was remembering Moyra, the wife he had, and he no older than a boy....
Like some strange fascination, ugly dream that came to him.... And
queerly enough, the picture of Moyra's mother, the old wife of Louth,
was clearer in his mind than his wife.... Moyra was like some troubled
cloud, a thing that blotted out sunshine for a while, through no fault
of its own, but the mother was sinister. An old woman keening, and the
breath of whisky on her, and her eyes sobering in a bitter greed.... Why
should Moyra have died? Fate: the act of God: whatever you care to call
it. Why should he have been dragged into it, Shane wondered. If he
hadn't, what would have happened? He didn't know. But he knew this, that
in the marriage to Moyra he had been gripped by the shoulder, and looked
in the eyes, and a voice had said: "Wait. All is not wonder and mystery.
Life is not a child's toy. You must learn."
Poor Moyra, he could hardly remember anything but her pleading,
half-inimical eyes, her mouth that twisted easily to anger, her shame
that her hands and feet were uncouth. And now she had loved him. And now
hated him. He remembered one May evening when suddenly she had caught
his hand and kissed it, and pressed it to her heart. And later that
night she had cursed bitterly at him, saying black was the day she had
set eyes on him, and black the day she married him, and her face was
twisted into agonized ugliness. And when he went to sea a few days later
he had found a symbol of her religion, an _Agnus Dei_, sewed into his
coat to protect him against the terrors of the deep waters.
And she had died, poor tortured Moyra, suddenly. Why? Had What had
fashioned her thought: That's not rightly done? No. That's poor. Wait.
I'll do it over....
Ah, well, God give her peace, wherever she wandered! How many years had
it taken to get over, not her death, but their being married? A long
time. Seven bitter years. He might have turned into a bitter, fierce old
man, hating all things. The whole thing had been like a cruelty to a
happy wondering child. And he had closed his heart, resentful,
afraid.... And then had come Claire-Anne.
Once he had been a child with wondering gray eyes, and life had made him
blind as a mole, secretive as a badger, timid of the world as the owl is
timid of daylight. The shock of Claire-Anne, and he was cognizant of
great enveloping currents of life. Wonder he had known, and bitterness
he had known, but the immense forces that wind the stars as a clock is
wound he had not known.... And with Claire-Anne they had burst about him
like thunder. They had played around him as the corposant flickers
around the mast-head of a ship.... Poor Claire-Anne! The miracle of her.
She was like some flowering bush in an arctic waste.... Her wonderful
scared eyes, her tortured self.... It was a very strange thing that her
end did not bother him.... A gesture of youth, that sudden snap of the
wrist with the poor dead prince's dagger.... He had been very honest
about it, and it did not bother him, any more than it would have been on
his conscience to have shot a crippled horse.... Once it had seemed to
him unnecessarily histrionic, but now he knew it was merciful.... Her
spirit had gone too far ever to return to normal life....
But the little woman of the East, that did bother him. In boyhood he had
known the wonder of life. In youth he had known there existed sordid
tragedy. In young manhood passion had crashed like lightning.... And
then he had thought he knew all. He had considered himself the master of
life and said: "I will do such and such a thing and be happy. Enjoy
this, because I know how to enjoy it. To the wise man, all is a
pleasant hedonism." It struck, him at the time how terribly foolish and
piteous great men were.... Jesus dead on a crucifix; Socrates and the
hemlock bowl; the earnest Paul beheaded at Rome.... A little wisdom, a
little callousness would have avoided all this.... How satisfied he was,
how damned petty! His little bourgeois life, his harem of one pretty
girl, his nice ship ... smug as a shop-keeper ... and then life, fate,
whatever you call it, had tripped him up, abashed, beaten, through the
medium of a mountebank wrestler whom he had conquered in a street
brawl....
[Illustration]
And after seven years of blackness, and despair. The long reach to
Buenos Aires, and the querulous sea-birds mocking him: On the land is
desolation and pettiness and disappointment.... And what is there on the
sea? The great whale is dying; the monster who ranged the deep must go
because men must have oil to cast up their accounts by the light of it,
and women must have whalebone for stays.... The sleek seal with brown
gentle eyes must die that harlots shall wear furs.... And there never
was a Neptune or a Mannanan mac Lir.... There were only stories from a
foolish old book.... The sun shines for a moment on the green waters,
and your heart rises.... But remember the blackness of the typhoon,
and how the cold left-hand wind rages round the Horn.... And the coral
islands have great reefs like knives, and the golden tropics lure to
black lethal snakes.... Fool! Fool! We have ranged the clouds, and there
is no good-willing God.... There is only coldness and malignant
things.... So cried the querulous sea voices, and they tempted him: "All
you have known is desolation and vanity. Better to have died a boy while
the meadows they were green.... All before you is emptiness," they
mocked. And they came nearer: "Behold, the night is black, the ocean is
of great depth, immeasurable, the ship plows onward under a quartering
breeze. A little step, a little step leeward, a vault over the taffrail
as over a little ditch, and there will be peace and rest. Look at the
water flow past. No problems there.... God! how close he had been to it,
in the seven black years, the long voyage from Liverpool, and the sordid
town at the end.... How close! And then Alan Donn, God rest him! had
died, and he had gone back to Ireland, and met Granya, and been foolish
as a boy in his teens. A shipload of rifles to free Ireland! What a
damned fool he had felt when they had simply shooed him away!"
He thought to himself with a little smile that out of the wisdom of his
life had always come sorrow, and out of his foolishness had come joy....
Granya, and peace, and meaning to his life.... A very foolish thing it
had been, that expedition.... But he wouldn't have it laughed at, nor
laugh at it himself.... Over the mists of the past the thing took
glamour.... He had been more moved than he had allowed himself to
believe then. And here in his New York drawing-room, remembering the old
heroic-comic gesture, and remembering tragedies of material that were
glorification of spirit, he thought for an instant he had solved the
mystery of Ireland, ... Ireland was a drug.... Out of the gray sweeping
stones, and the bogs of red moss and purple water, and from the proud
brooding mountains, and the fields green as a green banner, there
exhaled some subtle thing that made men lose sense of worldly
proportion.... It was in their mothers' milk, a subtle poison. It crept
into their veins, and though they might leave Ireland, yet for
generations would it persist.... It gave them the gift of laughter, and
contempt for physical pain, and an egregious sensitiveness.... So that
the world wondered ... their wars were merry wars, and their poetry
sobbed, like a bereaved woman.... They threw their lives away
recklessly, and a phrase meant much to them.... Perhaps they knew that
action counted nothing, and emotion all.... Ah, there he was losing
himself!
At any rate, Ulster Scot though he was, he didn't regret it--apart even
from its bringing him Granya. Perhaps at the news of it, some hard
English official might feel a twitch at his heart-strings, and
remembering that the Irish were as little children, be kind to some
reprobate Celt.... An action had so many antennæ. One never knew where
its effects stopped, if ever....
A foolish thing that had brought him joy where wisdom brought him
sorrow! Strange. Until then he had been existent, sentient, but never
until then alive. Wonder, disillusionment, passion, tragedy, despair. In
each of these moods he had had a glimpse, now and then, of an immense
universal design, as a bird may have it, and its throat quivering with
song, or as a salmon may have it, and he flinging himself tremendously
over a weir. He knew it, as a tree knows when the gentle rains of April
come. But that he existed, as an entity apart from trees, from salmon,
and from birds, he had not known until Granya, broken, had crept weeping
into his arms....
"Give me strength, Shane, for God's sake. Give me strength, or I die!"
And somewhere, out of something, some esoteric, where he had plucked
strength and given it to her, and he knew it wasn't from his body, or
from his mind, or his spirit even, he had given it. He had, from some
tremendous storehouse, got life for her, got peace, so that she
fluttered like a pigeon and sighed and grew calm.... And in that moment
he knew he was alive.
He tried to figure it to himself in terms of concrete things, and he
said: "If I were a racing-boat now, I would decide how to make a certain
buoy, and my mind would figure how to get there, what tack to make, the
exact moment of breaking out the spinnaker rounding the mark. Perhaps my
mind is nothing, something I use just now, as I use my body. For the
hand on the rudder is not I. It is something I am using to hold that
rudder. As I might lash it with a rope, if I were so minded. And my eyes
are just something I use. They are just like the indicators on the
stays; they and the indicators are one, to tell me how the wind shifts.
All that is not I. It is something I use. Perhaps even my mind is
something I use, as I use my hands. But somewhere, somewhere within me,
is I."
And a great sense of exaltation and wonder and dignity swept through
every fiber of him at the thought of this: new-born he was, clean as a
trout, naked as a knife, strong as the sea. He was one of the lords of
the kindly trees, masters of the pretty flowers: the little animals of
God were given him, it being known he would not abuse the gift.... And
though lightning should strike him yet he would not die, but put off his
body like a rent garment.... And though he were to meet the savage bear
in the forest, and have no means of conquering it, yet were he to become
aware of this entity of life in him, he would smile at the thought of
physical danger, and the great furry thing would recognize that dignity
and be abashed.... And there was no more wonder, or mystery, or fear,
only beauty.... The moon was not any more a mystery, but a place to be
trodden one day, were his place to be there.... And the furthest star
was no further than the further island on terrestrial seas; one day he
would reach that star, somehow, as now he could the furthest island with
head and hand.... Though death should smite his body he would not die.
§ 4
A strange thing was this, that Granya had always known this life. It was
so certain to her that it was no more a wonder than rain is, or
sunshine, or the rising of the moon....
He had spoken of it to her one evening in the dusk. She had smiled, her
grave beautiful smile.
"Of course I know, Shane. I always knew."
"But how did you know, Granya?"
"I think," she said, "I think all good women know, Shane. Men are so
complete, so welded. Mind and body seem to be themselves; the body and
mind function so that one doesn't see that there is anything within that
directs them. They are compact. But a woman is diffuse, Shane. Her mind
is not a man's mind; it is a thing she can use when she wants to and
then forget.... When women sit and think, you know, they aren't
thinking. They are feeling, Shane. It comes like a little wind. There
may be a place by the sea-shore, sparse heather and sandy dunes, and the
little waves come chiming, and the curlew calls. And you sit. And a very
strange peace comes to you, so that in a low soft voice you sing a verse
of song.... Or it may come on the cold winds of winter, through the
ascetic trees.... But women are always cognizant of God.... Even bad
women, Shane, who mistake the Unknown God for the true.... And a woman
is very much apart from her body. It is just a nuisance at times, or at
times a thing of beauty, or at times a thing one expresses something
with, something that is too deep for words, as with a violin. And to
some it is a curse.... But a body is always apart from one, and a mind
is, too.... Shane, you have seen very beautiful old women.... Women with
a beauty that is like a flame that does not burn, that have a light
within them somewhere ... that is not of the mind or of the body ...
that is of these things worn thin so that they themselves show.... See,
heart?"
"But Granya, why must a man find out, and a woman know?"
"Shane of my heart, because it is necessary to women that they may live.
A man can live without knowing God, as blind men live without ever
seeing the moon. For they have minds, Shane, pursuits--the amassing of
money, the little light of fame, that is only a vanity--not real.... But
Shane, no matter how hard a man has to work, a woman has more terrible
things.... There is no man on earth can understand the bearing of
children.... And there is no man, were he to think of it, try to know,
but would rather die than submit to what he thinks that terror.... And
yet, Shane, it is not so much.... After a little agony, when one goes
into the dark, olive valley, and strength seems to go from you in great
waves, until you are robbed of strength as a man may be robbed of
blood.... Then one goes out of one's self and gets it.... The beauty in
the face of young mothers, of brides. That is not body or mind, Shane,
that is their selves. This was the Eleusinian mystery, Shane, that women
know that God lives, and that they cannot die....
"See, Shane, the stars are out. The dew is falling. And on the morrow
you must be afoot early. Shall we go in?"
* * * * *
Once, before Alan Oge was born, a wave of panic swept over him, and he
caught her hand and looked at her:
"What is it, Shane?"
"If--if you should die--"
"I shall not die, Shane. I know. I shall not die."
"But how do you know?"
"I just know, Shane. That's all."
"O Granya, it seems very terrible, that one day one of us should die."
"Dear Shane, it is not very terrible. If I should die, my heart, I
should know I would not have long to wait. And I should be with you,
Shane, even dead, when I could.... And after days of trouble suddenly
one morning you would know you had had a good night's sleep, and that
would be because I had come to you in the night and had kissed you, and
laid a dim hand on you.... And sometimes, in difficulties, you would
feel a sudden rush of strength, and that would be because I was beside
you ... dear heart, dear Shane."
"I am so much older, Granya. I shall be the first to die."
"If you are the first to go, Shane, I shall be like some wife of the
Crusades, of an old time when a dream meant more than a pocketful of
money ... and men were glad to go, and women glad to send them. I shall
sit by my fire, and when you come I shall talk to you in my heart ...
saying little foolish sweet things.... And when I need you, I shall go
out into the soft night, and call, and you will hear my voice in the
Milky Way ... and God will let you come ... my darling...."
"Granya!"
"And maybe--sweet, sweet thought--He will let us go together...."
§ 5
Here was a great fact, that he lived, but with the fact came a problem:
Why? If within him there existed this sentient, supple, strong thing,
and it did exist, for what end was it designed? It was not enough to
have faith, to know one lived to save one's soul.... That was selfish,
and selfishness was an unpardonable thing, the sin against the Holy
Spirit. That has ordained there should be one occult purpose.... No,
everything had a reason.... The sheltering trees, the ocean from whose
womb came the great clouds that nurtured the green grass: the winds that
were like gigantic brooms. The wise and the good labored, and never
shirked.... Each man must give according to his station, the strong man
of strength, the wise one of wisdom; the one who knew beauty must give
it somehow, not huddle it like a miser's hoard.... All men must work;
that was as natural an instinct as the law that men must eat: and work
did not mean grinding, but justifying one's existence fully.... None may
hold back, for that is ignoble, and all that is ignoble dies, dies and
is used again.... The murderer's dead body may nurture a green bay-tree,
such beautiful economy nature has.... And it seemed to him that the
souls of dark men were used, too, but used as negations, and that was
death.... Perhaps they provided the sinister thunderstorms, the terrible
typhoon, the cold polar breezes, the storms off the Horn.... They might
be the counterpoint of nature's harmony.... But this was going past
knowledge, and past knowledge of heart and head one must not go.... But
of one thing he was certain; all that is ignoble dies....
He had always known from the time he was a young boy that man must do
something.... It was not sufficient to make a little money and sit down
and spend it, as a dog finds a bone and gnaws it, or buries it, in a
solitary place.... For a long time he had thought it sufficient to do
the little commerce of the world.... But that was not sufficient.... In
Buenos Aires he had felt ridiculous, as a giant might feel ridiculous
carrying little stones for the making of a grocer's house.... Ashamed, a
little resentful! He was like a dumb paralytic with flaming words in his
heart and brain, and he could not write them, not even speak them
aloud....
But all his life this had worried him, the getting of work to do. And
when he came to America with Granya he had come with great plans. Ships
and ship-building were the only things he knew, and he had thought with
others that the great clipper days might be revived. Iron steamships
were grasping the swift commerce of the world, but there were errands
great wooden ships under skysails might yet be supreme in, the grain
trade of San Francisco, for instance. And it might be possible, so he
had dreamed, that once more the great pre-war clippers should be the
pride of the new idealistic commonwealth ... and what had come from his
hand? A half-dozen three-masted schooners, and not very good schooners
either, being too long in the hull for strength.... And nobody seemed to
care.... From Belfast and the Clyde, iron boats swarmed like flies....
And people were impatient.... They did not care to wait if a ship were
blown from her course.... They wanted ships on time.... People had
laughed at him, calling him crazy, and saying he was trying to stem
progress.... And then they had done worse.... They had smiled and said
it was a hobby of his.... He knew it was no use. He quit.... And Granya
had been very tender.
"You mustn't mind, Shane. It was very lovely of you to dream and act....
But it is not intended. Don't take it to heart, dearest."
"All my life, Granya, I have been trying to do something, and I always
fail."
"Dear Shane, you never fail. The success is in yourself, not outside of
yourself. That is all."
"Ah, yes, Granya, but that is not enough. That seems so selfish. So many
men have done so much for the world, and I have done nothing. Even the
old charwoman on her knees scrubbing floors has done more. She has given
her best, and her best has been useful."
"But, Shane, you must wait. Have patience."
"I am old, Granya, and have done nothing."
"Wait, Shane, wait. I am going to dim the light, and blur all these
things around us, and tell you a secret thought has been deep in my
heart for years. There will be we two just in the room--absolute. And
come nearer the fire, dear Shane, where I can just see where your hand
is, and put my hand on it when the thought makes me feel like a child in
a great wood.... Shane....
"You know your charts, the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of
the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon
and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star
you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations,
the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear
and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern Cross
... and the little stars you have no names for, but mark them on your
chart with quaint Greek letters.... Our little world is so little, so
pathetically little in this immensity.... It is as though we were living
on the smallest of islands, like some of the islands you have known and
you on board ship following the moon down the West--Saba, where the
Dutch are in the Caribbean, or Grenada, the very little island.... And
on that island they know only vaguely that such great lands as Africa
and Europe and Asia are.... They don't know it from experience.... But
Peking of the bells exists, and stately Madrid, and Paris that is a
blaze of light, and London where the fog rolls inland from the sea....
Heart of my heart, how terrible it is that cannot, will not see,
understand.... And they say: Well, we don't see it. Here we were born
and here we die.... And they say: Show us somebody who has been
there.... They forget how long is the journey and how a man may have
affairs in the crowning cities.... Dearest, I am losing myself, but I
know.
"And this is what I want to tell you, Shane, that when you die--oh,
such an ugly word that is, Shane, for the bud bursting into flower--when
it is your time to leave here, Shane, there will be a place for you, not
idleness at all.... All the stars, Shane, the valleys of the moon....
There is work, Shane dear. Nothing is perfect, else there should be no
reason for life. There must be stars that are old, as Dublin is old, and
need vitality.... There must be stars that are young and cruel, as this
city is young and cruel, and need sweet strength.... But I am very
presumptuous, Shane, to try and fathom the Great Master's plan.... It is
so colorless--oh, there is no word or symbol for it, Shane.... But there
is a Great Master and there is a Plan....
"Heart, I tell you this, showing all my weakness of thought. You know it
is the truth, too.... But I tell you I know, so that our two selves'
knowing may make it a little stronger in us....
"O Shane, I have no logic, but I know.... And all the logicians in the
world could not shame me to myself. All the reason in the world could
not shake me. It would be artillery shot against the wind.... A star is
a promise to me, Shane, and the wind a token, and the new moon just a
pleasant occurrence, like the coming of spring....
"Shane, I know all this. I know it not for myself but for you.... I
know three things: I know God lives, I know I love you, I know we shall
not die.... I love you, Shane, and there is no shame on me telling it to
you, for you are as my heart and I am as yours.... When I see you at
times there comes over me a sweetness from head to foot, and at times
when I see you, a great dignity comes to me, because you love me, and
your love is good.... I know there is a place in the coming days, and I
know I shall be with you, wherever you go....
"Here in this dim room, Shane, I know these things. Outside is the
world, that is forgetting or that doesn't care, or will not see. Here in
this dim room, with the red of the fire turning to a gentle yellow, I
know it better than the people in churches, that kindly God lives, that
I love you, Shane, and that we shall not die...."
§ 6
It seemed to him that he must have been in reverie for ages, so much had
he thought sitting there, so much felt.... He had been like a gull
poised on the wing, and now he dropped gently to the calm waters.... New
York to-day, and in two weeks Antrim, and then a rest.... And then
wider spaces than he had ever known, greater adventure.... A day would
come when he would be called, as though some one had said: Shane
Campbell! and then a gesture that made a horse stumble, or a flaw of
wind that would turn over a boat.... Click!...
And it seemed to him that it would be not only sweeter, but wiser to die
in Antrim.... New York was no place for a man like him to die. For an
old man, weary with life's work, there would be gentle hands, and soft
caring, and guidance for tired eyes.... But for a man young spiritually,
strong, there would be no coddling.... He would be expected to jump
forward at the call.... And to go through the maze of smoke and dust,
and the evil jungles of the air one sensed in a great city would
be--waste of time and energy.... In Antrim when the call would come
there would be the clear high air, the friendly glens, the great
encouraging mountains, and the Moyle laughing in the moonlight: Don't be
embarrassed! Don't be afraid!