And again a sullen peace, and Ulster rang to the trumpet of American freedom
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 onesees 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 commandArose 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 KildareThe 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 greenThey march along the deep.There's wine from the royal popeUpon 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....
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 playLady Macbethin Nottingham.
"You know how she enters, Shane. She comesin reading a letter. She is alone on the stage, inMacbeth'scastle of Inverness: '"They met me in the day of success,"' she reads—Macbethis 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 curtaindown ... 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 thethings 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 redWith redundance of blood,The earth shall rock beneath our tread,And flame wrap hill and wood,And gun-peal and slogan-cryMake 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....
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 inreality 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 losttheir 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.
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."
"Oh, yes, I have. Every damned right! Do you think I'd let any woman go cruising around the North Seas, with a crew of foreigners, and a shipmaster she doesn't know.... I'll bring the bi—the boat in...."
They left the city of strange ugly women, with great spirit in their faces, and great bearing to the body of them, and of slim cat-like men, who had great power in their eyes.... A very beautiful city of churches and hammered brass ... a place of high rarefied thinking and savage animal passion.... They left it on a July morning with the sun high.... And they sailed east, sou'east down the Gulf of Finland, until Dago Island was on their port quarter....
And they rolled down the Baltic Sea, sailing sou'-sou'west, until they passed Gotland, and they edged west again, leaving Bornholm to port.... And they sailed past Malmö into the Sound, heading north for the Cattegat....They turned the Skaw and swung her into the Skage-Rack.... And the wind held....
And once out of there, they pointed her nose nor'west by nor' as though Iceland were only a buoy in a yacht-race.... And the wind held.... The summer nights of the North were on them, the unearthly beauty of the light.... There was no world.... They were sailing on the Milky Way.... Only the gurgle of the water at the bows, thewhushof the wake beneath the counter, held them as by a thin umbilical cord to the world of men.... Thewhap-whap-whapof the cordage.... Theting-ting-tingof the helmsman's bell.... The cry for'a'd: "The lights are burning bright, sir!" ...
The gaunt Shetlands were on their starboard beam now, the dun Orkneys off the port bow. Sumburgh Head dropped away, and they headed due west.... The waves were laughing, the sun rose in a great explosion abaft of them.... The world was a very small place.... The universe so large.... At dawn the gulls chatteredand whined, and screamed until they felt immense loneliness.... One seemed to be intruding in a world of white feathers and cold inimical eyes, and complaints in a language one could not understand.... So lonely ... so undefiled ... the home of the great whale.... Here was the world as God first made it ... clean and beautiful and absolute.... Up here steam engines seemed ridiculous toys.... In winter the sleek seal and the great white bear.... And the great crying of the gulls.... One thought of Adelina Patti's great singing and wondered did it matter a lot.
And they swung sou'west by sou' to leave the Hebrides to port. They were on the last leg of the voyage, and the wind still held....
"O Shane, it's wonderful...." She had come on deck in her man's clothing.... She was so tall, so slim, her legs so long, it seemed some pleasant feminine fancy of hers, not a material adaptation of the life on board ship. "The wind will hold until we get there."
"I don't like it," Shane grumbled.
"Why, Shane? Why don't you like it?"
"We're too lucky."
"It isn't luck, Shane. It's the will of God."
"Hmm!"
"Granya!"
"Yes, Shane."
"I've just been thinking. Why couldn't you conspirators have chosen a better time of the year than August for landing your arms? There's only about two hours of night."
"Because, Shane, the arms must be ready for autumn, when the harvest is in. That's the best time for a revolution. And the arms must be distributed. And the men must drill a little. Now is our only time."
"Hmm."
"O Shane, I wish you would be a little enthusiastic."
"Enthusiastic? At forty-nine!"
"Are you forty-nine, Shane? You don't seem thirty-nine. None could tell but for the little gray in your hair.... And Shane...."
"Yes!"
"I like your hair rumpled a little with the sea-air ... much better than when it is sleek in Antrim.... Shane, you don't know how well you look on board ship."
"Ooh, be damned to that.... Mr. Janseen, get them to lay aft, and see if you can't get a little more out of that mizzen.... A little more pocket in the luff." ...
They passed the Butt of Lewis, sailing due sou'west.... To port they left the Seven Hunters, changing the course to sou'west by sou'.... The Hebrides passed them like islands in a dream, purple, gleaming strangely in the sunlight, now a black shower whipping over them, now sunshine pouring in great floods.... Lewis went by, and then Harris.... North Uist where the winds blow so hard they have an old word:Is traugh fear na droiche air mhachair Uistibh: 'Tis a pity of the slut's husband on the plains of Uist.... You'll be needing buttons on your coat there.... They passed Rona of the Seals, and Benbecula.... They passed South Uist and Eriskay.... They passed the Ponboy Isles.... The islands of the Cat they called them in Gaelic.... Faintly they saw the mists of Hecla ... heard the curlews.... They saw fishing-boats with great brown sails....
Honk-honk of wild ganders in the distance, and occasionally thechughof a diving bird.... The wind blew from the nor'west.... The foam snarled beneath the bows....
"I don't like it.... I don't like it...."
"Shane, it is wonderful.... God is with us."
"Hunh...." He saw the weather leaches flick.... "Don't let her come up," he roared at the helmsman. "Steer her, you Swede bastard.... Where the hell did you ever steer before? On a canal?"
"Shane!"
"What is it, Granya?"
"Your language, Shane!"
"Listen, Granya.... I'm not playing a comedy.... I'm sailing a ship ... that's on an errand I don't like.... If you don't like my language, get below...."
"Sorry, Shane!" She said with a meek courtesy. She stayed....
They passed Skerryvore.... They passed Dhu Heartach, Colonsay, Islay of McCrimmin.... Iristrahull was on the weather beam.... They swung eastward.... Irishowen Head showed off the port bow.... On an August afternoon, they slipped into Lough Foyle....
The soft luminosity of a summer night was in it ... and a little moon, which Shane damned....Before them rose the outline of Donegal.... On each beam they could see faintly the outlines of the bay's arms.... The schooner moved under jibs and mizzen.... From the bow was the splash of the lead....
"By the mark, fine!"
"Luff her a little, a little more ... steady!"
"Four fathoms, no bottom!"
"Keep her off a point!"
"By the deep, four!"
"How's the bottom?"
"Clean and sandy, sir!"
"No bottom at three!"
"Ready for'a'd to let go?"
"All ready, sir!"
"The mark three, no bottom!"
"Lee—o!... Hold her!"
The long swish of oars, the rattle of oar-locks.... A voice rapping out:
"Rest on the oars!" And then: "Schooner ahoy!"
Shane's heart sank. He gave no answer.
"What ship is that?" The voice rang over the little bay ... found a grotesque echo in some cliff....
"Who are you?"
"His Majesty's coast-guards. Stand by. Coming aboard. Lay on your oars, men!"
And then ... a long instant.... "Toss oars!"
"Bring her into the wind!" Shane ordered....
A scramble alongside, and some one was coming over the waist rail.... A firm step on deck.... Some one was smiling....
"My name's Flannagan, Lieutenant Flannagan.... Sorry, Mr. Campbell, we can't let you land ... your cargo or your passenger...."
"I don't understand."
"Well, sir, we know what your cargo is, and my orders are not to let you land. And I was to tell you, sir, that you couldn't land anywhere."
"By God! I knew it would end like this.... Are we under arrest?"
"No, sir.... You are just not to land. I'm sorry, sir, but.... Orders!"
"Then what the blazes am I going to do?"
"Jove, I don't know. Can't you bring the cargo back where you got it?"
"I suppose I'll have to do that. But my passenger.... I can put her ashore."
"I'm sorry, sir. But your passenger can't go ashore, anywhere, any time, in her Majesty's dominions."
"Hmm!"
He heard her quick step on the companionway.
"Shane."
"Shane, are you there?"
"Shane, Shane, what's wrong?" She came into the shrouded light of the binnacle. "Shane, who—who is this?"
"My name's Flannagan, Miss O'Malley—royal navy—I'm sorry; you can't land."
"What does it mean, Shane?"
"You're beaten, Granya."
"Are we prisoners?"
"No, Miss O'Malley, just you can't land. And I'm very distressed to tell you.... You may not land anywhere, any time, in her Majesty's dominions."
"That doesn't shut out Mr. Campbell, does it?"
"I've no orders against him, Miss O'Malley, barring his landing his cargo or you...."
She laid her hand on Shane's arm....
"I'm sorry, Shane.... I'm very sorry, my dear—dear friend.... You were so good.... There are few—would have sacrificed their time and profession, and everything—to help a woman on a wild-goose ideal!—like mine was.... So please forgive me!"
"There's nothing to forgive, Granya...."
"I want to do this ..." she leaned forwardand kissed him.... The lieutenant turned away. "And now good-by."
"Why good-by? I'm not going ashore. I'll stick."
"Dear Shane, you would." She caught his hand, pressed, dropped it. Her voice rang out: "But I'm going ashore...." She had swung over the taffrail and dropped into the water with the soft splash of a fish....
"My God ...!" Shane swore with rage. "Wait. I'll get her. Will you stand by with your boat?"
"Right-o!" Flannagan answered cheerily.
Shane kicked off his shoes, slipped out of his coat.... "This damned woman!" he thought as he dropped astern, came out, began to cast for direction like an otter-hound.... He heard her soft rhythmical strokes ahead.... He tore after her ... caught up ... reached her shoulder....
"Come back, Granya!"
"No, Shane."
He had decided, once he reached her, to turn her back by force, but the strange gentle voice restrained him. All this matter of Ireland, all this expedition of opera bouffe, took on again a strange dimension when she spoke.... All thetime he had been foolish, he knew, and, worse, looked like a fool, but some strange magic of her voice made it seem natural ... the naïve brave gestures.... One levitated above common ground.... Even this moon-madness did not seem trivial and a thing for laughter.... A dignity of ancient stories was on it.... The blue Irish hills, soft as down, the little moon, and the tide hurrying out of the lough to the great Atlantic.... A wrench of the will and he gripped her shoulder:
"Shane, please don't!"
"You're coming back, Granya."
"I'm not, Shane, and please don't hold me. I'm getting weak."
"You'll never make it, Granya. And if you did, where would you go on the Donegal hills?"
"I don't know, Shane. But please let me go, I implore you.... Even if I do go down.... Don't you see? There is nothing for me but this, or death.... My life.... O Shane, let me go!"
"Quiet, Granya!" He caught her wrist.
"Please, Shane. Please. I pray of you...." She began to twist.... "O Shane, you hurt."
"Quiet, Granya. Boat—o!"
The lantern of the coast-guards' cutter camenearer.... The measured swish of the oars ... the creak.... She began to struggle fiercely....
"Granya, if you don't keep quiet, I'll have to hit you...."
"O Shane!" she whimpered....
"All right Get her on board. Steady, there. Trim a little. Good!" Flannagan and a great bearded coast-guard had her.... The silence was broken with her little sobs.... He helped her over the waist of the schooner....
"Go below, Granya, and get into some dry clothes.... Mr. Flannagan, I'll take the boat back to St. Petersburg.... If Miss O'Malley doesn't land neither do I. May I send a letter ashore? It's only about business, and the place in the glens...."
"I'll take it and have it sent."
"Another thing; we want to get some provisions and water."
"Of course, sir.... That's all right."
"Do you think one of the country girls could be persuaded to come on board as Miss O'Malley's maid?"
"I think so. We'll ask the local priest."
"Oh, yes, the priest.... Another thing: do you think you could dig out a parson around here somewhere and bring him on board?"
"O Shane, what do you want that for?" She hadn't gone below, but waited in the companionway.
"You don't think you're going wandering around with me, casually, like this?"
"But it's only to St. Petersburg, Shane!"
"And then where do you go? What do you do?"
"I—I—I don't know."
"Better get the parson, Mr. Flannagan."
"Oh, but Shane—" she protested.
"Go below, Granya, and get those wet things off.... And get into women's clothes.... Granya!"
"Yes, Shane.... Very well, Shane...."
He felt a little ashamed, a little shy, what with his gray hairs, his paternity, that there should still be a thrill in his heart, a sense of flight in him. At fifty-eight to feel like a schoolboy going home, it seemed—well, not indecent, indecorous. This thing of returning to Antrim had been a matter of pure reason, and then suddenly his heart had spread forgotten wings.
Without, the sound of Broadway had changed subtly, with the coming of the September dusk. The quick-pacing people had given way to theclop-clop-clopof hansom-cabs, and the tram-cars with their tired horses came less frequently now. One felt that a giant had been at work all day, and was now stretching himself, not lazily, but a little relaxingly. Soon the great lamps would flare, and the crowds would be going to the playhouses: to Tony Pastor's to see the new play, "Dreams," or to Harrigan & Hart's to see"Investigation," or to Mr. Bartley Campbell's latest, "Separation," at the Grand Opera-house. He would miss all this in Antrim, but Antrim called him.... Antrim, our mother....
And three months ago he had never thought this possible. He had drilled himself into a mature philosophy, saying: "It doesn't matter that I never see Ireland again. I am happy here with Granya and young Alan and Robin Beg, little Robin. All the folks are kindly and the country is a great country, and when my time comes to die there are sweet little places on Long Island where they can lay me within sound of the sea, and the gentle snow will come and cover me in winter and in summer somewhere about me the dogwood will blow, and the very green grass come. And perhaps some young children will come and play around my grave, and I shall hear their little gurgling laughter, sweet as the voices of pigeons.... And one day Granya will come.... Nothing is more certain than that, that Granya will come...."
But all the philosophy in the world could not shut from his ears the little piping of Antrim. He would say: "'Tis little thought I gave to Antrim and I a young man! And what is a town or so to me, who have seen all great cities?" And again he said: "Didn't you give up Antrimgladly when you got Granya? Wasn't she worth a hundred Antrims?" And his heart and mind answered: "Yes, a thousand Antrims!" But, a very queer thing, the little haunting melody of the glens would not be stilled.
And it came to him thus: I am no longer a young man. For all I look forty-five, as they tell me, yet I am fifty-eight. The life of the body is over now. That had passed, as a mood passes. And the mind is fixed. In what remains of life to me, I must think, divine, weigh. One prepares.... And thoughts must not be disturbed. To grow old in a city that is ever young, that is in its twenties itself as it were—it makes an old man cold and afraid. Old buildings he has known to go down, old streets are obliterated. It is a very terrible thing to be lonely when old, and to feel everything passes, dies.... All I have loved is thrown away, is of no use.... Everything old is in the way, and I am old.... The hawk-eyed commercial men go about so that the streets are filled with them.... And all the sweet things that were said in Galilee seem only a casual all-but-forgotten melody, and no revelation.... And then comes a horrible memory of stark Ecclesiastes: "The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also theirlove, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." And old men remember the sorrowful things of their life, and how little happiness measured up to the misery and toil of life, and they had hoped.... But there were the words of the preacher: "Neither have they any more a reward".... And secretly and quietly old men weep....
But to grow old with the mountains and the eternal sea, and to watch the delicate bells of the heather, to know the quiet companionship of dogs—there is a revelation in it. No, nothing dies. And the moon rises and the mountains nod: Yes, I remember you when you were a schoolboy, running to be on time. And the green waves make a pleasant laughter: We are here. When you arise in the morning you may be certain we are here. The friends of one's young days die, scatter, are lost. But the mountains and the water are friends forever. One can speak to them. One can speak to ancient trees. And the leaves rustle....
And Granya had sensed it.... He might have known she would. Conceal it as he might try, a mysterious telepathy was between them.... She knew....
It was she who had gone to the British embassyin Washington, telling Shane nothing. He had heard of it afterward. She hadn't pleaded or given any promises. She had just flared in to the startled envoy.
"I wish to go back to Ireland."
"Unfortunately, the privy council had the matter of Miss O'Malley—"
"I am not Miss O'Malley. I am Shane Campbell's wife."
"But you are a dangerous enemy to the empire!"
"Am I? I had forgotten completely about the empire."
"There was a little matter of a shipload of rifles—"
"And now it is a matter of a husband and two children."
"Sure, Miss O'Malley?"
"I am not Miss O'Malley. I am Shane Campbell's wife. And I'm absolutely sure."
It had been so easy after all.
And now when it was true, it was hard to credit. Within two weeks the ship would swing to port around Donegal, and they would enter the bay they had entered seven years ago, seven years and a month ago, to be exact. He wondered whether it would be a foggy morning, or a great golden afternoon. It was a pity it had to be onboard a steamship, though. He would liefer have luffed in on board a boat of his own, a great suit of snowy canvas drawing joyously the Irish wind.
Upstairs he could hear and distinguish the feet in the nursery. There was the patter of little Alan's feet, and the stumble of Robin Beg's. There was the shuffle of the nurse-maid, and the firm light tread of Granya. Soon she would come down, after the children were safely to bed, and little Alan's prayers were heard. And they would go out to dinner in New York for the last time. It was a little pang to leave New York.... Ah, but Antrim!
He picked up his paper and read while waiting.... It was queer how he could hardly focus his attention on it, impatient for her as a schoolboy for his first love.... Always when she entered a room came beauty.... Well, she would come.... The type took form beneath his eyes.... The races at Sheepshead Bay: Tom Martin had captured the Twin City Handicap.... In Ireland they would go to theCurragh and Baldoyle to see the horses, and the Dublin horse-show, and the hunts on a frosty morning.... What was this? Heavy bets laid that Cleveland would be next President. The Irish wouldn't like that. They were all for Blaine. It was only the other night that Mrs. Delia Parnell, Parnell's mother, had attended the great Irish rally in the Academy of Music.... That was a mistake, mixing up Irish politics with American statesmanship. There would be folk to resent that, and rightly, too.... Too much talk of dynamite, and that horrible thing in Phœnix Park.... What an involved, emotional affair all this Irish matter was!... To understand Ireland one must understand Irishmen, that either hatred or love rule them.... Parnell, though, looked hopeful. No emotion, all brains and will.... He could not be side-tracked by preferment, or religion, or love for women. There was a man whose head was firm on his shoulders; he would never be wrecked.... Ah, here was something Granya would be glad to hear: Margaret Mather got a splendid reception in Pittsburg with herLady Macbeth.... Whew! Cholera at Naples. That was serious! Not an over-clean people, the Italians.... Li Hung Chang degraded of his titles. Who the blazes was Li Hung Chang anyway, and what titles didhe have?... And Major Kitchener disperses the Berber tribes.... How unimportant! Ah, here was something. Great gambling reported on theCity of Rome. Ah, there was what he always contended, that steam would ruin everything. The great sea a resort for gamblers! In the old days, in sail, when a captain was a captain, he'd have had none of that on board clean timbers.... He was a little afraid the world was going to the dogs!
Och! Was that woman never coming down at all, at all?
He smiled to himself at how the Ulster speech came back to him at the thought of Ulster.... He turned to the paper with an effort of will.... An Indian outbreak feared in western Montana.... Stanley going to Egypt.... Policeman beaten up in Brooklyn; a tough place, Brooklyn!... American schooner arrested by Russian corvette for selling rum to Bering Strait natives: a very strict modern people, the Russians.... Picnics on Staten Island blamed for ruin of young girls.... And Bismarck and the pope still sparring. Did that poor German think he could ever get the better of the subtle Romans ...? Och, what was keeping that woman?
The light had become so dim that he couldhardly read. The tempo without quickened. People were hurrying now, on their way to the restaurants for the evening meal. From the restaurants to the theater. Home to sleep. And a new day with the old work facing them. There was a fascination, a hypnosis to New York. He felt a pang at leaving it. It had been very friendly to him. And he would never see it again.... Ah, but he would remember it!
It came to him with a sense of revelation that all his life he had been looking forward: always the new thing. And now he would be looking back. Always before guessing. Looking back now, knowing, or not quite knowing, but having before him material from which to draw wisdom, truth. All his life it seemed he had been gathering something. Now was the time to sort it, make it.... And then, what was he to do with whatever he had made? Toward what end? The paper he had in his hands dropped to his knees. His eyes fixed on the windows where the lights of the city began to shine, sawa haze, saw nothing. His ears, listening to theclop-clop-clopof the hansoms, heard only rhythm, then a faint harmony, then nothing.... Himself, within him, seemed to see old scenes, to be in old scenes. The little boy going down to the sea in ships, seeking an island he had seen in a mirage ... a mood of wonder.... There were feet, there was the world. Every tree was an emerald miracle, every house a mystery, all people were riddles.... Come, little boy, come and look! The instinct of the salmon for the sea. The river where he was spawned hurries to the sea, and his instinct is to go with it, not against it.... It deepens and broadens, and ahead is always a clearer pool, a more shadowy rock, a softer water-fern. It is pleasant to swim under the sallow-branches, and rapids whip.... And there is the lull of an estuary, and thechush-chushof little waves, and he is in the sea.... And now he must lay his own course.... The lure of the river has brought him so far.
And Shane thought: I was born a salmon in a river. The stupid pretty trout remained in the river, and the secretive eels.... And the perch and the roach and the ponderous bream, and the pike that is long of snout, they remained by the grassy waters.... But those that are born salmon must go down to the sea....
A little shadow came into his face, and his breath was caught sharp. He 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 shehad 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, anAgnus 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 wiseman, 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....