I
IN the west of Ireland, on the 9th of December, in the town of Ballah,
in the Imperial Hotel there was a single guest, clerical and youthful.
With the exception of a stray commercial traveller, who stopped once
for a night, there had been nobody for a whole month but this guest,
and now he was thinking of going away. The town, full enough in summer
of trout and salmon fishers, slept all winter like the bears.
On the evening of the 9th of December, in the coffee-room of the
Imperial Hotel, there was nobody but this guest. The guest was
irritated. It had rained all day, and now that it was clearing up night
had almost fallen. He had packed his portmanteau; his stockings, his
clothes-brush, his razor, his dress shoes were each in their corner,
and now he had nothing to do. He had tried the paper that was lying on
the table. He did not agree with its politics.
The waiter was playing an accordion in a little room over the stairs.
The guest’s irritation increased, for the more he thought about it
the more he perceived that the accordion was badly played. There was
a piano in the coffee-room; he sat down at it and played the tune
correctly, as loudly as possible. The waiter took no notice. He did not
know that he was being played for. He was wholly absorbed in his own
playing, and besides he was old, obstinate, and deaf. The guest could
stand it no longer. He rang for the waiter, and then, remembering that
he did not need anything, went out before he came.
He went through Martin’s Street and Peter’s Lane, and turned down by
the burnt house at the corner of the fish-market, picking his way
towards the bridge. The town was dripping, but the rain was almost
over. The large drops fell seldomer and seldomer into the puddles. It
was the hour of ducks. Three or four had squeezed themselves under a
gate, and were now splashing about in the gutter of the main street.
There was scarcely anyone abroad. Once or twice a countryman went by
in yellow gaiters covered with mud and looked at the guest. Once an
old woman with a basket of clothes, recognizing the Protestant curate’s
_locum tenens_, made a low curtsey.
The clouds gradually drifted away, the twilight deepened and the stars
came out. The guest, having bought some cigarettes, had spread his
waterproof on the parapet of the bridge and was now leaning his elbows
upon it, looking at the river and feeling at last quite tranquil.
His meditations, he repeated, to himself, were plated with silver by
the stars. The water slid noiselessly, and one or two of the larger
stars made little roadways of fire into the darkness. The light from a
distant casement made also its roadway. Once or twice a fish leaped.
Along the banks were the vague shadows of houses, seeming like phantoms
gathering to drink.
Yes; he felt now quite contented with the world. Amidst his enjoyment
of the shadows and the river--a veritable festival of silence--was
mixed pleasantly the knowledge that, as he leant there with the light
of a neighbouring gas-jet flickering faintly on his refined form and
nervous face and glancing from the little medal of some Anglican order
that hung upon his watch-guard, he must have seemed--if there had been
any to witness--a being of a different kind to the inhabitants--at once
rough and conventional--of this half-deserted town. Between these two
feelings the unworldly and the worldly tossed a leaping wave of perfect
enjoyment. How pleasantly conscious of his own identity it made him
when he thought how he and not those whose birthright it was, felt most
the beauty of these shadows and this river! For him who had read much,
seen operas and plays, known religious experiences, and written verse
to a waterfall in Switzerland, and not for those who dwelt upon its
borders for their whole lives, did this river raise a tumult of images
and wonders. What meaning it had for them he could not imagine. Some
meaning surely it must have!
As he gazed out into the darkness, spinning a web of thoughts from
himself to the river, from the river to himself, he saw, with a corner
of his eye, a spot of red light moving in the air at the other end of
the bridge. He turned towards it. It came closer and closer, there
appearing behind it the while a man and a cigar. The man carried in one
hand a mass of fishing-line covered with hooks, and in the other a tin
porringer full of bait.
‘Good evening, Howard.’
‘Good evening,’ answered the guest, taking his elbows off the parapet
and looking in a preoccupied way at the man with the hooks. It was only
gradually he remembered that he was in Ballah among the barbarians, for
his mind had strayed from the last evening flies, making circles on
the water beneath, to the devil’s song against ‘the little spirits’ in
_Mefistofele_. Looking down at the stone parapet he considered a moment
and then burst out--
‘Sherman, how do you stand this place--you who have thoughts above mere
eating and sleeping and are not always grinding at the stubble mill?
Here everybody lives in the eighteenth century--the squalid century.
Well, I am going to-morrow, you know. Thank Heaven, I am done with your
grey streets and grey minds! The curate must come home, sick or well.
I have a religious essay to write, and besides I should die. Think of
that old fellow at the corner there, our most important parishioner.
There are no more hairs on his head than thoughts in his skull. To
merely look at him is to rob life of its dignity. Then there is nothing
in the shops but school-books and Sunday-school prizes. Excellent, no
doubt, for anyone who has not had to read as many as I have. Such a
choir! such rain!’
‘You need some occupation peculiar to the place,’ said the other,
baiting his hooks with worms out of the little porringer. ‘I catch
eels. You should set some night-lines too. You bait them with worms in
this way, and put them among the weeds at the edge of the river. In the
morning you find an eel or two, if you have good fortune, turning round
and round and making the weeds sway. I shall catch a great many after
this rain.’
‘What a suggestion! Do you mean to stay here,’ said Howard, ‘till your
mind rots like our most important parishioner’s?’
‘No, no! To be quite frank with you,’ replied the other, ‘I have some
good looks and shall try to turn them to account by going away from
here pretty soon and trying to persuade some girl with money to fall in
love with me. I shall not be altogether a bad match, you see, because
after she has made me a little prosperous my uncle will die and make
me much more so. I wish to be able always to remain a lounger. Yes, I
shall marry money. My mother has set her heart on it, and I am not,
you see, the kind of person who falls in love inconveniently. For the
present--’
‘You are vegetating,’ interrupted the other.
‘No, I am seeing the world. In your big towns a man finds his minority
and knows nothing outside its border. He knows only the people like
himself. But here one chats with the whole world in a day’s walk, for
every man one meets is a class. The knowledge I am picking up may be
useful to me when I enter the great cities and their ignorance. But I
have lines to set. Come with me. I would ask you home, but you and my
mother, you know, do not get on well.’
‘I could not live with anyone I did not believe in,’ said Howard; ‘you
are so different from me. You can live with mere facts, and that is
why, I suppose, your schemes are so mercenary. Before this beautiful
river, these stars, these great purple shadows, do you not feel like
an insect in a flower? As for me, I also have planned my future. Not
too near or too far from a great city, I see myself in a cottage
with diamond panes, sitting by the fire. There are books everywhere
and etchings on the wall; on the table is a manuscript essay on some
religious matter. Perhaps I shall marry some day. Probably not, for I
shall ask so much. Certainly I shall not marry for money, for I hold
that when we have lost the directness and sincerity of our nature we
have no compass. If we once break it the world grows trackless.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Sherman, briskly; ‘I have baited the last hook. Your
schemes suit you, but a sluggish fellow like me, poor devil, who wishes
to lounge through the world, would find them expensive.’
They parted; Sherman to set his lines and Howard to his hotel in high
spirits, for it seemed to him he had been eloquent. The billiard-room,
which opened on the street, was lighted up. A few young men came round
to play sometimes. He went in, for among these provincial youths he
felt distinguished; besides, he was a really good player. As he came
in one of the players missed and swore. Howard reproved him with a
look. He joined the play for a time, and then catching sight through a
distant door of the hotel-keeper’s wife putting a kettle on the hob he
hurried off, and, drawing a chair to the fire, began one of those long
gossips about everybody’s affairs peculiar to the cloth.
As Sherman, having set his lines, returned home, he passed a
tobacconist’s--a sweet-shop and tobacconist’s in one--the only shop
in town, except public-houses, that remained open. The tobacconist
was standing in his door, and, recognizing one who dealt consistently
with a rival at the other end of the town, muttered: ‘There goes that
Jack o’ Dreams; been fishing most likely. Ugh!’ Sherman paused for a
moment as he repassed the bridge and looked at the water, on which now
a new-risen and crescent moon was shining dimly. How full of memories
it was to him! what playmates and boyish adventures did it not bring to
mind! To him it seemed to say, ‘Stay near to me,’ as to Howard it had
said, ‘Go yonder, to those other joys and other sceneries I have told
you of.’ It bade him who loved stay still and dream, and gave flying
feet to him who imagined.