of the tribe is dead. Sons were not born—only daughters. The
genealogy of our people is clear back to the days of Diarmod of
the Foreigners, who is in hell if there be one! The women of our
house married scholars, and into families of scholars. The record
of that blood was the record of a province, and there was no
generation of it lost.
I am different from my family. They were fair, I am dark as our
ancient Spanish cousins. My mother wept often on my birthdays
but would not say why to me. Later I learned that I was born the
night of the death of my father. There were times when she cried
out that I was born with his brains, and my questions of ancient
things frightened her, for I spoke as a child of things I could
not know as a child. She thought I had “the sight,” and she was
frightened by it, for she was a quiet, God-fearing woman, with
only dread on her for the side of life she could not see.
Because of that dread I grew silent about many things. I wanted
to ask why, when I closed my eyes to sleep, I so often rose above
my body and drifted there, held only by the thin invisible cord,
waiting for the slumber of the body to release me until I could
go free—where?
I wanted to ask why certain people, though dressed in sober
friese, yet had rainbow rays of light visible—while others had
clear white—and others the color of gloom.
I wanted to ask of the faint, sweet music of harps, heard in
nights of clear cold and white snow under the moon—often I was
out at dawn to find track of the musicians whose playing was
unearthly sweet.
But I was only a boy, and I had learned to watch and learn if
others were in the same wonder, but it was of no use. There were
no tracks in the snow, and no one seemed to me to have ears or
eyes for my mysteries.
So I grew to live much within myself, and my mother was a lonely
woman. When the father of Raymond wed with her, it brought more
content to us both. I think she feared the care of me as I grew
older, and Raymond was the sort she could best understand.
It was after the marriage that I first saw the land of our
ancient people. In Galway my mother’s husband had bought an old
estate, and Raymond had great joy in plans for showing me the old
castle—the secret dungeon—the hidden stairway and subterranean
gallery whose exit they had not yet discovered.
That was the time I had the first glimmer of light as to where I
had flown while my body slept!
For I turned to the hidden stairway before Raymond could tell me,
and I took them to the ruins of an old monastic cell, and told
them to lift a slab there to find the underground entrance—and it
was there as I said.
My mother wept when they told her. I said I had dreamed it.
In looking over the ancient documents of transfer of the lands,
its history was clear to the days of Edward the Third, when
a beautiful daughter of the Saxon owner had become a court
favorite, and left the wilds of Connaught to carry her graces
to the eastern market. The name of her was Enora. I was reading
Latin by that time and found her name in our own records
by Kearmit. Raymond came by some deeds giving names of her
descendants, and it was a game of interest to trace them down
through the centuries.
Happiness was with me in that place; I had never heard the Gaelic
until I heard it there, and the knowing of it seemed breathed
into me with the air, for I was soon delving in every corner
for songs of the ancient bards and seeking out old singers, and
hearing over and over their tales of the breaking of Ireland’s
harps by England’s laws that her music might be killed forever.
The tales were sad enough, but I was only a lad and no sadness
stayed on me, for I was in more happiness than ever before.
In my early childhood I had been long ill, and debarred from
ranging in freedom the field or the mountains, but in old
half-Spanish-looking Galway I walked into new life—and new
strength. The nights and days were filled with the harmonies of
mere living. I was as one who has hungered long for full warm
heartbeats and who grows drunken with the rhythmic music of that
pulsing—all the world and the harmonies of it were as chorus to
me.
I enjoyed life with every breath of me—not as my mother and
Raymond did, in quiet and serene, but with the lilt of a singing
gladness that was but a reflection of every flower—an echo of
every bird-song and the joyous, thunderous rhythm of the tide
with its menace of mysteries.
The Gaelic came to me as though in sudden remembrance, and I
lived in the very spirit of the ancient legends of the Land
Wonderful where turrets of sunken cities are seen in a clear day
at the ebb, and the magic island of the “Land of the Ever Young”
rises above the waters to the west every seven years.
Ireland is the tragic “different” land from every other. The
wish is with me that I could tell to you the influences in that
land—the inherited influences by which an unread peasant can
recite the loves and battles of Queen Maeve, and the flight of
Grania and her Diarmod, as if the passions of them had been in
our own day rather than twenty centuries back in the shadows.
Every well and river, every hill and battle-plain, has its legend
of god or goddess, of the Danaans or the later wondrous Fionn
and the Comrades. Nothing is old there, because the spirit of it
is young. It is why the music of it has had soul enough to reach
through the world—Teuton and Briton and Gaul borrowed and renamed
the music of Ireland and the legends of Ireland, even while
Britain smashed Ireland’s harps lest the bards keep alive forever
her kinship with the Spirits of Beauty.
Only fragments of the music are left to her—death and exile were
the penalties for giving shelter to a bard, or giving ear to
his harping. An old man of Laherdane told me a human life had
been paid twice over for every note of every ancient Irish song
preserved to us in this day. All that is left are a few airs to
which the moderns strive to fit words, or a few verses to which
they strive to fit music, yet the beauty of the fragments are
worth all the strivings.
By this you will see that, as a lad, I was overswept by the great
wave of ancientness of the land—and the charm of it. You have
seen Raymond, and you will know without any telling that he lived
beside me for years, yet never saw the Ireland I was enthralled
by. We had the different eyes and the different heart for its
reading.
I thought often enough how strange it was that while he was near
double the years of me, yet it was the new things of today
he was alive to: the trading of nations, and the financing of
American mines, and such like, with never a thought of even the
policies of kingdoms further in the past than his own generation;
while I lay hidden from my English tutor on the cliffs above the
bay, and tried to picture the gray-blue mist by which the magical
Danaans made a wall between themselves and the foreign invaders
while their hidden palaces under the green hills were being made
ready for their using.
I knew the magical and majestic Danaans of the land had dwindled
in earth-power with the centuries, until in our day they are
spoken of as fairies, or earth-spirits, but that lessened none of
their interest to me. They had, for some mystic reason, drawn the
veil of the invisible over their life. But the life did endure,
and was often close akin to certain living mortals.
For hours I would lie thus in the grasses, listening to the
whisper of winds and waves, singing with them at times, listening
for echoes, until the soft flight of velvet-winged bats from the
cliff caves sent me home in the dark to tell my mother and my
tutor the many echoes of ancient years I had heard out there with
only sea and sky, bird and wind voices for my telling.
I did not mean to speak falsely when I averred, despite lectures
from my tutor and scoldings from my mother, that the birds did
speak, and that the wind did bring whispering voices which none
but I could hear. I heard them, felt their presence, and at times
the veil between this and that other life was so thin that I
could see the glad sunlight on faces that came—I knew not whence!
Slowly, as I grew older, they faded—as do the many other dreams
that come to children.
But the echo of the whispers remained; through all of life they
have seemed to prepare me for what was to come. And if my
sentence from the court is death, I feel that the same voices
will greet me again, and will say: “Rest you now; the time has
been long to you since you wandered away. Your work in that life
is over. Rest you with us.”
So I grew up, my mind full of fancies; and they were odd and
foolish, and frightening to my mother.
“Sorrow of me,” she would say, scoldingly. “You are like a
changeling of different blood. You do naught but dream in
idleness, and see unchristian things that are the outgrowth of
lazy brains.”
It would be of no use in the world to tell her that at times I
dreamed true—like the secret stairway, and the lost underground
hall to which I had found the lichen-covered door. To say
aught to her of these things in argument only sent her to her
prayers—or to her priest, who deemed me but a hopeless liar, and
an unrepentant one.
Only Raymond did not scold. “Never you mind, mother, he is but
a boy,” I have often heard him say; “and why should he do aught
but dream and sing old songs if his happiness is in that? He has
income enough to be at no one’s expense but his own.”
In our house were many old books of the tribes of the Cumanac,
and quaint old pictures of our people. My mother never looked
at them. She only had care of them because her mother had known
them as treasures. Kings had been of our family in the past, and
mystical druid rulers in the dim shadow ages. The old legends
and traditions over which I pored as I grew older told me of the
beauty of our women, the bravery of our men, and the high esteem
in which they were held even by their enemies of the east and
north. They lived in the feudal grandeur of those days—kings in
their own territory.
Then the curse came!
All those tales of a life so different to that around me made a
lasting impression on my imagination. I seemed to live in the
lives of those who were gone centuries before I was born. And
when alone in some old room of the castle with my books about me,
or alone in the hills in the night with my memories of dreams
about me, I had strange temptings at times. If my self-confidence
had equaled my convictions, I would have turned scribe and
supplied many missing chapters in the old histories. Strangely
enough, it was not history at all that I wanted to write, but it
was the lost songs of Ancient Ireland, and they held themselves
high in the air—the words never came near—only fugitive melodies
and the thrilling harp!
I think now I should have written the history as it came clear in
my mind, and at times in scribbling idleness to my pen’s point.
The flashes of the ancient life were as a schooling for my mind
and my hand. I think the songs would have followed if I had done
good work.... It is my grief that I have lost the chance for this
life. They come not again to a closed door.
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When I was seventeen my mother died. That left Raymond and me all
alone, for his father had already gone the Way. He was like a father
to me always in his care and the quietness of his love. One day he
came to me with some papers he had found in an old desk. My mother,
and her mother before her, had taken no heed to them; but they
concerned a property in Scotland to which he said I was the heir
through an ancient branch of our family.
“What will we do?” I asked him. Scotch cousins did not seem near to
me. That people had helped break the harps.
“I must go myself and see about it,” he said; “it is not a large
property and may have gone to the Crown through being unclaimed. But
by going I may at least find in it some old books such as you fancy,
or some old pictures for you to dream over.”
That is what he said: “some old books or old pictures for you to
dream over.”
Aye! The dreams he made true for me by that going!
In that way he went from me to be back in a month, but letter after
letter came, pleading business details to be arranged. My claim was
made good, but it required much attention to settle the matters
connected with it. So time went on until many weeks had passed. Then
at last came a letter which explained all, and it said:
“Fergal, my brother—
“I have news to tell you—news I hope you will be glad to hear.
Tomorrow I am to be married. It all seems very sudden to send
you word thus, but she has been left alone in the world by
death—herself the last of the ancient family of the Galway
castle, who, I have heard you say, were your forefathers’ enemies
ages ago. Her name is Ednah; she is the last of their line, and
you the last of yours. I give her to you as a sister, and thus we
will bury the old hates of Erin and Albion.”
I read this letter as in a dream. I had never thought of the marrying
of Raymond. I re-read it, trying to remember all the tales of our old
feud with her people. Why did that one of Randuff and White Enora
come first and keep uppermost in my mind? Parts of the others were
forgotten It alone remained undimmed in my memory. I tried to put it
aside and think only of Raymond. I thought I succeeded, at least in
the daytime.
I was out on the cliffs when they arrived, and did not see them at
once. I came in vexed with myself for forgetting the hour he was to
come. I found them in a room where our family portraits were hung.
I could see them through the door—he so large and massive, she so
slight and fair. His arm was about her shoulders.
I hesitated; I was only a lad, and our family had been one with
family affections, but little of outward sign given of them—no
kisses, no embraces, even from my mother; and the sight of that
half-embrace was a strange one to me. It made me feel more keenly
my own aloneness. Because of the shyness on me I waited until they
should move. They had stopped before my picture.
“Who is that?” she asked, and her voice was music.
“It is my brother Fergal,” said Raymond. “He should be here now—the
idle, dreaming fellow. He has forgotten. Come, we will go and look
for him.”
“Wait,” she said. “I want to look at his picture. How different from
all the rest it is. Somewhere, sometime ... I have seen a face like
that, or a picture, but where—where?”
“I have no doubt there are many such happy, careless faces among
boys,” said Raymond.
“But is it quite careless?” she asked. “When one looks at it long it
grows sad, then stern—and the eyes—ah, those eyes! If he looks at me
in that way I shall fear him, Raymond.”
Raymond put his hand over her eyes, and laughed and kissed her on the
mouth. I went chill in the heart at that kiss.
“What a foolish child you are,” he said. “You and Fergal are alike in
your imaginings.”
Then they turned and saw me. Raymond looked so happy and so
different that I was glad. But I do not know if I can find words to
tell how she looked.
She was fair and babyish, with little ways and movements like a white
kitten. Her hair was the yellow of the cornsilk, and her eyes as blue
as the violet which grows always in the shade. She reached out her
hands to me in a pretty childish way.
“We are to be brother and sister,” she said. “I hope we shall all be
very happy together.”
I barely touched the hands of her—such pretty hands—but that
touch tingled through all my blood. I stammered and blushed with
embarrassment. I had known so few women, and none well, and I had
never seen any as beautiful as my brother’s wife. She was dainty and
delicate as the snow maiden that fades when brought down to the level
where humanity lives.
Perhaps that was why I feared to touch her, even. If I did by chance,
my hand would tremble and my face flush. She laughed over it to
Raymond.
“He will never be my brother,” she said. “He is as shy of me as if I
were still a stranger.”
One day Raymond spoke to me of it:
“Why are you so foolish,” he asked. “Ednah wonders why you have
dislike of her. You are almost of an age—born in the same year—and
should be better friends. Yet you range the mountains alone more than
ever. Even the books are forgotten by you.”
In answer I asked to go away to school, or to travel. I had never
before cared for anything but our old house and the forest near, or
the musty books in the time-worn cases. Now the air had grown close;
all the quiet of the forest, all the hum in the grasses, could not
bring to me their old, drowsy rest; and the wind no more carried
echoes of whispering voices!
“Perhaps it is best that you should go,” said Raymond. “Travel may
cure you of this strangeness and shyness. I shall give up this place
for a while and cross seas. Ednah has horror of these old walls, and
will stay in no room of them alone. When you join us again you will
find us in some sunnier place.”
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So I made my farewells and went wandering. For three years I never
saw Ireland. All that time I was going, going—never at rest. And
though through every hour of it I longed to go back, and feared to, I
could not explain whence the fear came.
Then Raymond wrote to me in Spain to join them here. I was almost
twenty-two. There were property matters to be arranged, and my
presence was required. I am not sure if I was glad or not. I did not
sleep at all, and I sailed on the first ship.
Once on the sea the fear fell away. Almost the music of dreams came
back to me. The three years of wandering had driven out the dreams
and remembrance had not been happiness.
But the ship to the west brought me into starry nights of sweetness
and wonderful dreams when all the world was of hope, for the fear was
gone on the waves.
Raymond did not expect me so soon, and I found their new home all
alone. Only Ednah was there. She ran down the steps to meet me. Back
of her was a tall hound.
“Fergal, Fergal!” she said, and the blue eyes of her were bright as
if with tears.
I am not knowing if I spoke to her—I think I did not. But I took
her hand. She offered her cheek as if for a brother’s caress, but I
did not touch it. I only looked at her, and we walked up the steps
together, and the hound followed.
“I am glad it is today you came,” she said. “I am all alone. Ah, we
have wanted you so often! The world felt so empty—empty as all my
life used to be! Now all will be different—you are here.”
She showed me a portrait lately finished of her with the hound at her
knee. The artist had asked that one be secured for the painting, and
Raymond had tried to find one to look most like an Irish wolfhound
for the harsh note of contrast with her own whiteness. She told this
frankly as a child, and laughed because the dog would not follow
Raymond when she was near. Then she showed me all their wonderful new
home, and the Italian garden above the river, and a wonderful pergola
where yellow roses and crimson roses burned like flame.
We sat in that dream place through the sunset. I listened and
said little. Her glad voice was as cool, sweet rain that falls on
sun-scorched sands. I was beside her until the dusk, drinking in
tones of music, but never once did I look in her eyes.
And Raymond came when the night fell.
I scarce know how to tell of the days to follow. The fear and shyness
came back to me. But I was older and could hide it more than when
she first came to my sight, and Raymond had pleasure to think I was
feeling more friendly toward the lovely wife. But I avoided being
alone with her, and with the tall hound ever her shadow.
Even when she rode horseback above the cliffs of the river the hound
was at the heels of her horse, and was known widely by the new
friends of Raymond. The portrait was shown in a great gallery, and
was called “Beauty and the Beast.” But you have seen that, and know
the pride of Raymond that she was his. He housed and dressed and
adored her as queen of the world.
But it was herself gave long, strange looks to me, and looks of
question they were, too. Everyone sought her except myself, and she
was noting that, even though the eyes of Raymond were blind by his
love for us both.
One day I came in with scarlet blossoms for which she had asked.
She was coming down the great stairs and smiled at me.
“How lovely,” she said; “we have dinner-guests tonight, but I shall
wear no jewels. I want only those scarlet blossoms in my hair; bring
them in here to the musicroom.”
I followed her, and stood there holding the flowers; but she did not
take them. She only looked at me and laughed a little.
“One would think me an old witch-wife of your Irish hills, you shun
me so, brother Fergal,” she said, “and I think I shall make you do
penance here. You must fasten the blossoms in my hair with your own
hands. You should learn to be gallant, Fergal, else when you meet
your ladylove you will never know how to woo her.”
I held the flowers in silence and tried to fasten them. My fingers
were shaking. The perfume of her hair made me drunk as wine.
“Your hands are nervous doing work so new to them,” she said, and
laughed. “You foolish boy, what can I do more than to fit up this
room for you only, with its Irish harp and its Irish music and a pot
of Shamrock in each window. It is enough to make any other man love
me—but not Fergal!” she said, and sighed, and then laughed.
I could not answer her words of light mocking, and the great hound,
stretched at her feet, arose and the bristles on his neck stood
upright as my hands touched her hair. He was ever on guard for her,
and it was a jest that she had to put chain on him for the lessons
with a dancing-master. He would allow no stranger to touch her, and
me he was ever watching in jealousy.
Raymond’s wife noted it, and laughed.
“He has the jealousy of a man in love,” she said, “but you know
nothing of that jealousy, for it is only books and old music you have
in your mind. You are almost a year older than I, and have traveled
around the world, yet are afraid of women. And to think I once
dreamed of fearing you—or your picture—that is amusing to me now!
I have never once seen your eyes look in a rage as I thought they
might. But it is seldom you favor me even with a glance. I doubt if
you could tell the color of my eyes.”
So she chattered on, smiling up at me, mocking at my silence and at
my shaking hand.
“I have fear that this will not be done to your pleasure,” I said at
last.
She laughed again. “Fergal,” she said, “is it all women you are
fearing, or only me?”
As she spoke her head was turned to look up at me. I still held the
flowers in her hair. My wrist was near her cheek. In turning, her
lips touched it. Perhaps it was accident. I do not know.
The golden hair of her was over my hands, her red mouth on my wrist,
and the wonderful child-eyes of her looking into my own. She raised
one hand and clasped my arm. I threw it from me with a force that
staggered her back to the wall, and the tall hound pressed close to
her and growled deep threat to me. The flowers in my hand I dashed to
the floor, and I left her there like that. As I went down the steps I
heard my name called by her, but I never looked back.
That night I spent in the forest.
When morning came again I told Raymond that my wandering years were
not over. The Foreign Legion of France might need another sabre. I
was willing to offer one to her—or to Ireland, if need arose in the
south. And it was not a time for youth to be easy in comfort in any
house.
Raymond laughed, and said I could send money enough to buy them a
seasoned soldier instead of myself, and told me he would take it
ill if I sailed before Ednah’s birthday, for it was in his mind to
give an entertainment that I might meet their many new friends. His
wife joined us in silence and clasped his arm and stood with eyes
downcast. She looked very white and very childish. We had not spoken.
“You young people have been dull here,” her husband said. “Suppose
we have a ball for your birthnight; something to repay the great
hospitality of the people. What do you say, my child? I must not have
you lonely.”
She spoke her pleasure, and, the choice of entertainment being left
to her, it was a masquerade she made choice of. “It is more gaiety,”
she said.
“A masque it shall be, then,” said Raymond. “And you, Fergal, must
have no thought of leaving us until after that.”
“Are you going again?” she asked, and her blue eyes had pleading in
them.
I could make her no answer.
“So he threatens,” said Raymond. “You must help me to persuade him
to be sensible and stay where he is. Perhaps we can find him a
sweetheart at the ball. You must get a fine dress, Fergal, and we
shall have it the night Ednah is twenty-two.”
I was arranging some books in a case while they talked. I did not
want to look in her eyes and see the appeal there. One of the volumes
slipped from my hand to the floor. It was our old book of legends,
and it lay open at the tale of Randuff and White Enora.