Some shading that comes from the yews, some phenomenon of cliff and
water ... But even that did not circumscribe the rich grave look of
grounds and house. A song from "The Tempest" came to him:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange ...
That was it, something rich and strange, like some old cloister into
which one might turn from an inquiet and hubbubby street ... A knock at
an oaken wicket; a peering shy brother, and one was on green lawns and
the shadows of a gabled monastery. Cowled, meditative friars, and the
quiet of Christ like spread wings ... But there was a reason for the
cloister's glamour: cool thoughts and the rhythm of quiet praying, and
the ringing of the little bell of mass, and the cadenced sacramental.
All these were sympathetic magic ... But whence came the glamour of Tusa
hErin?
§ 7
And she said: "I am glad you came. I knew somehow you would."
"I am glad, too. I knew Tusa hErin as a boy. It was then a weird old
place. The yew-trees were unclipped, the turf riotous, the little lake
ungraveled ... It had an eeriness. But now--it is very different."
"Any place is different for being loved, tended."
"I suppose so. One loves but one gets careless toward ... I know Antrim
has always had an immense attraction for me ..."
"Antrim--alone?"
"Yes, of course, Antrim."
"Not all Ireland, then?"
"I never thought of Ireland as all Ireland."
"O Shane Campbell, you've sailed so much and seen so much--China, they
tell me, and South America, and the Levant. And in the North, Archangel.
I'll warrant you don't know Ireland."
"I never saw much, though, in any place outside Antrim."
"You never saw much in the little towns of the Pale, or gray Dublin,
with the Parliament where Grattan spoke now a money-changer's business
house, and the bulk of Trinity of Goldsmith and Burke--or the great wide
streets where four-in-hands used to go. And Three-Rock Mountain. And
Bray. And the beauty of the Boyne Valley. And the little safe harbors of
the South. And the mountains of Kerry. And all the kingdom of Connacht.
And the great winds of Donegal."
"But it's so eery, deserted, a dead country. All like Tusa hErin was
before you took it."
"If one could take it all, and do to it as I've done to Tusa hErin. By
the way," she asked suddenly, "is Tusa hErin haunted?"
"No, I never heard. Did you see anything?"
"I think I heard something a few times. A piper piping when the storms
rose. A queer little tune--like that thing about McCrimmon."
"_Cha till, cha till, cha till McCrimmon._"
"Are there words to it?"
"_Le cogadh mo sidhe cha till McCrimmon._"
Never, never, never, will return McCrimmon.
With war or peace never will come McCrimmon.
For money or spoil never will return McCrimmon.
He will come no more till the Day of the Gathering.
"A lamenting tune like that, I heard."
"The drone was just the grinding of the waves, the air the wind among
the yews."
"That's possible. But isn't a phantom piper possible, too, in a land of
ghosts?"
§ 8
"A land of ghosts"; the phrase remained with him. And the lighted lamp
and the burning peat fire seemed to invoke like some necromantic ritual.
How often, and he a young boy, had the names trumpeted through his
being. Brian Boru at Clontarf, and the routed red Danes. And with the
routing of the Danes, Ireland had come to peaceful days, and gentle
white-clothed saints arose and monasteries with tolling bells, and great
Celtic crosses.... And gone were the Druids, their cursing stones, their
Ogham script.... Gone old Celtic divinities, Angus of the Boyne, and
Manannan, son of Lir, god of the sea ... and the peace of Galilee came
over the joyous hunting land.... The little people of the hills, with
their pygmy horses, their pygmy pipes, cowered, went into exile, under
the thunder of Rome.... And the land was meek that it might inherit the
kingdom of heaven.... And the English came.... The Earls of Ulster fled
into Spain.... And only here and there was a memory of old-time heroes,
of Cuchulain of the Red Branch; of Maeve, queen of Connacht, in her
fighting chariot, her great red cloak; of Dermot, who abducted Grania
from the king of Ireland's camp, and knew nine ways of throwing the
spear.... The O'Neils remembered Shane, who brought Queen Elizabeth to
her knees with love and terror.... And Owen Roe, the Red.... And the
younger Hugh O'Neil, with his hardbitten Ulstermen at Benburb.... They
had to bring the greatest general of Europe, Cromwell, the lord
protector, to subdue the Ulster clans.... Sullen peace, and the Stuarts
came back, and again Ireland was lulled with their suave manners, the
scent of the white rose.... The crash of the Boyne Water, and King James
running for his life.... And Limerick's siege, and the Treaty, and
Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese setting wing for France.... France
knew them, Germany, Sweden, even Russia.... Ramillies and the
Spaniard knew Lord Clare's Dragoons.... And Fontenoy and the thunder of
the Irish Brigade.... And Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, dead at the
end of the day.... Even to-day Europe knew them: O'Donnel, Duke of
Tetuan and grandee of Spain; and Patrice McMahon, Duke of Magenta, who
had been made president of the Republic of France--they were of the
strain of Lucan's wild Geese....
[Illustration]
And again a sullen peace, and Ulster rang to the trumpet of American
freedom, and the United Irishmen arose in Belfast.... And Napper Tandy
at Napoleon's court, and Hoche with his ships in Bantry Bay.... Wolfe
Tone's mangled throat, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald murdered by his
captors....
What had made these men, sane men--Ulstermen mostly--risk life and face
death so gallantly? What brought out the men of '48 and the men of '67?
What was making little Bigger fight so savagely in Parliament, blocking
the legislation of the empire? What had got under their skins, into
their blood? Surely not for a gray half-deserted city? Surely not for
little bays and purple mountains? Surely not for an illiterate
peasantry, half crazed by the fear of hell?
He tried to see Ireland as a personality, as one sees England, like the
great Britannia on a copper penny, helmeted, full-breasted,
great-hipped, with sword and shield, a bourgeois concept of majesty, a
ponderous, self-conscious personality:
When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main,--
Just like that!
And Scotland he could see as a young woman, in kilt and plaid and
Glengarry cap, a shrewd young woman though, with a very decisive
personality, clinching a bargain as the best of dealers might, a little
forward. He could think of her as the young girl whose hand Charles the
Young Pretender kissed, and who had said to him directly: "I'd liefer
hae a buss for my mou'." "I'd rather have a kiss on my mouth." Scotland
knew what she wanted and got it, a pert, a solid, a likable girl.
But Ireland, Ireland of the gray mists, the gray towns. How to see her?
The country ballad came to him. The "Shan Van Vocht," the poor old
woman, gray, shawled, pitiable, whom her children were seeking to
reinstate in her home with many fields:
And where will they have their camp?
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
And where will they have their camp?
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
In the Curragh of Klidare,
The boys will all be there.
With their pikes in good repair,
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
To the Curragh of Kildare
The boys they will repair,
And Lord Edward will be there,
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
No! Not enough. One might work, sacrifice money, for the Shan Van
Vocht--but life, no! He thought again. Poor Mangan's poem flashed into
his mind and heart....
O my Dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green
They march along the deep.
There's wine from the royal pope
Upon the ocean green.
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My dark Rosaleen!
Ah, that was it! Not pity, but gallant, fiery love. Modern ideals and
ancient chivalry.... A young dark woman with a quivering mouth, with
eyes bright in tears.... There was an old favorite print that portrayed
her, a slim wistful figure resting a pale hand on a mute harp, a great
elk-hound at her feet on guard, and back of her the rising sun shone on
the antique round tower.... A pretty picture, but was it enough? He
tried to envisage her close, concentrated.... There the dog, there the
harp, there the slim form.... But the face.... It seemed to elude him.
And suddenly it flashed at him with abrupt dark beauty ... the face of
the woman of Tusa hErin....
§ 9
The long Ulster twilight had set in, the twilight of bats, gray-blue,
utterly peaceful ... the little chiming of the sea.... Even the wind was
still.... All things drowsed, like a dog before the fire, relaxed but
not asleep.... Beneath her feet the turf was firm ... beneath that the
hush-een-husho of the purple Moyle.... Soon there would be a moon and
her servants would saddle Shane's horse for him and he would ride home
in the Antrim moonlight, eighteen miles of grim road with the friendly
moon above him, and the singing Moyle on his left hand, and on his
right the purple glens.... And the shadows ... the delicate tracery of
the ash-tree, and the tall rowans, and the massive blue shadows of the
cliffs ... a golden and silver land.... A very sweet silence had fallen
between them, as if music had ceased and become restful color.... They
watched the quiet swan....
"I am a little afraid to leave Tusa hErin," she said suddenly and
softly, as though thinking aloud.... "I am like a nun who has been in a
convent.... She is lost in the open world.... Will I ever again find a
place like Tusa hErin?"
"Granya, are you selling Tusa hErin?"
"I have sold it, Shane."
"I am sorry," was all he could say. A little silence, and he could feel
her smiling through the dusk.
"You never ask any questions, Shane?"
"It never occurs to me to ask them, Granya. If any one wants to tell me
a thing, I know they will, and if they don't why should I intrude?"
"I should like to tell you why I sold Tusa hErin. But I cannot. It is my
own secret."
He nodded in the dusk: "I understand."
She turned to him slowly. Her sweet dark head was like some fragrant
shrub.... Her low soft voice had so much life to it....
"I wonder if you know what a friend you are, Shane? If you understand
how peaceful it is to have you here? You are such a sweet fact, Shane,
like the moon."
"I am a friend, Granya...."
"You are, yes.... And you know so little about me, Shane. And I know all
about you.... I know the adventures of your youth.... And of the hard
girl of Louth, and the poor harassed woman of Marseilles.... And of the
little Syrian wife whom you didn't know you loved until you lost her ...
and the gray voyages to the cruel country.... At times I see you like a
little boy hunting the leprechawn.... And then I see your face, your
eyes, and understand how you commanded men in ships.... You are like
some beautiful play, Shane.... I wonder what is the ending?"
"It is already ended, Granya."
"No, Shane. I know, the end hasn't come.... I know you, Shane," she
asked abruptly; "what do you know about me?"
"Nothing much, Granya, except that you are you. I heard you were a great
actress ... and that you had two babies ... who died...."
"Not a great actress, Shane, a very good one, perhaps. I might have been
great one day ... and again, I mighn't. I shall never know.... And I
had two babies.... They were very nice little people, Shane. I was very
fond of them.... But a physical life is a little thing, I have come to
believe, and there is another life, a life of thought and emotion. And
that one is so long.... It seems ages since I was an actress and had two
pretty babies. It seems in another life.... Shane, I don't think I was
alive until my babies died...."
"I don't understand, Granya."
"I mean this, Shane, that things were so casual to me. They came and
they went, and I was what I was, and that was all.... When you were a
boy, Shane, you had what I never had--wonder. I was the child of actors,
Shane, brought up to a mechanical tradition, knowing the business
thoroughly--a part was words and directions, and a salary.... That
things were mimic meant nothing ... do you see? That there was a life
that was unreal, and another life that was real, and then a further
life, too subtle, too profound for the value of words ... one sees
glimpses ... one feels ... and when you try to fix it, it eludes you. Do
you understand? Like your mirage, a little.... That is only a symbol....
Am I talking nonsense, Shane? Anyway, I took things, well, just
casually....
"See the moon rising, Shane?" she paused. She turned again.
"I got married, just got married; he was a good man, Shane. But I didn't
love him. I loved nobody. I got married because he was a suitable and
every one got married. And just the same way I accepted marriage.... And
when he died, I was very sorry, but impersonally sorry ... as if
something nice in the world had been gone ... a swan shot....
"And my little people, Shane, they were very nice little people.... I
was fond of them, but as I might be fond of some terrier dogs.... I was
good to them.... Often I sit here and wonder: Was I good enough? And,
Shane, God is my witness and this garden, and the moon above, there is
nothing I could give them I held back....
"You know how they died, Shane?... I was playing and my house went on
fire, and the servants fled.... When I came back from the theater a
policeman said: 'We got everything all right, Miss O'Malley. Your dogs,
your piano.' ... 'Where did you put the babies?' I asked.... They said:
'What babies?'
"Shane, I knew after a little while that I cried too easily ... a little
sweet rain of affection ... April ... I didn't forget them.... I
wouldn't let myself.... And then I thought: God! if I had loved my
husband my heart would have been like a cracked cup when he died.... And
when my babies died, I could not have lived.... And all I shed of tears
was a little shower of April.... O Shane, one isn't like that when one
is hurt.... Do you remember David, Shane, when he went up to the chamber
over the gate ... and as he went thus he said, 'O my son Absalom, my son
Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!' ...
And he was only a man, Shane....
"Am I bothering you, Shane? No? I am just thinking aloud, with you
there.... I never thought I could, with any human being....
"And then I knew, Shane.... Part of me was not alive.... That was
terrible to know, like finding out a horrible deformity, or knowing you
are insane.... And I began to watch people.... I could say: There is a
woman who knows she is loved, Shane.... There is a radiance in her face,
an indescribable something.... You remember the Bible word 'Shechinah,'
the glory of the Lord!... And there were women with children ... that
had lost themselves in the joy of giving ... would always have that joy
of giving.... And it made me feel strange, shameful ... as though I had
no breasts....
"I must have been a little insane then, Shane. I would go along the
streets, looking at people, and saying: 'That person looks as if they
would understand,' and thinking of stopping them with: 'Please, a
moment, there is something wrong with me!' But I knew they wouldn't
understand ... wouldn't believe it real.... Even if they were kind, all
they would say was: 'It's all imagination ... as if imagination were not
the most terrible thing in the world.... All that is wrong with the poor
mad people is imagination.... Shane, I was like some poor cripple
holding out his deformity to the passers-by, asking for help.... All he
would want was money, but I wanted ... oh, I don't know what I
wanted....
"And, then, Shane, I would go into a church, and pray, and wait,
kneeling there, for something to happen.... It never happened.... Then I
would laugh. People used to turn and look at me.... I began to hate
them. I grew proud. I hated them more and more....
"I said I'd get back to work, and forget it all.... I was made as I was
made.... Accept it.... I thought I could.... I was to play _Lady
Macbeth_ in Nottingham.
"You know how she enters, Shane. She comes in reading a letter. She is
alone on the stage, in _Macbeth's_ castle of Inverness: '"They met me in
the day of success,"' she reads--_Macbeth_ is writing of the witches in
the desert place: '"and I have learned by the perfectest report, they
have more in them than mortal knowledge."' I came on as I always came
on.... And the moment I left the wings, Shane, saw the audience, a
strange thing happened.... Illusion died, not died ... but was dead....
And there I was supposed to be reading a letter that had never been
written by people who had never possibly an existence, before an
audience who had paid a little money to be amused.... I couldn't read
it. I just couldn't....
"Behind me in the wings they were prompting, whispering fiercely.... But
I couldn't.... I stood there.... Then I said: I'll go off the stage. But
I couldn't do that even.... My feet were shackled to the ground.... I
seemed to have been charmed.... My hand fell to my side.... And then a
panic came. My knees hit one another. My teeth chattered ... awful,
awful....
"There was such a silence. The audience stirred, whispered.... Then some
one laughed.... Never laugh, Shane, suddenly, with me.... I crumpled up.
They rang the curtain down ... I stole away to Ireland.... Whenever I
am not hating--enough, the thought of that laugh comes to me...." She
shivered on her seat.
"That was only nervousness, Granya. Somebody got nervous and laughed."
"No, Shane, no."
"They talk of people laughing in the face of death. It's just a nervous
action, Granya."
"I tell you, no, Shane." She grew vehement. "It's a cruel country,
England. And Shane, they hate us Irish. As long as we are pleasant,
witty, as long as we are buffoons ... but let us be human beings, Shane,
and they hate us."
"Don't be silly, Granya!"
"I'm not silly, Shane. I know. They hate us because we have something
they have not. The starved Irish peasant is higher than the English
peer. He has a song in his heart, a gay song or a sad song, and his eyes
see wonders...."
"But, Granya, we are only a little people, and they all but rule the
world.... You are wrong. They don't hate us."
"Do you remember Haman, Shane; Haman who had everything:
"'And Haman told them of ... all the things wherein the king had
promoted'; and he said: 'Yet all this availeth me nothing so long as I
see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.'"
"Shane, do you remember how Haman died?"
"Granya!"
She rose. Her hands stretched out to the Irish hills. Her voice took on
the throbbing of drums:
"Oh! the Erne shall run red
With redundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flame wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal and slogan-cry
Make many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!"
"Poor Granya!" he said. He caught and kissed her hand.
She let her other fall on his shoulder for an instant.
"Good night, Shane!" she said abruptly. She moved swiftly toward the
house through the yew-trees. In her pale dress against the moonlit turf,
between the dark trees, she was like some old, heart-wringing ghost....
§ 10
He brought back from Tusa hErin that night a sense of dread. What in
God's name had Granya done? To what committed herself? There were rumors
abroad that the men of '67 were not dead yet.... In America, in the
hills of Kerry, in Galway, there was plotting ... not glorious, but
sinister plotting.... God! had they enmeshed her?
He had three times heard her sing the old Ulster ballad of General
Munro:
Up came Munro's sister, she was well dressed in green,
And his sword by her side that was once bright and keen.
And she said to the brave men who with her did go,
"Come, we'll have revenge for my brother Munro!"
He had looked on that as only a queer romantic gesture, but with what
she said last night, it occurred to him that there was a deeper motif to
it all.... She was often in Dublin these days.... Did they? Had they?...
If it had been the Jacobite times, or '98 or even '48, he would not have
minded. The Irish might call these Irish rebellions, but in reality
they were world affairs. James and the Prince of Orange were the clash
of the ideal of courtliness and tradition worn to a thin blade and of
the stubborn progress of pulsing thought. And '98 was the echo of the
surge for liberty--the frenzy of France and the stubborn Yankee
steel.... And '48 was another breathing of the world.... Even '67 he
would not have minded. Sixty-seven was a gallant romantic rally, a dream
of pikes amid green banners, and men drilling by moonlit rivers....
But to-day was different.... Revenge was in the air, and revenge was no
wild justice, as an old writer had said. Revenge was an evil
possession.... An exhausting, sinister mood.... The men who would fight
this modern battle, if battle there was to be one, were dark scowling
men.... The amenities of battle, the gallantry of flags meant nothing to
them. They would shoot from behind ditches in the dark.... In America
was talk of dynamite--an idealist using a burglar's trick.... There was
no gallantry that way....
And besides, it wasn't an Irish war. It was a matter of agriculture....
A war of peasants against careless landlords, Irish themselves in the
main, who had fled to England to avoid the suicidal monotony of Irish
country life, and lost their money in the pot-houses and gambling-dens
of London, and turned to their tenants for more, forgetting in the
glamour of London the poverty of the Irish bogs.... It was contemptible
to squeeze the peasants as a money-lender squeezes his victims, but the
peasants' redress, the furtive musket and horrible dynamite, that was
terrible. God, what a mess!... And had Granya been caught into that evil
problem, a kingfisher among cormorants?
And if she had what was he going to do about it?
What could he do? What right had he to meddle with her destiny? Friendly
they had become, close sweet friends--the thought of her was like the
thought of the hills purple with heather,--but friendship and destiny
are a sweet curling wave and a gaunt cliff. They were two different
people, independent. Shane Campbell and the Woman of Tusa hErin.
§ 11
She had been distraught all the evening. Merry, feverishly merry at
times, and again silent, her eyes far off, her mouth set. She rose
suddenly from the piano she was playing, and looked at him. Standing,
above the light of the candles, her face and head were like some dark
soft flower.
"Shane, you are a very true friend of mine, aren't you?"
"Yes, Granya."
"If I wanted a very great favor, would you consider it?"
"Not consider, but do it."
"Yes, but the risk," she faltered. "I hardly dare--"
"What risk? What are you talking about, Granya?" A thought struck him.
"Is it money? Don't be silly and talk about risk! Anything I can give
you is yours, and welcome!"
"It's not money, Shane. And thank you! It's--it's this--"
"Yes, Granya."
"It's this, Shane. Would you--would you bring a ship for me from St.
Petersburg to Lough Foyle, very quietly?"
"What kind of a ship?"
"A ship, just a ship, a sailing-ship."
"What's in the ship?"
She paused. "Guns, Shane."
"No, Granya. I won't."
"Oh, well," she sat down, "I shouldn't have asked."
"Granya," he walked over and caught her shoulder, "don't be foolish."
"I'm not foolish, Shane. If I am, it's done now." She smiled.... The air
crashed out beneath her fingers. Her voice rang:
In came the captain's daughter--the captain of the Yeos--
Saying, "Brave United Irishmen, we'll ne'er again be foes.
One thousand pounds I'll give to you, and go across the sea;
And dress myself in man's attire and fight for liberty!"
"You'll not move one foot from Tusa hErin!"
"O Shane, Tusa hErin's no longer mine, and I've got to go."
"Because the ship and the guns are mine, Shane," she smiled quietly; "my
present."
With a terrific smash of the fist he broke in the top of the piano. The
wires jangled in pandemonium. The candles fell to the floor.
"Hell's fire and God's damnation!" He swore at her. "You fool!"
She rose, her breasts heaving. Her eyes flashed.
"You've no right to speak to me like that, Shane Campbell."