"Can I give you a lift back to Ballycastle, Simon Fraser? Or a lift anywhere you want. It's the least I can do and you coming this long way to tell me news."
"I'm very thankful to you, Shane Campbell, very thankful indeed. It's just the way of you to ask a poor sailor man does he want a lift halfway across the world. But I'll never again see Ballycastle with living eyes."
"And why not, man Simon?"
"It's this way, Shane Campbell. It's this way. When I came back after six years—four years lost on the coast of Borneo—my three fine sons were gone—twenty and nineteen and seventeen they were. Gone they were following the trade of the sea. And herself the woman of the house was gone, too. I didn't mind the childer, for 't is the way of the young to be roving. But herself went off with another man. A great gift of making a home she had, so there was many would have her, in spite of her forty year. Into the dim City of Glasgow she went, and there wasno word of her. And she might have waited, Shane Campbell; she might so. Four years lost on the coast of Borneo to come and find your childer scattered, and your wife putting shame on you. That's a hard thing."
"You're a young man, Simon Fraser. You're as young as I am, forty-two. There's a quarter-century ahead of you. Put the past by and begin again. There'd be love at many a young woman for you. And a house, and new bairns."
"I'm a back-thinking man, Alan's kinsman, a long back-thinking man. And I'd always be putting the new beside the old and the new would not seem good to me. The new bairns would never be like the old bairns, and it would na be fair. And as for women, I've had my bellyful of women after her I was kind to, and was true to for one and twenty years, going off with some sweating landsman to a dingy town.... I was ay a good sailor, Shane Oge....
"It's by now, nearly by.... So I'll be going up and down the sea on the chance of meeting one of my new braw bairns. And maybe I'll come across one of them on the water-front, and him needing me most.... And maybe I'll sign articles wi' the one aboard the same ship, and it's the grand cracks we'll have in the horse latitudes.... Or maybe I'll find one of them ayoung buck officer aboard a ship I'm on; and he'll come for'a'd and say: 'Lay aloft, old-timer, with the rest and be pretty God-damned quick about it.' And I'll say: 'Aye, aye, sir.' And thinks: Wait till you get ashore, and I'll tell you who I am, and give you a tip about your seamanship, too, my grand young fello'.... Life has queerer things nor that, Shane Oge, as maybe you know.... The only thing that bothers me is that I'll never see Ballycastle any more."
"Is there nothing I can do for you, Simon Fraser?"
"There's a wee thing, Shane Campbell; just a wee thing?"
"What is it, man Simon?"
"Maybe you'd think me crazy—"
"Of course not, Simon."
"Well then, when you're home, and looking around you at the whins and purple heather, and the wee gray towns, maybe you'll say: 'Glens of Antrim, I ken a man of Antrim, and he'll never see you again, but he'll never forget you.' Will you do that?"
"I'll do that."
"Maybe you'll be looking at Ballycastle, the town where I was born in."
"Yes, Simon."
"You don't have to say it out loud. You canstop and say it low in yourself, so as nobody'll hear you, barring the gray stones of the town. Just remember: 'Ballycastle, Simon Fraser's thinking long ...'"
A cold southerly drove northward from the pole, chopping the muddy waves of the river. Around the floatingcamolotes, islands of weeds, were little swirls. The poplars and willows of the banks grew more distant, asMaid of the Islescut eastward under all sail. As he tramped fore and aft, Buenos Aires dropped, dropped, dropped behind her counter, dropped ... became a blur....
Maid of the Isleswas only going home, as she had gone home a hundred times before, from different ports, as she had gone home a dozen times from this one. But never before had it seemed significant to Shane.... Back, back the city faded.... If the wind lasted, and Shane thought it would last, by to-morrow they would have left the Plate and be in the open sea. Back, back the city dropped.... It couldn't drop too fast.... It was like a prison fromwhich he was escaping, fleeing.... A great yearning come on him to have it out of sight ... definitely, forever. Once it was gone, he would know for a certain thing, he was free....
He was surprised to be free. As surprised as an all but beaten wrestler is when his opponent's lock weakens unexpectedly, and dazedly he knows he can get up again and spar. A fog had lifted suddenly, as at sea. And he had thought the mist of the Valley of the Black Pig could never lift, would remain, dank and cold and hollow, covering all things like a cerecloth, binding all as chains bind ... and that he must remain with the weeping population, until the Boar without Bristles came ... forever and forever and forever....
But the nearest and dearest had died gallantly, and somehow the fog had lifted. And then he was dazed and weak, but free. Where was he going? What to do? He didn't know, but hope, life itself had come again, like a long awaited moon.
Buenos Aires faded.... Faded the Valley of the Black Pig.... Buenos Aires its symbol ... Buenos Aires with bleak squares, its hovels, its painted trees—timboandtipaandpalo barracho....
He stood aft of the steersman, and suddenly raised his head.
Mo mhallacht go deo leat, a bhaile nan gcrann!'S mo shlan do gach baile raibh me riamh ann.
"My curse forever on you, O town of the trees," an old song came to him, "and my farewell to every town I was ever in—"
A great nostalgia for Ulster, for the whins and heather, choked him:
"S iomaidh bealach fliuch salach agas boithrin cam—
"There's many a wet muddy highways and crooked half-road,eader mise, betweenme,eader mise,eader mise—" He had forgotten.
"Between me and the townland that my desire is in," the Oran steersman prompted. "Eader mise agas an baile bhfuil mo dhuil ann!"
"Mind your bloody wheel," Shane warned. "This is a ship, not a poetry society. Look at the way you're letting her come up, you Highland bastard. Keep her off—and lam her!"
"Lam her it is, sir," the steersman grinned....
The worst of it all, Campbell smiled, was this: that life was so immensely healthy now, immensely peaceful, immensely sane. Here he was in the house of his fathers, built from the angle of a turret of King John's time. Here he was by the purple hills, by the purple Moyle. Five springs had come since he had given up the sea. Five times he had seen the little mountain streams swell with the import of the season, hurrying from the summit of the eagles, carrying water on nature's business. Five times had the primrose come, and the cuckoo. The faint delicate blue of early grass turned to green. The heat haze of summer on the silent glens. The Moyle thick with fish. Then autumn, a deep-bosomed grave woman moving through the reddening woods, the turf-cutters with their spades, the pillars of blue smoke from the cottages in the stilly September sky. And the three great moons of autumn, silver assixpence. Five times the distant trumpeting of the wild swans and winter came, in great galloping winds, and sweeping sheets of sea-rain. And Moyle tossed like a giant troubled in his sleep. And on the mountain-sides the rowan stood up like a proud enemy, and the ash bent humbly, and the dwarf oak crouched under fury. And the wind whistled in the frozen reeds. And with the snow came out the hunted ones unafraid, the red fox, and the badger of dark ways, and the cantering hare.
Without, the wind might roar like cannon, and the sea rise in great engulfing waves. Within the old house with its corner dating from King John's time—so long ago!—was comfort. Here was the library where Robin More—God rest his soul!—had puzzled over the round towers of Ireland and written his monograph on the Phenician colony of the County Down, and bothered about strange quaint old things, comparing the Celtic cross to the sistrum of Egypt, and wondering whether the round towers of Ireland had aught to do with worship of the sun, and writing of Gaelic occultism to Bulwer Lytton, and dreaming of the friend of his youth, Goethe, in the dusk. And down in the gun-room were the cups of Alan Donn, cups for sailing and cups for golf, and ribbons that horses won. And in thedrawing-room was the needlework of his mother, the precise beautiful broidery ... so like herself, minute, mathematical, not significant.... And in the kitchen was the red turf, and the flitches of bacon in the eaves, and the thick servant girls hustling impatiently, and the servant boys in their corduroy trousers bound with rushes at the knee ... their heavy brogues, their honest jests of Rabelais ... and in the fold the silent sheep, and great solemn cows warm in their manger....
Five years, going on six now, since he had left the sea, and invested his fortune in a Belfast shipyard, and taken over the homestead of Clan Campbell to run as it had always been run, wisely, sanely, healthily.... There were the servant boys and girls, with a comfortable roof above them. There were the cotter tenants, satisfied, certain of justice. At the shows his shorthorns took ribbons. For local charities, his duty was done.... But there was something, something lacking....
It wasn't peace. Peace he had in plenty. The spring of the heather, the tang of the sea brought peace. The bats of twilight, and the sallow branches, and the trout leaping in the river at the close of day. And the twilight itself, like some shy girl.... Out of all these came an emanation, a cradle-song, that lulledlike the song of little waves.... And as for pleasure, there was pleasure in listening to the birds among the trees, to seeing the stooking of barley, to watching the blue banner of the flax, to walking on frosty roads on great nights of stars.... To riding with the hunt, clumsily, as a sailor does, but getting in at the death, as pleased as the huntsman, or the master himself.... To the whir of the reel as the great blue salmon rushed ... Pleasure, and peace, and yet not satisfaction.
He thought, for a while, that what he missed was the ships, and that, subconsciously, there was some nostalgia for the sea on him. He had gone to Belfast thinking that with live timbers beneath his feet, the—the vacuum within him would be filled, but the thought of a ship somehow, when he was there, failed to exalt him. He loved them always, the long live ships, the canvas white as a gull, the delicacy of spars—all the beautiful economy.... But to command one again, to go about the world, aimlessly but for the bartering of cargo, and to return at the voyage's end, with a sum of money—no! no! not enough!
And so he came back to the peace and pleasure of the glens, the purple heather, and the red berries, the chink of pebbles on the strand. Tothe hunts on frosty mornings, to the salmon-fishing, to the showing of cattle. To peace: to pleasure....
And he suddenly asked himself what had he done to deserve this peace, these pleasant days? What right had he to them? What had he given to life, what achieved for the world, that he should have sanctuary?
The answer put him in a shiver of panic. Nothing!
He had no right, no title to it. Here he was drawing on to fifty, close on forty-eight; and he had done, achieved, nothing. He had no wife, no child; had achieved no valorous unselfish deed. Had not—not even—not even a little song.
Strange thing—it hadn't occurred to him at first; but it did now when he thought over it in the winter evenings—was this: that Alan Donn Campbell, for all that he was dead these six years and more, existed still, was bigger now than he had ever been in life....
Because Shane had hated to see the fine boat drawn up, he had putRigh nam Bradan, theSalmon King, Alan Donn's great thirty-footer, into commission, and raced her at Ballycastle and Kingstown, losing both times. He had ascribed it to sailing luck, the dying of a breeze, the setting of a tide, a lucky tack of an opposing boat. But at Cowes he should have won. Everything was with him. He came in fifth.
"I can't understand," he told one of Alan's old crew.
"Man," the Antrim sailor told him bluntly, "ye have na' the gift."
"But, Feardoracha, I'm a sailor."
"Aye, Shane Campbell, you're that. For five times seven years you've sailed the seven seas. But for racing ye have na' the gift. Alan Donn had it. And 'twas Alan Donn had the gift for the golf, and the gift for the horses. Just the gift. You must not blame yourself,Shane na fairrge, there's few Alan Donns."
And thinking to himself in the lamp-lit room, Shane found what the old man meant. Beneath the bronzed face, the roaring manner of Alan Donn, there was a secret of alchemy. Rhythm, and concentration like white fire. To the most acute tick of the stars he could get a boat over the line with the gun. Something told him where breezes were. By will-power he forcedout the knowledge of a better tack. As to horses, where was his equal at putting one over a jump? At the exact hair's-breadth of time, he had changed from human being to spirit. It was no longer Alan Donn and his horse when he dropped his hands on the neck. There was fusion. A centaur sprang.... On the links he remembered him, the smiling mask, the stance, the waggle, the white ball. The face set, the eyes gleamed.... The terrific explosion.... Not a man and a stick and a piece of gutta-percha, but the mind and will performing a miracle with matter.... And Alan Donn was dead six years ... and yet he lived....
He lived because he had been of great use. He was a standard, a great ideal. Children who had seen him would remember him forever, and seek to emulate the fire and strength of him, having him to measure by as the mariner has the star.... In foreign countries they would tell tales of him: There was once a great sportsman in the North of Ireland, Alan Donn Campbell by name....
His father, too, who had been dead so long—mortality had not conquered him. Once in Ballycastle Shane had seen a shawled girl look out to sea with great staring eyes and a wrymouth, and, half whispered, staccato, not quite sung, her fingers twisting her shawl, came a song from her white mouth:
Tiocfaidh an samhradh agas fasfaidh an fear;Agas tiocfaidh an duilleabhar glas do bharr nan gcraobh.Tiocfaidh mo chead gradhle banaghadh an lae,Agas bvailfidh se port ciuin le cumhaidh 'mo dhiaidh.The summer will come, and the little grass will grow;And there will come a green thickness to the tops of the trees.And my hundred loves will arise with the dawning of the day,And he will strike a soft tune out of loneliness after me.
A queer stitch came in Shane's heart—a song his father made! And following the stitch came a surge of pride. Those songs of his father! The light minor he had heard, and the others—the surge ofAn Oig-bhean Ruaddh, the Pretty Red Maiden:
"Se, do bheatha is an tir seo".... A welcome before you into this country, O sea-gull more lovely than the queen, than the woman of the West, whom Naesi, son of Usnach, held in the harbor. I could destroy all Ireland, as far as the Southern sea, but in the end I would be destroyed myself, when my eyes would alight on the white swan with the golden crown....
Or the despairing cry of his poemIg Cathair nan g Ceo: "In the City of the Fogs"—he meant London—
"A athair nan gras tabhair spas o'n eag domh—O Father of the Graces, give me a little respite from death. Let the ax not yet strike my forehead, the way a goat or a pig or a sheep is slain, until I make my humility and my last repentance."
Shane wished to God he had known his father, that the man had been spared a little until he could have loved him.... He had the only picture of him left.... Great throat and pale, liquor-harried face, burning eyes, and black tossing hair.... The bald-headed bankers might shake their heads and say: He was no good ... he was a rake ... he drank ... his relations with women were not reputable.... And old maids purse their thin-blooded lips.... But when the little money of the bankers was scattered through the world, and even their little chapels had forgotten them, and the stiff bones of old maids were crumbling into an unnecessary dust, his father's songs would be sung in Ireland, in Man, in the Scottish Highlands, in the battered Hebrides. So long as sweet Gaelic was spoken and men's hearts surged with feeling, there would be a song of his father's to translatethe effervescence into words of cadenced beauty.... He had an irreverent vision of God smiling and talking comfortably to his father while the bald-headed bankers cooled their fat heels and glared at one another outside the picket-gates of heaven.... The world had gained something with the last Gaelic bard....
And he had found out, too, that his other uncle, Robin More, had a great importance in a certain circle. In Dublin he met an old professor, a Jesuit priest, who seemed intensely excited that a nephew of Robin More Campbell's should be present.
"Do you know, by any chance, what your uncle was working on when he died?"
"I'm afraid I do not, sir."
"You know his manuscripts."
"Just casually, sentimentally."
"You don't know much about your uncle's work, then?"
"Not very much."
"Did you know," the old priest said—and his urbanity disappeared; there was pique in his tones—"that your uncle was the man who definitely decided for us that the Highlanders of Scotland migrated from Ireland to Scotland? Did you know that?"
"No, sir, I did not."
"I don't suppose," the old man was sarcastic, "that seems important to you."
"To confess, Dr. Hegan, it does not. Is it?"
"My child," the old priest smiled—it was so queer to be called "my child" at forty-seven—"all knowledge is important. All details of knowledge. We come we know not whence, and we go we hope we know whither. Our history, our motives, our all, is vague. All we have is faith, a great broad river, but knowledge is the little piers ..."
They had all been significant: Alan Donn, his father, even Uncle Robin, whom he had thought only a bookworm in the fading sunshine. The world was better, more mature, for their having lived....
And he had nothing. Here he was, drawing on to fifty, close on forty-eight. And he had done, achieved nothing. He had no wife, no child; had achieved no valorous unselfish deed. Had not—not even—not even a little song....
And then he said to himself: "I am too sensitive. I have always been too sensitive. The stature of my family has dwarfed me in my ownesteem. Haven't I got as much right as others to the quiet of the glens?" And again he said: "I sit here and I think. And my thought grows into a maze. And I wander in it, as a man might wander through some old gardener's fancy, having stumbled on it inadvertently, and now being in it, now knowing the secret of exit." But a maze was nonexistent, did a person regard it so, and if one were to walk on nonchalantly a little turn would come, and he find himself in the wide sunshine and smiling flowers. And he said: "Damn the subtleties! A person is born, lives, dies. And what he does is a matter for himself alone." But some inner antagonist said: "You are wrong."
And he said: "Look at the people around me. What more right have they than I to this quiet Ulster dusk?" And the antagonist smiled: "Well, look."
First were the farmers and the fisherfolk. Well, they didn't count. They were natural to the soil, as grass was. They grew there, as the white bog flower grew. An institution of God, like rain. And then there were the summer visitors, honest folk from the cities. Well, they had a right. They spent their winters and autumns and springs in mills and counting-houses, clearing away the commercial garbage of the world. And when the graciousness of summer came, they emerged, blind as moles, peak-faced. And before them stretched the Moyle, a blue miracle. The crisp heather, the thick rushes, the yellow of the buttercups, the black bog waters. And when clouds came before the sun the mountains drew great purple cloths over them. And in the twilight the cricket chirruped. And at night the plover cried out against the vast silence of the moon. And the hearts of the selling people turned from thoughts of who owed them money and who was harrying them for money. And the tight souls opened, just a little perhaps, but even that—Poor garbage men of the world, who would begrudge them a little beauty?
Then there were the country people, the landlords, the owners of the soil. Red-faced, sportsmen, connoisseurs of cattle, a sort of super-farmer, they were as natural to the soil as the fisherfolk or the tillers. Their stock remained from ancient tides of battle, centuries before. The founders of the families had been Norman barons, Highland chiefs, English squires; but the blood had adapted itself, as a plant adapts itself in astrange country. And now they were Ulster squires. Smiling, shy, independent. They had a great feeling for a horse, and a powerful sense of fair play. They were very honest folk. A station had been set them and they lived in it, honestly, uncomplainingly, quite happily. But a meadow was a piece of land to them and a river a place where trout could be caught, and snow was a good thing, because it kept the ground warm. They were a folk whom Shane respected a great deal, and who respected him—but they weren't his folk.
Above all these of his neighbors towered three figures, and the first of these was the admiral.
He had a name. He had a title, too—Baron Fraser of Onabega. But to everybody he was the admiral, and in speech plain "sir." A purple-faced and terrible old man, with bushy white eyebrows and eagle's eyes. Very tall, four inches over six feet, very erect for all his ninety years, with his presence there thundered the guns of Drake, there came to the mind the slash of old Benbow.... He had been a midshipman with Nelson at Cape Trafalgar.
Silent and fierce, about his head clouds of majesty, all his life had been spent with pursed lips and hooded eyes, keeping watch for England... And never a great battle where he could prove himself the peer of Benbow and Drake and Nelson ... Never a dawn when the fleet rolled down to battle with polished guns and whipping flags ... And a day came when he was too old ... So here he was in the Antrim glens ...
A great life, his, a great and serviceable life, frustrated of glory ... And well he deserved the quiet of Ulster, where he sat and wrote his long letters to archæological papers, proving, he thought, that the Irish were a lost tribe of Israel and that the Ark of the Covenant was buried on Tara Hill ... And there were none to laugh at him ... All spirit he was; watchful, dogged, indomitable spirit with a little husk of body ... Soon, as he had directed, his old bearded sailormen would take his flag-covered casket out to sea in the night, and the guns would thunder: A British admiral sails by ...
And there was Simon Fowler in his little cottage, who was dying by inches from some tropical malady ... A small chunky man with white hair and wide blue eyes ... He had been a missionary in Africa, in China, in India—not the missionary of sentimental books, but a prophet whose calm voice, whose intrepid eyes, had gained him ahearing everywhere ... "Put fear away," he had preached in Africa; "let darkness flee. I come to tell of the light of the world ... After me will come the sellers of gin and of guns. But I shall give you a great magic against them ... Little children love one another ..." In China his fire had shamed philosophers: "I know your alms-giving. I know your benevolence. It is selfishness. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Unless ye become as little children ..." And in the sensuous Indian lands, his voice rose in a great shout: "Subtle Greece is dead," he proclaimed, "and razed are the fanes of Ephesus. And the Unknown God slinks only through the midnight streets ..." "Blessed are the pure in heart ..." He had gone like a flame through the pagan places of the world, and here he was dying in the Antrim glens, with the quiet of Christ about him, the droning of God's little bees, and the lowing of the cattle of Bethlehem ... He was a great man. He had only one contempt: for hired clergymen.
There were three folk of heroic stature around him: the admiral, and Simon Fowler, and the woman of Tusa hErin.
A very small townland is Tusa hErin, the smallest in Ireland, it is said. And a very strange name on it: Tusa hErin, the beginning of Ireland. Why it is so called, none know. Possibly because some Highlanders named it this on landing there. Probably because it was a division between the Scottish and Irish clans. So it was called when the Bruce fled to Ireland. So it is called to this day.
Twenty acres or so are in it—a wind and sea lashed little estate, a great gray house and a garden of yew-trees. For ten years it had been untenanted, until a Miss O'Malley had bought it, and opened the great oak doors, and let the sea-air blow through the windows of it, and clipped the garden of the yews. The country people knew little of her, except that she had a great reserve. To the glensmen she wasBean Tusig Erin, the woman of Tusa hErin.
"What kind of a person is she?" Shane asked.
"A strange woman is in it, your Honor; a strange and dark woman."
"An old lady?"
"If she was one of us, she would be an old woman, your Honor, what with the bitter work and the hard ways. But being what she is, she is a young woman, your Honor. I heard tell she said she was thirty-four."
"Is she good-looking?"
"Well, now, your Honor, that would surely be a hard thing to say. A great dark face she has on her, and her head high, the like of a grand horse. Barring her eyes, you might call her a fine woman."
"What's wrong with her eyes?"
"Hard eyes she has, your Honor, hating eyes. She's always looking at you to see if it is an enemy is in it. A queer woman, your Honor; the like of her was never known."
"But how?"
"The talk that's at her, your Honor. The great hatred she bes having of England, and the talk of old Irish times."
"And she a lady?"
"You'd think it was a queen was in it, with the high head of her, and the proud step of a racing horse. You would, your Honor, you would so."
He asked the admiral about her.
"Do you know this Miss O'Malley, sir, of Tusa hErin?"
"I had the honor to meet her twice, Campbell. A very great woman. A great loss, Campbell, a great loss."
"Who is she, sir?"
"Good God! Do you mean to tell me you don't know who Grace O'Malley is?"
"No, sir, I don't."
"One of the greatest Shaksperian actresses, possibly, the English stage ever knew—and you never heard of her. Good God! How abominably ignorant you merchant marine men are!"
"Abominably so, sir ... But please tell me, sir, why does she hate England so much?"
"Oh, these geniuses, Campbell! They must hate something, or love something to excess ... Depths of feeling, I suppose ... Campbell, do you know anything about Ogham writing?"
"Only that it's straight lines on the corners of stones, sir!"
"Well, now, I think I've discovered something important, most terribly important ... You may have heard of the Babylonian cuneiform script ..." and the old gentleman was off full gallop on his hobby ...
From Simon Fowler he extracted a little more information.
"Fowler, do you know Miss O'Malley of Tusa hErin?"
"I do, poor lady."
"Why poor lady?"
"Wouldn't you call any one poor lady who had just been widowed, then lost her two children? Poor lady, I wish I could say something to comfort her."
"You! Fowler! You couldn't say anything?"
"The wisdom of God, Shane, is sometimes very hard to see. Our physical eyes can only see a little horizon, and yet the whole world is behind it. Miss O'Malley is not a case for any of the ministers of God ... but for Himself ..."
"You exaggerate, Fowler. Surely you are wrong ... They say she is young and proud and beautiful."
"I don't know. I never noticed ... She may be young and proud and beautiful ... I only thought of the dark harassed thing—inside all the youth and pride and beauty ..."
He met her for the first time at a neighboring fair ...
Eleven on a hot June morning, and the little town was crowded, like some old-time immigrant ship. Women in plaid shawls and frilled caps,men in somber black as befitted a monthly occasion. Squawking of ducks and hens, trudging of donkeys, creaking of carts, unbelievably stubborn bullocks and heifers being whacked by ash-plants, colts frisking. Girls with baskets of eggs and butter; great carts of hay and straw. Apple-women with bonnets of cabbage-leaves against the sun. Herring-men bawling like auctioneers. Squealing of young pigs. An old clothes dealer hoarse with effort. A ballad singer split the air with an English translation ofBean an Fhir Ruaidh, "The Red-haired Man's Wife."
Ye Muses Nine,Combine, and lend me your aid,Until I raisethe praise of a beautiful maid—
The crash of a drover driving home a bargain:
"Hold out your hand now, by God! till I be after making you an offer. Seven pound ten, now. Hell to my soul if I give you another ha' penny. Wait now. I 'll make it seven pound fifteen."
"Is it insulting the fine decent beast you are?"
"Eight pounds five and ten shillings back for a luck-penny?"
"Is it crazy you've gone all of a sudden, dealing man. If the gentle creature was in Dublintown, sure they'd be hanging blue ribbons around her neck until she wilted with the weight of them."
"It's hanging their hats on the bones of her they'd be, and them sticking out the like of branches from a bush."
"Yerra Jasus! Do you hear the man, and her round as a bottle from the fine filling feeding. You could walk your shin-bones off to the knee, and you'd not find a cow as has had the treatment of this cow. Let you be on our way now."
"Look, honest man. Put out your hand, and wait till I spit on my fist—"
Through the doors of Michael Doyle's public house a young farmer walked uncertainly. He gently swung a woman's woolen stocking in his right hand, and in the foot of the stocking was a large round stone:
"I am young Packy McGee of Ballymoyle," he announced, "the son of old Packy McGee of Ballymoyle, a great man in his day, but never the equal of young Packy McGee. I have gone through Scotland and Ireland, Wales, the harvest fields of England, and I have never yet found the equal for murder and riot of young Packy McGee. I am young Packy McGee. I am young Packy McGee of Ballymore, and I don't care who knows it. Is there any decent man in this fair that considers himself the equal of young PackyMcGee?" And he walked through the fair, chanting his litany and gently swinging the woman's woolen stocking with the large round stone in the foot of it ...
The penny poet changed from the high grace notes of "The Red-Haired Man's Wife" to the surge of a come-all-ye. There was the undercurrent of a pipe drone to his voice:
Fare-you-well, Enniskillen, fare-you-well for a while,All round the borders of Erin's green isleAnd when the war 's over return I shall soon,And your arms will be o-o-open for your Enniskillen Dragoon.
In the intervals between verses a black-bearded man with blue spectacles announced solemnly that he was Professor Handley direct from English and German universities, empowered by the Rosicrucian order to distribute a remarkable panacea at the nominal sum of sixpence a bottle ...
Forests of cows' horns and drovers' sticks, clamor of frightened cattle, emphatic slapping of palms. Clouds of dust where the horse fair was carried on. Stands of fruit and cakes. Stalls of religious ornaments, prayer-books, and rosary beads ... A shooting gallery ... A three-card trickster, white and pimpled of face ... A trick-of-the-loop man, with soap-box and greasy string ... A man who sold a gold watch,a sovereign, and some silver for the sum of fifteen shillings ... An old man with the Irish bagpipes, bellows strapped to arm, playing "The Birds Among the Trees," "The Swallow-tail Coat," "The Green Fields of America" ... small boys regarding him curiously ... later young farmers and girls would be dancing sets to his piping ... At the end of the street a ballad-monger declaiming, not singing—his head thrown back, his voice issuing in a measured chant ... "The Lament for the Earl of Lucan":
Patrick Sarsfield, Ireland's wonder!Fought in the field like bolts of thunder!One of Ireland's best commanders!Now is food for the crows of Flanders!Och! Ochone!
A knot of older people had gathered around him, white-headed farmers, bent turf-cutters of the glens, a girl-child with eyes like saucers. A priest stopped to listen ... The crude English of the ballad faded out, until there was nothing but disheveled agony ... rhythm ... a wail ... Somewhere a leaping current of feeling ... There was a woman on the edge of the crowd, a lady ... She came nearer, as though hypnotized ...
The country bard stopped suddenly, exalted,and swung dramatically into Gaelic ... Dropping the alien tongue he seemed to have dropped fetters.... His voice rose to a pæan ... he took on stature ... he looked straight in the eye of the sun ... And for Shane the clamor of the drovers ceased ... And there was the plucked note of harpers ... And fires of ancient oak ... and wolf-dogs sleeping on skins of elk ... And there was a wasted place in the twilight, and grass through a split hearthstone ... And a warrior-poet, beaten, thinking bitter under the stars ...
Do threasgar an saoghal agas do thainic an gaoth mar smal—;Alastrom, Cæsar, 's an mead do bhi da bpairt;Ta an Teamhair na fear agas feach an Traoi mar ta!'S na Sasanaigh fein, do b' fheidir go bhfaigh dis bas!
A voice spoke excitedly, imperiously to Shane:
"What is he saying? Do you know Gaelic?"
"I'm afraid I've forgotten my Gaelic, but I know this song."
"Then what is it? Please tell me. I must know."
"He says:
"The world conquers them all. The wind whirls like dust.Alexander, Cæsar, and the companies whom they led.Tara is grass, and see how Troy is now!And the English themselves, even they may die."
"How great!" she said. "How very great!" She turned to Shane, and as he saw the dark imperious face, he knew intuitively he was speaking to the Woman of Tusa hErin. She seemed puzzled for an instant. Something in Shane's clothes, his carriage ...
"You don't look as if you understood Gaelic? How is it you can translate this poem?"
"I knew it as a boy. My father was a Gaelic poet."
"Then you are Shane Campbell."
"And you are the woman of Tusa hErin!"
"You know Tusa hErin?"
"I know every blade of grass in the glens."
"If you are ever near Tusa hErin, come and see me."
"I should like to."
"Will you really?"
"Yes."
She left him as abruptly as she spoke to him, going over to the ballad-monger. She left him a little dazed ... He was aware of vitality ... He was like a man on a wintry day who experiences a sudden shaft of warm sun, or somebody in quiet darkness whose eye is caught by the rising of the moon.
As in a story from some old unsubtle book, in passing the gates of Tusa hErin, he had gone into another world, a grave and courteous world, not antique—that was not the word, but just older ... A change of tempo ... A change of atmosphere ... TheBois Dormant, the Sleeping Wood of the French fairy-tale?... Not that, for the Sleeping Wood should be a gray wood, a wood of twilight, with the birds a-drowse in their nests ... And here were clipped rich yew-trees, and turf firm as a putting-green's, and rows of dignified flowers, like pretty gracious ladies; and a little lake where a swan moved, as to music; and the sunshine was rich as wine here ... all golden and green ... But the atmosphere? He thought of the cave of Gearod Oge, the Wizard Earl in the Rath of Mullaghmast, and the story of it ... A farmer man had noticed a light from the old fort, and creeping in he had seen men in armor sleeping with their horses beside them ... And he examined the armor and the saddlery, and cautiously half drew a sword from its sheath ... And the soldier's head rose and: "Bhfuil an trath ann?" his voice cried ... "Has the time come?" "It is not, your Honor," the farmer said in terror, and shoved the sword back and fled ... An old man said for a surety that had the farmer drawn the blade from the scabbard, the Wizard Earl would have awakened, and Ireland been free ... There was great beauty and great Irishness to that story, but there was terror to it, and there was no terror on this sweet place ...
He said: It is a trick of my head, an illusion that this is different. Some shading that comes from the yews, some phenomenon of cliff and water ... But even that did not circumscribe the rich grave look of grounds and house. A song from "The Tempest" came to him:
Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fadeBut doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange ...
That was it, something rich and strange, like some old cloister into which one might turn from an inquiet and hubbubby street ... A knock at an oaken wicket; a peering shy brother, and one was on green lawns and the shadows of a gabled monastery. Cowled, meditative friars, and thequiet of Christ like spread wings ... But there was a reason for the cloister's glamour: cool thoughts and the rhythm of quiet praying, and the ringing of the little bell of mass, and the cadenced sacramental. All these were sympathetic magic ... But whence came the glamour of Tusa hErin?
And she said: "I am glad you came. I knew somehow you would."
"I am glad, too. I knew Tusa hErin as a boy. It was then a weird old place. The yew-trees were unclipped, the turf riotous, the little lake ungraveled ... It had an eeriness. But now—it is very different."
"Any place is different for being loved, tended."
"I suppose so. One loves but one gets careless toward ... I know Antrim has always had an immense attraction for me ..."
"Antrim—alone?"
"Yes, of course, Antrim."
"Not all Ireland, then?"
"I never thought of Ireland as all Ireland."
"O Shane Campbell, you've sailed so muchand seen so much—China, they tell me, and South America, and the Levant. And in the North, Archangel. I'll warrant you don't know Ireland."
"I never saw much, though, in any place outside Antrim."
"You never saw much in the little towns of the Pale, or gray Dublin, with the Parliament where Grattan spoke now a money-changer's business house, and the bulk of Trinity of Goldsmith and Burke—or the great wide streets where four-in-hands used to go. And Three-Rock Mountain. And Bray. And the beauty of the Boyne Valley. And the little safe harbors of the South. And the mountains of Kerry. And all the kingdom of Connacht. And the great winds of Donegal."
"But it's so eery, deserted, a dead country. All like Tusa hErin was before you took it."
"If one could take it all, and do to it as I've done to Tusa hErin. By the way," she asked suddenly, "is Tusa hErin haunted?"
"No, I never heard. Did you see anything?"
"I think I heard something a few times. A piper piping when the storms rose. A queer little tune—like that thing about McCrimmon."
"Cha till, cha till, cha till McCrimmon."
"Are there words to it?"
"Le cogadh mo sidhe cha till McCrimmon."Never, never, never, will return McCrimmon.With war or peace never will come McCrimmon.For money or spoil never will return McCrimmon.He will come no more till the Day of the Gathering.
"A lamenting tune like that, I heard."
"The drone was just the grinding of the waves, the air the wind among the yews."
"That's possible. But isn't a phantom piper possible, too, in a land of ghosts?"
"A land of ghosts"; the phrase remained with him. And the lighted lamp and the burning peat fire seemed to invoke like some necromantic ritual. How often, and he a young boy, had the names trumpeted through his being. Brian Boru at Clontarf, and the routed red Danes. And with the routing of the Danes, Ireland had come to peaceful days, and gentle white-clothed saints arose and monasteries with tolling bells, and great Celtic crosses.... And gone were the Druids, their cursing stones, their Ogham script.... Gone old Celtic divinities, Angus of the Boyne, and Manannan, son of Lir, god of the sea ...and the peace of Galilee came over the joyous hunting land.... The little people of the hills, with their pygmy horses, their pygmy pipes, cowered, went into exile, under the thunder of Rome.... And the land was meek that it might inherit the kingdom of heaven.... And the English came.... The Earls of Ulster fled into Spain.... And only here and there was a memory of old-time heroes, of Cuchulain of the Red Branch; of Maeve, queen of Connacht, in her fighting chariot, her great red cloak; of Dermot, who abducted Grania from the king of Ireland's camp, and knew nine ways of throwing the spear.... The O'Neils remembered Shane, who brought Queen Elizabeth to her knees with love and terror.... And Owen Roe, the Red.... And the younger Hugh O'Neil, with his hardbitten Ulstermen at Benburb.... They had to bring the greatest general of Europe, Cromwell, the lord protector, to subdue the Ulster clans.... Sullen peace, and the Stuarts came back, and again Ireland was lulled with their suave manners, the scent of the white rose.... The crash of the Boyne Water, and King James running for his life.... And Limerick's siege, and the Treaty, and Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese setting wing for France.... France knew them, Germany, Sweden, even Russia....Ramillies and the Spaniard knew Lord Clare's Dragoons.... And Fontenoy and the thunder of the Irish Brigade.... And Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, dead at the end of the day.... Even to-day Europe knew them: O'Donnel, Duke of Tetuan and grandee of Spain; and Patrice McMahon, Duke of Magenta, who had been made president of the Republic of France—they were of the strain of Lucan's wild Geese....