strange. One could not imagine them about the daily business of life,
waking, eating, buying, and selling. Black men and ocher-colored folk.
There seemed to be a mystery somewhere. One imagined them gathering at
night in secret to begin their real un-understood life. At times it
seemed impossible that it was the same world. Surely the sun that struck
like a hammer in Jamaica could not be the gracious warm planet that
gilded the gorse of the Antrim glens. And up the Baltic in mid-winter it
was bleak as a candle, and even then in Antrim it had a great
kindliness. Nor were the winds the same. The hot puffs of the Indian
Ocean, the drunken, lurching flaws of Biscay Bay, the trades that worked
steadily as ants, had not the human quality of the winds of the Nine
Glens, that were now angry as an angry man, now gentle as a gentle
woman.
Only one thing was constant, and that was the women whom sailors know in
ports. And they wore masks. The same easily forced laughter, the same
crude flattery, the complacent arms, the eternal eager hand....
And then one day the new port palled, like a book one has read too
often, or a picture one has looked at over-long. And it was sheet home
the royals and off to a new port, where there were new strange people,
and streets laid another way, and other things in the merchants' booths,
and a new language to pick up a phrase or two of.
But in the end all palled for a time, the aphrodisiac tropic smell; the
coral waters, clear as well water at home; the white houses with the
green jalousies; the lush, coarse green. And the melancholic drums of
the East palled. And palled the grimness of the North. And the unceasing
processional of strange secret faces wearied the eye and the mind. And
the angular spiritual edges of shipmates wore toward one through the
uniform of flesh, became annoying, sometimes unbearable.
And then an immense yearning would come over young Shane for the beloved
faces in the lamplight, for the white road over the purple heather, for
the garden where the greened sun-dial was, with its long motto in the
Irish letter:
_Is mairg a baidhtear in am an anaithe
Na tig an ghrian in dhiaidh na fearthainne_--
as if anybody didn't know that, that it was a pity to be drowned in time
of storm, for the sun shines brightly when the rain goes!
But the sun-dial was mirrored in his heart, and the purple mountain and
the great dun house. The winds he sniffed as a hunting dog does, and
each tack to port or starboard either thrilled or cast him down.... When
would he get there? Would it be cool of the evening, when the bats were
out? Or would it be in the sunshine of the morning, when a great smell
was from the heather? And who would hear the wicket-gate click as the
latch was lifted, and put a welcome before him with a great shout,
uncles Alan or Robin, or a servant girl or boy, or the bent old gardener
who kept the lawn true as a bowling-green?... Or would it be his mother?
§ 5
Aboard ship the young apprentices had their problems, problems of
conduct, or of girls at home, or of money in port, but for young Shane
there was always the problem of his mother.
At home he had regarded as a matter of fact that she should come and go
in her hard, efficient French way. It had not seemed strange to him that
her mouth was tight, her eyes hard as diamonds. It was to him one with
his Uncle Robin's solemnity and Alan Donn's gruff sportsmanship. But
away from home he thought of it, brooded over it. Her letters to him
were so curt, so cut and dried! She wrote of the birth of another child
to young Queen Victoria,--as if that mattered a tinker's curse!--or how
her Holland bulbs, which she had bought at Belfast, had withered and
died. She directed him "to pray God to keep him pure in mind and body,
your affectionate mother, Louise de Daméry Campbell." Alan Donn's
letters had the grand smell of harness about them. "You'll mind the
brown gelding we bought at Ballymena. He disgraced us at Dublin in the
jumping competitions. You know he can jump his own height, but he got
the gate after three tries. I could have graet like a bairn. Well, this
will be all from your loving Uncle Alan. P.S. I caught the white trout
in Johnson's Brae burn. I was after him, and he was dodging me for six
years. Your loving Uncle Alan, P.P.S. The championship is at Newcastle
this year, and I think I've a grand chance. If you're home, you can
caddy for me. Your loving Uncle Alan."
Uncle Robin's letters had vast wisdom. "Ay be reading the books, laddie.
An ill-educated man feels always at a disadvantage among folk of talent.
Aboard ship you can read and think more than at a university. I've got a
parcel for you to take when you go again. Hakluyt's Voyages and a good
Marco Polo. And the new book of Mr. Dickens, 'The Haunted Man.' And
there's a great new writer you'll not want to miss, by name of
Thackeray." And there'd be the Bank of England note, "for fear you might
be needing it on a special occasion, and not having it, and feeling
bad." Dear Uncle Robin! And then the flash of tenderness, like a
rainbow: "God bless you and keep you, my brother's son!"
His Uncle Robin's letters he would greet with a smile, and perhaps a bit
moistness in the eye; Alan Donn's with a grin, as an elder brother's.
But his mother's letters he would approach with a coldness akin to fear.
He hated to open them. It was like an unpleasant duty.
The realization of her was always a chilling disappointment, but the
dream of her was a great hope. And in the black waters of the China
Seas, or in the night watches off the Azores, where the porpoises played
in the phosphorescence, there would come a sea-change over the knowledge
he had of her. All the spiritual, all the mental angles of her faded
into gracious line, and on the tight French lips of her a smile would
play as a flower opens, and her eyes, hard as diamonds, would open and
become kindly as a lighted house. And the strange things of the heart
would come out, like little shy rabbits, or like the young tortoises,
and bask in that kindly picture. And the things that were between them,
that could not be said, but just sensed, as the primroses of spring are
sensed, not seen, not felt, hardly smelt even, but sensed.... The
hesitant deep things he would say and the dignified, smiling answer, or
the pressure of the hand even, and the inclination of the shoulder....
And the people he would meet who would ask him about his mother, and he
could answer nothing, so that they thought him stupid and unthoughtful.
But really what was there to say?... And once when he sprang into Biscay
Bay after a cabin-boy who had fallen over the taffrail, and the lad's
mother had thanked him in Plymouth for saving the child's life: "Your
mother will be very proud of you," the old woman said. But the reality
of the harsh Frenchwoman came to him like a slap in the face. "Christ,
if she only were!" his heart cried. But the clipped little Scots-Irish
voice replied, "Aye, I suppose she will."
And again the soft mood would come, and then he would have a letter from
her, ending with that harsh command, that was a gust of some bleak
tempest of her own life, where his father had perished: "Pray God to
keep you pure in mind and body!"
And homeward bound again, in the soft murmur of the wind among the
shrouds, and the little laughter of the water at the bows, there would
abide with him again the dream mother of the night watches, until he
said to himself that surely the reality was false, and at the
garden-gate she would be waiting for him with a great depth of kindness
in her eyes, and arms warm as sunshine, and a bosom where a boy might
rest his head for a moment after the great harshness of the strange
places.
But the kindliness came not from her. It came from Robin More, who ran
down the garden faster than his dignity should have allowed him. "Are
you all right, wee Shane? Is everything all right with you? You're
looking fine, but you haven't been sick, wee fellow? Tell me, you
haven't been sick?" Or from Alan Donn, with his great snort of
laughter: "Christ! are you home again? And all the good men that's been
lost at sea! Well, the devil's childer have the devil's luck. Eigh,
laddie, gie's a feel o' ye. _A Righ_--O King of Graces, but you're the
lean pup! Morag, Nellie, Cassie, some tea! and be damned quick about
it!"
And then his mother would come into the room, like a cold wind or a thin
ghost, and there would be a kiss on the cheek, a cold, precise peck,
like a bird's. And, "Did you have a good voyage?" just as if she said,
"Do you think we'll have rain?"
Oh, well, to hell with it! as Alan Donn said when he flubbed his
approach to the last green for some championship or other. "What you
never had, you never lost!"
Aye, true indeed. What you never had you couldn't very well lose. Aye,
there was a lot in that. Just so; but--
Boys do be thinking long....
§ 6
Because his Uncle Alan was in Scotland somewhere shooting deer and would
not be home for several days, and because Uncle Robin was in Paris, and
because the _Goban Saor_ put into Dundalk to take a cargo of unbleached
linen, young Shane decided to stay there for a few days before
proceeding northward to the Antrim Glens. He felt he couldn't face the
house at Cushendu with his cold, precise mother alone there, so he
accepted the hospitality of an apprentice friend.
It was at a country barn dance during these few days that he met Moyra
Dolan.
A tallish, tawny-haired woman with the dead-white skin that goes with
reddish hair, with steel for eyes, there was a grace and carriage to her
that put her aside from the other peasant girls as a queen may
masquerade as a slave and yet betray herself as a queen. Other girls
there were as pretty, with their hair like flax and their eyes like blue
water; with hair like a dim blue cloud and eyes like a smudge of
charcoal. But none had her teeth, her small ankles, her long, sensitive
hands. Some strain of the Stuart cavaliers had crept into that hardy
peasant stock on the way to the defeat of the Boyne Water.... She might
have seemed nothing but a pretty lady's maid in London or Dublin but in
North Louth she was like a queen....
Her looks were her tragedy, for she held herself too good for a
laboring man to marry, and, having no dower, no farmer would have her.
Among the peasantry romance does not count, but land. And if the Queen
of Sheba, and she having nothing but her shift, were to offer herself in
marriage to a strong farmer, he would refuse her for the cross-eyed
woman in the next townland who had twenty acres and five good milch
cows.... Only for the very rich or the very poor is romance!
Her only chance for marriage was a matter of luck. She would have to
meet some government official, or some medical student home on his
holidays, or some small merchant whom her beauty would unbalance, as
drink would unbalance him. And she must dazzle, and her old mother play
and catch him, as a jack pike is dazzled by a spoon bait, hooked, and
brought ashore. She might marry or might miss, or grow into an acidulous
red-headed woman. It was a matter of luck. And her luck was in. She met
young Shane Campbell.
They danced together. They wandered in the moonlight. They met in the
country lanes. And they were very silent, she because she played a game,
and a counter is better than a lead, and he because he was in love with
her. Had it been only a matter of sweethearting, he would have been
merry as a singing bird, full of chatter, roughing it with her for a
kiss. But it was love with him, and a thing for life, and life was long
and more serious than death.... So he was silent.
He was silent when he went home for a week, silent with uncles Robin and
Alan, who sensed he was going through one of the crises of adolescence,
and knew the best thing to do was to leave him alone. He was silent with
his mother, who saw nothing, cared nothing, so intent was she on
revolving within herself as inexorably as the planets revolve in space.
He decided to spend the last days of his leave in Dundalk. And at the
railroad station in Ballymena he hazarded a look at Alan Donn.
"Uncle Alan--" and he stopped.
"What is it, laddie? Is it a girl troubling you? Take my advice and look
her in the eyes and, 'You can love me or leave me, and to hell with
you!' tell her. 'Do you see this right foot of mine?' says you. 'Well,
it's pointed to the next townland, where there's just as pretty a one as
you.' And you'll find her come around; maybe there'll be a bit of an
argument, but she'll come around. And if she doesn't, there'd have been
no hope for you, anyway. A touch o' the spur for the lazy mare and a bit
sugar for the jumper! And when you've done loving her, gie her a chuck
in the chin: 'Good-by! Good luck! What you keep to yoursel' 'll worry
nobody,' says you. And to hell with her!"
"Alan Donn!"
"Oh, it's that way, is it, Shaneen? If you're in deep water, there's
none but yourself can help you, laddie. I thought it was just maybe a
case o' laugh and kiss me. But it's different, is it? There's no use
giving advice. What's in you will out. But remember this: when it's
over, for good or bad, your Uncle Alan's here, to laugh with you or
greet with you or help you out of a hole. So--
"Good-by, laddie. _Beannacht leat!_ My blessing with you!"
§ 7
"Young lad, what is this you have done to my fine young daughter?"
"I have done nothing, Bhean 'i Dolain," young Shane flared up, "save in
honor, and the man or woman who says other lies."
"Agra, I know that. I know there's no harm in you from head to foot. And
the trouble you've put on her is in her heart. All day long she sighs,
and is listless as a shaded plant that does be needing the sun. All
night long she keeps awake, and the wee silent tears come down her face.
And before my eyes she's failing, and her step that was once light now
drags the like of a cripple's. Young lad of the North, you've put love
in the heart of her and sorrow in the mind."
"I'm not so sprightly in the mind myself, woman Dolan."
"I know, avick. I know. Isn't it myself that's suffered the seven pangs
of love and I a young girl? But it's easy on a man, avick. He can go
into the foreign countries, and put it out of his mind, or take to the
drink and numb the great pain. But for a woman it's different. It's the
like of a disfiguration that all can see. And when you're gone away,
sure all will remember, for men do be minding long. The marrying time
will come, and they'll look at my grand young daughter: strong farmer,
and merchant of the shop, and drover does be going to England for the
cattle-fairs, and they'll say: 'Isn't that the red girl gave love to the
sailing fellow, and burnt her heart out so that there's no sap in it for
me?' And they'll pass her by, my grand young daughter, that's the equal
of any."
"And what would you have me do, woman of the house?"
"What would any decent man do but marry her?"
"Aye!... Aye! I thought of marrying her, if she'd have me.... But we
hardly know each other yet ... and maybe I'm too young...."
"If you're able to handle a ship, you're able to handle a woman, young
lad. And what time is better for marriage nor the first flush of youth?
Sure you grow together like the leaves upon the tree. Let you not be
putting it off now, but spring like a hero."
"But isn't the matter of her faith between us, woman of the house?"
"And sure that can be fixed later. Will the priest mind, do you think,
so long as she does her duty? And a sixpence in the plate on Sunday is
better nor a brown ha'penny, and a half-sovereign at Easter will soothe
black anger like healing grass. Very open in thought I am, and I knowing
the seven pangs of love. Let you go to your own clergyman, and she'll go
with you, I'll warrant, so eaten is she by love."
"My people, woman o' the house--"
"Your people, is it? Sure it isn't your people is marrying my grand
young daughter, but you yourself. The old are crabbit, and they do be
thinking more of draining a field, or of the price of flax, nor of the
pain and delights of love. And it's always objections. But there can be
no objecting when the job's finished."
She looked at him shrewdly.
"A grand influence, a grand steadying influence is marriage on a sailing
man. It keeps you from spending your money in foreign ports, where you
only buy trickery for your silver. And when you have a wife at home,
you'll have little truck with fancy women, who have husbands behind the
screen, sometimes, and them with knives.... So I've heard tell.... Or
maybe get an evil sickness. Listen to an old woman has wisdom, bold
lad."
"When I come from my voyage...."
"Dark lad, if anything happens to you, and you drowning in the black
water, the great regret that will be on you and the water gurgling into
your lungs, and, 'Wasn't I the fool of the world,' you'll say, 'that
might have heard the crickets singing in the night-time and my white
love by my side? And might have had power of kissing and lovemaking, but
was young and foolish, and lay be my lee lone....'"
But this was the wrong tack, the old woman noticed, and came about.