CHAPTER V
WhenI woke up this morning—my first in Ballysheen—the sun was ablaze upon everything. Last evening I had driven over the nine miles from Youghal upon Quin's car. Quin is the local baker, doing odd jobs as a jobbing-master besides. Then the sky had been a sullen grey, no light or hope was there to be found in it as far as your eyes could see. Those long, lone, rutted roads were empty. Not a soul did we pass from the bridge over the Blackwater all the way to where the dense trees tunnel an entrance into the wee village of Ballysheen.
"Is it always as lonely as this over here?" I asked of Quin, whose eyes were set dreamily before him, as though in the little gap between the horse's ears he saw visions of a country we should never reach. "Are there never any people about on the roads?"
With a jerk he brought himself back into the present.
"Shure there are plenty of people in these parts," said he, "only they're in their cottages, the way 'tis misting."
I gathered that he meant raining. But it was not raining, wherefore I said as much.
"Ah—well it will," said he, in a tone of fatality. "Ye see them clouds over there to the west, 'tis always wet when they be coming up from there. D'ye see the way the cattle have got their backs turned to ut? Yirra, don't I know a wet day when I see wan!"
"But, my God!" said I. "It's six o'clock and it isn't wet yet!"
"Wait a while," he replied, equably, "it will," and he put up the collar of his coat to prove it.
That was my first, my very first, impression of Ireland. Here this morning there was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was a flaming torch in the heavens, there had not been a drop of rain all night, yet in the heart, in the very spirit of James Quin there had poured down a veritable deluge. And they would understand Ireland who talk of a nation of light-hearted men and women. I think we must have driven three more miles of our journey before I said another word after that. Speaking truth, the greyness of it, the endlessness of those walls of mud and stone, the passing sight of a roofless cottage, the very soul of its past habitation starved and dead within it, they had all combined to close about me in a dull, impenetrable despair. Despair, I will admit, that was not of my own. I was thinking of Clarissa. I could see her gazing forth from the window of her prison, with those dark, Southern eyes of hers, gazing into that limitless mist of grey out of which, had a Banshee cried, upon my word, I should have felt no surprise.
Then from thought of her came the sudden wonder to my mind—how was I to help her? How, in the name of Heaven, set about the liberation of a woman who hugs to her heart the very chains that bind her? And not that obstacle only, but there were those two maiden aunts to face. It was then I turned once more to Quin.
"Who are the Miss Fennells who live in Ballysheen?" I asked.
"Is it Miss Mary and her sister, living at Janemount?"
"Are there others?" I inquired.
"There are not," said he, "'tis enough for one village to be havin' thim two. I wouldn't drive thim on this carr, not if they was to go down on their four knees bended."
"Why not?"
"Faith, they'd owe me for the job of ut for the rest of their lives."
"Are they very poor?"
"Is ut poor?" he exclaimed. "Shure, they haven't got what 'ud cover the palm of me wan hand with silver, an' they dhrive to Lady O'Shea's at the house on the cliff over, the way ye'd think the money was dhropping out av a sack with a hole in ut."
"Is it a crime to be poor, then?" I asked.
"It is not," said he; "but 'tis a crime to hide ut, the way ye can be ashamed of others who are."
To meet fatalism and philosophy all in one day! I had not done as much in London in a year. But in Ireland, if Nature has not given you the one, a divine Providence invests you with the other. My friend Townshend, whom I have not met since our days together at Oxford, I find is a philosopher to his finger-tips. But his is a philosophy of the beauty of Nature, whereby he closes Her hand that she may not present him with the gift of fatalism too.
It was this morning when, finding the sun laughing in at my windows, shaming my laziness, I jumped out of bed, dressed and went down into the garden. There was Townshend already before me, visiting his rose trees with an open pruning knife in his hand.
"I thought March—" I began.
He laughed.
"You're quite right," said he. "March for pruning—but all the rest of the year for love."
I stole a glance at him as he moved to another tree. This was the first swift insight I had received into his philosophy. Had he really got the secret of it—had he found Dandy's unassailable circle of contentment? One asks one's self these questions in a breath. If in the next breath they are not answered, they are gone. Now, in the next breath, the name of Dandy having but recently come into my mind, I lost sight of the spirit of his philosophy and began wondering where he was in the flesh. From wondering, I asked.
"On a morning like this," said Townshend, "where else would you expect?"
I shook my head.
"Out on the cliffs with Bellwattle?"
I stared at him.
"In the name of God," said I, "who's that?"
"My wife. My name for her is Bellwattle. In a moment of exuberant spirits one day, she addressed me as Cruikshank. Why? For no reason. For less reason I returned her the compliment of Bellwattle. That at least was suggested by her name for me. What made her think of Cruikshank is more than I can tell you. She hasn't the faintest conception herself."
So I call them Cruikshank and Bellwattle. It seems in some odd way to fit in with the quaintness of their philosophy—this living to give to Nature in return for what Nature has to bestow on them.
Just before breakfast, then, came Dandy dancing attendance on Bellwattle. They had walked four miles.
She swung up the path from the gate with Dandy at her heels, and her step was as light as the morning. I had not even known until the night before that my host was married; yet as Dandy, seeing me for the first time that day, leapt thrice and was at my knees, she gave me a smile and a cry of good-morrow, and I felt we had been the best of friends for the better part of our lives.
"How about breakfast?" said Cruikshank.
Bellwattle nodded her head violently, waving a bunch of wild violets in her hand. I followed them slowly into the house. There was something on Dandy's mind which he had somehow or other to express.
"Well—what is it?" I said, and I caught one paw as he jumped up, so that he must walk upon his hind legs beside me. "What is it?"
He dragged at his paw until I set it free, and then he told me. He raced three times round one flower-bed and twice round another, with the sides of his body almost touching the ground, so incredible was the speed he made. When that was completed he came back and looked up at me with his tongue lolling out.
"I understand," said I. "I can feel it just the same. It's the country." Whereupon he started racing it all over again.
Of course, it is the moment that lives; never the hour or the day or the year. The moment is the nearest approach to the truth in our conception of Eternity. I have gone back in my mind since, over my stay at Ballysheen, and, though many a meal-time comes back to my memory with pleasure, that first breakfast stands out beyond them all.
The chintz curtains were drawn full back, the window was wide open. Marvellously muted by the distance came the tireless music of the sea, which plays upon its gentlest instruments when the day is still. From the farmyard over the way the strains of yet another orchestra touched at moments on our ears. Neither the one nor the other clashed, for Nature chooses her instrumentalists, not for what theycando, but for what theymust. This is not only the secret of harmony, it is the secret of all music and all art.
In the hedge of barberry across the lawn, the birds were building a very city of houses. In the high grass of the lawn itself, the daffodils lifted their trumpets, blowing a blast—young heralds announcing the entry of a knight into the lists, while all the little snowdrops bowed their heads, as maidens used, and trembled.
I sat down at the table facing the window in silence. Upon the clean white cloth was placed their set of Worcester-pink, with the color of roses, such as we scarce know how to handle upon china now. In the middle of it all stood one great bowl of primroses.
The maid came in and placed a basin of porridge before me—porridge! Such as I had not eaten for years and years.
"I'll ask them to let me off this to-morrow," I said to myself. "But this being my first day, 'twere better manners to take it now and say nothing." Therefore, I took it; and what is more, I am glad I said nothing. When I looked up out of the window again, that basin was empty.
Half way through breakfast, Cruikshank suddenly looked up. He directed his gaze at me.
"What was that about the Miss Fennells?" said he.
For a moment I felt confusion in my cheeks. The barest instant it lasted, and then was gone; yet in that very instant Bellwattle's eyes had sought my face. When a woman has instinct—and when has she not?—her heart has seen long before her eyes are warned of it. The abruptness of her husband's question had presupposed confusion in both of us, wherefore, while I was confused, her eyes were ready to my face to find it. I would swear Cruikshank were as ignorant of it as a helpless babe, for when he had waited but a second for my answer, he began again.
"That letter you wrote me," said he. "When you asked—"
"Of course—I know—and in the postscript I wanted to know if they lived here."
"That's it."
I made an effort to let him leave it at that.
"All your eggs come from the farm, I suppose?" I hazarded.
"Yes; he won't let me keep chickens; they tear up the garden," said Bellwattle. "Bless their hearts—I think those little chickens—the tiny little yellow things—" The thought of them overwhelmed her.
Words failed, as they often did with her. She begged to be allowed to keep them next year; but Cruikshank shook his head.
"What was it you wanted to find out about the Miss Fennells?" he asked. His mind had clung tenaciously to its subject.
"Merely that I wanted to know if they lived here. I had heard them mentioned."
"They live at a house called Janemount," said Bellwattle. "I'll show it to you after breakfast."