They received her with the scant show of surprise which youth, so proud
of appearances, so jealous of its own dignity, extends to the unknown,
and, after the brief word of welcome, and swift surmising glance,
the conversation which she had interrupted renewed itself, perhaps
a shade more boisterously because they had been surprised, a little
more hardily because they knew one was listening who was not of their
company and might be critical.
Soon, in their own despite, something ceremonious crept on them,
overpowering their boisterousness and making each self-conscious,
until, by the inevitable degrees, silence hovered and threatened about
the fire, and for moments nothing moved but the eye that flickered and
wandered into woodland vistas, where delicate dark trees stood rimmed
in silver, and everything on the ground crept and fled as the boughs
swayed and the moon spilled through them.
But the silence only endured long enough for the look to become frank
and the mutual examination a judgement. Then the eldest of the three
boys seized the conversation to himself and upheld it, for he saw that
their guest was so afflicted with shyness that she could not move hand
or foot, and could not have replied if one had addressed her.
He spoke for occupation also, because, having looked at her, he feared
or was too shy to look again; feared, too, that the others might
observe his embarrassment; and, being one to whom action was a first
habit, he did what he could do when he found that there was something
which he could not do.
He did it well.
Listening to him Deirdre knew what was the mid surge of the stream
she had listened to, the top singing of the song she had heard. This
was the lark sustained at the top of flight, and the others the mazy
pattern of the swallows’ wings. Listening she could collect herself;
and, in a while, daring to hear, she dared to see, and then she heard
no more; for when the eye is filled the ear is no more attended, and
all that may be of beauty is there englobed, radiant, sufficient,
excessive.
How should I paint Naoise[7] as Deirdre saw him, or show Deirdre as
she appeared to the son of Uisneac? For than Deirdre there was no girl
so beautiful unless it might be Emer the daughter of Forgall, soon to
be wooed by Cúchulinn; and Naoise himself could not be bettered by
any among the men of his land unless it was by the “small, dark man,
comeliest of the men of Eirè,” Cúchulinn himself.
When we endeavour to tell of these things words cannot stand the trial.
It may be done by music, or by allusion, as the poets have always
done, saying that this girl is like the moon, or like the Sky-Woman
of the Dawn, when they would indicate a beauty beyond what we know;
and that she is like a rose when they would tell of a gentle and proud
sweetness; that her wrist is crisp and delicate like the delicate foam
that mantles on a sunny tide; that the wise bee nestled in her bosom,
finding more of delight there than the hive gives; that she walks as a
cloud, or as a queen-woman of the sky, seen only in vision, so that all
other sights are but half seen thereafter and are scarcely remembered.
In these grave ways we may approach perfection, indicating distantly
that which cannot be unveiled in speech; or we may tell of the
abasement which comes on the heart when beauty is seen; the sadness
which is sharper than every other sadness; the despair that overshadows
us when the abashed will concedes that though it would overbear
everything it cannot master this, and that here we renounce all claim;
for beauty is beyond the beast, and like all else of quality it can
only be apprehended by its equal and enjoyed where it gives itself.
Still, they were young, and with young people impressions that come
quickly go as fast. They have so much in common; their interest in
the present is so quick; their faith in the future so fearless; their
memory of tenderness is so recent, and their experience of treachery
so small, that friendship comes easier to them than enmity does, and
trust grows where suspicion withers; so in a little time they were
again at ease, and when the food they had been preparing was eaten they
knew one another and were friends.
Naoise was then almost nineteen years of age, his brother Ainnle,
seventeen, and Ardan more than fourteen, while Deirdre herself was
almost a full sixteen years.
If she had listened before as it were to the chattering of a brook or
the outburst of a flight of birds, she now listened to a talk that was
like a mill-race for exuberance, and the cawing of a colony of rooks
for abundance; and yet, when she remembered it afterwards, she could
not remember much, or she recollected that they laughed more than they
spoke. For the talk consisted more of questions than anything else,
and the answer to each query was in nearly all cases an outbreak of
laughter and another question.
Do you remember the day Cúchulinn came playing hurley into Emain?
And the way he took the troop under his protection?
And the night he went out a boy and came back a hound?
Jokes, hinted at, that had been played on foster-fathers; grisly jokes
of the first combat of a comrade who had left his head where his feet
should be; questions that hinted at outrageous parties in the night,
when the boys chased a wild boar and their fathers and foster-fathers
hunted them; of punishments that had been evaded as a fox dodges a
dog, and behold, when safety had been found, there was the punishment
awaiting them.
They were young, but they had killed; and they rocked with glee as
they told by what marvellous strategy they had got in the lucky blow,
and how the champion had gone down never to rise again, and they had
trotted home squealing and squawking with joy, with a head surveying
the world from the top of a spear, and it grinning down on them as
joyously as they chattered up at it.
Names that Deirdre was unfamiliar with, and some that she knew from
the servants’ talk, flew from mouth to mouth. Conall the Victorious,
Bricriu the Prank-player, Laerí called the Triumphant, Fergus mac Roy,
these youngsters spoke of as familiarly as she might have told of the
birds in her garden, and criticized them with all the unsparing freedom
of youth.
They did not consider that these great men were in any way superior to
themselves: the contrary was certainly in their minds. It was evident
that Ardan and Ainnle thought their brother Naoise could whip any other
champion rather easily: but Naoise was modest and would say nothing for
or against this theory.
Deirdre was as convinced as the boys were that Naoise could beat any
combination of champions that might have the ill-luck to move against
him. She knew it from his complexion, from his curling hair. Oh! she
knew it from a variety of proofs, and she was inclined to be angry when
he argued with the younger boys that Cúchulinn[8] was the greatest man
alive. But on that subject the agreement was so unanimous, so hearty,
that she might doubt but could not question it.
“What I should like,” said Ainnle, “would be to see a fight and a
combat between our Cúchulinn and Fergus mac Roy.”
“That would be a fight indeed,” said Naoise, “but we shall never see
it. They love each other.”
“It would be a queer thing,” said Ainnle, “if a boy were to fight with
his own foster-father.”
“I heard that a boy once did, and killed him too,” said Ardan.
“Who did? Who did?”
“I forget his name.”
“Because you never heard it.”
“Our young Ardan makes things up in his head,” said Naoise, in a
fatherly voice, while Ardan hid his blushes by attending to the fire.
“Do you think,” Ainnle inquired, “that Cúchulinn could beat Fergus if
they fought?”
Naoise regarded that query judicially.
“I don’t know indeed,” he replied.
“I think Cúchulinn could beat anybody,” Ardan broke in.
Naoise continued, without regard to his youngest brother:
“It was Fergus that taught Cúchulinn all his battle feats, and Fergus
knows everything that the Cú knows, but it may easily be that our Cúcuc
does not know all the things that Fergus knows.”
“Fergus,” cried Ainnle indignantly, “would not keep a thing back, for
he wants Cúchulinn to be the best champion in Eirè.”
“I think that is true,” replied the very judicial Naoise, “but there
are some things a fighter knows and can’t teach even if he wants to.
They are not tricks, they are what Conachúr calls ways, and Fergus has
‘ways’ in combat, as if he had been born in a fight and could go to
sleep in it if he wanted to.”
“Do you remember,” cried Ainnle, “the champion that stopped to scratch
himself while he was fighting?”
“Ho, ho,” laughed Ardan.
“And the other champion chipped his hind end off while he was bending,”
gurgled Ainnle.
“Wasn’t that man a great fool?” said Ardan solemnly.
“No,” laughed Naoise, “it was just that he thought he had time to do
it. I saw that combat. It must have been that a wasp or hornet slid
into his leg band. He gave a jump and a quick bend to get at his leg,
but the other man jumped after him; then he gave another great jump and
another bend, and he got a little trip at the same time--that is how
the other champion slashed him; but everybody was laughing so much that
his life was spared, so he kept his head if he lost his tail.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” roared Ardan.
And it was his laughter that made Deirdre part with a squeal of glee
which so astonished her that she leaped to her feet and fled among the
trees, and so home.
She had not spoken to the boys beyond the word of blessing and greeting
which could not be omitted. Ardan and Ainnle considered that it was
quite right a girl should be silent in the presence of champions, but
Naoise thought it was a pity she did not speak, for he was inclined to
fancy that her voice would be pleasant to listen to.
[7] Naoise = pron. neesh-eh.
[8] Cúchulinn = pron. Ku-hullin.