There was a continuous clatter of conversation that rose and fell and broke like the waves on the beach, there was the dull shuffling of uneasy feet on the ground, the tinkling of glasses, the rattle of bottles, and over it all the half hysterical laugh of a tipsy woman. Above the racket a penetrating, quivering voice was raised in song.
Now and again bleary eyes were raised to, the stage, shadowy in a fog of tobacco smoke. The figure on the boards strutted about, made some fantastic steps, the face pallid in the streaky light, the mouth scarlet as a tulip for a moment as it opened wide, the muscles about the lips wiry and distinct from much practice, the words of the song coming in a vehement nasal falsetto and in a brogue acquired in the Bowery. The white face of the man who accompanied the singer on the piano was raised for a moment in a tired gesture that was also a protest; in the eyes of the singer as they met those of the accompanist was an expression of cynical Celtic humour; in the smouldering gaze of the pianist was the patient, stubborn soul of the Slav. The look between these entertainers, one from Connacht the other from Poland, was a little act of mutual commiseration and a mutual expression of contempt for the noisy descendants of the Lost Tribes who made merry in the place.
A Cockney who had exchanged Houndsditch for the Bowery leered up broadly at the Celt prancing about the stage. He turned to the companion who sat drinking with him, a tall, bony half-caste, her black eyes dancing in a head that quivered from an ague acquired in Illinois.
"'E's all ryght, is Paddy," said the voice from Houndsditch. He pointed a thumb that was a certificate of villainy in the direction of the stage.
"Sure," said the coloured lady, whose ancestry rambled back away Alabama. She looked up at the stage with her bold eyes.
"I know him," she said, thoughtfully. "And I like him," she added grinning. "We all like him. He's one of the boys."
"Wot price me?" said the Houndsditch man.
"Oh, you're good, too," said the coloured lady. "Blow in another cocktail, honey." She struck her breast where the uneasy bone showed through the dusky skin. "I've a fearful thirst right there."
Little puckers gathered about the small, humorous eyes of the Cockney as he looked at her. "My," he said, "you 'ave got a thirst and a capacity, Ole Sahara!"
The coloured lady raised the cocktail to her fat lips, and as she did so there was a sudden racket, men shouting, women clapping their hands, the voice of the tipsy woman dominant in its hysteria over the uproar. The singer was bowing profuse acknowledgments from the stage, his eyes, sly in their cynical humour, upon the face of the Slav at the piano, his head thrown back, the pallor of his face ghastly.
The lady from Alabama joined in the tribute to the singer.
"'Core, 'core," cried Ole Sahara, raising her glass in the dim vapour. "Here's to Denis Donohoe!"
The white goat stood in a little clearing closed in by a ring of whins on the hillside. Her head swayed from side to side like the slow motion of the pendulum of a great clock. The legs were a little spread, the knees bent, the sides slack, the snout grey and dry, the udder limp.
The Herd knew the white goat was in great agony. She had refused the share of bran he had brought her, had turned away from the armful of fresh ivy leaves his little daughter held out to her. He had desisted from the milking, she had moaned so continuously.
Some days before the Herd had found the animal injured on the hill; the previous night he had heard the labourers making a noise, shouting and singing, as they crossed from the tillage fields. He knew what had happened when he had seen the marks of their hob-nailed boots on her body. She was always a sensitive brute, of a breed that came from the lowlands. The sombre eyes of the Herd glowed in a smouldering passion as he stood helplessly by while the white goat swung her head from side to side.
He gathered some dry bracken and spread a bed of it near the white goat. It would be unkind to allow her to lie on the wet grass when the time came that she could no longer stand. He looked up at the sky and marked the direction of the wind. It had gone round to the west. Clouds were beginning to move across the sky. There was a vivid light behind the mountains. The air was still. It would rain in the night. He had thought for the white goat standing there in the darkness, swaying her head in agony, the bracken growing sodden at her feet, the rain beating into her eyes. It was a cold place and wind-swept. Whenever the white goat had broken her tether she had flown from it to the lowlands. He remembered how, while leading her across a field once, she had drawn back in some terror when they had come to a pool of water.
The Herd looked at his little daughter. The child had drawn some distance away, the ivy leaves fallen from her bare arms. He was conscious that some fear had made her eyes round and bright. What was it that the child feared? He guessed, and marvelled that a child should understand the strange thing that was about to happen up there on the hill. The knowledge of Death was shining instinctively in the child's eyes. She was part of the stillness and greyness that was creeping over the hillside.
"We will take the white goat to the shelter of the stable," the Herd said.
The child nodded, the fear still lingering in her eyes. He untied the tether and laid his hand on the horn of the goat. She answered to the touch, walking patiently but unsteadily beside him.
After a while the child followed, taking the other horn, gently, like her father, for she had all his understanding of and nearness to the dumb animals of the fields. They came slowly and silently. The light failed rapidly as they came down the hill. Everything was merged in a shadowy vagueness, the colour of the white goat between the two dim figures alone proclaiming itself. A kid bleated somewhere in the distance. It was the cry of a young thing for its suckle, and the Herd saw that for a moment the white goat raised her head, the instinct of her nature moving her. Then she tottered down the hill in the darkness.
When they reached the front of the stable the white goat backed painfully from the place. The Herd was puzzled for a moment. Then he saw the little pool of water in a faint glimmer before their feet. He brought the animal to one side, avoiding it, and she followed the pressure of his directing hand.
He took down a lantern that swung from the rafters of the stable and lighted it. In a corner he made a bed of fresh straw. The animal leaned over a little against the wall, and they knew she was grateful for the shelter and the support. Then the head began to sway in a weary rhythm from side to side as if the pain drove it on. Her breath quickened, broke into little pants. He noted the thin vapour that steamed from about her body. The Herd laid his hand on her snout. It was dry and red hot. He turned away leading the child by the hand, the lantern swinging from the other, throwing long yellow streaks of light about the gloom of the stable. He closed the door softly behind him.
It was late that night when the Herd got back from his rounds of the pastures. His boots soaked in the wet ground and the clothes clung to his limbs, for the rain had come down heavily. A rumble of thunder sounded over the hills as he raised the latch of his door. He felt glad he had not left the white goat tethered in the whins on the hill.
His little daughter had gone to sleep. His wife told him the child on being put to bed had wept bitterly, but refused to confess the cause of her grief. The Herd said nothing, but he knew the child had wept for the white goat. The thought of the child's emotion moved him, and he turned out of the house again, standing in the darkness and the rain. Why had they attacked the poor brute? He asked the question over and over again, but only the rain beat in his face and around him was darkness, mystery. Then he heard the voices higher up on the side of the hill, first a laugh, then some shouts and cries. A thick voice raised the refrain of a song, and it came booming through the murky atmosphere. The Herd could hear the words:
Where are the legs with which you run?
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are the legs with which you run?
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are the legs with which you run
When first you went to carry a gun?
Indeed, your dancing days are done!
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!
And then came the chorus like a roar down the hills:
With drums and guns, and, guns and drum
The enemy nearly slew ye;
My darling dear, you look so queer,
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!
The voices of the labourers passing from the tillage fields died away, and the rumble of thunder came down more frequently from the hills. The Herd crossed his garden, his boots sinking in the soft ground. Half way across he paused, for a loud cry had dominated the fury of the breaking storm. His ears were quick for the cries of animals in distress. He went on rapidly toward the stable.
The ground grew more sloppy and a thin stream of water came from the rim of his soft black hat, streaming down his face. He noted the flashes of lightning overhead. Through it all the cry of the white goat sounded, with that weird, vibrating "mag-gag" that was the traditional note of her race. It had a powerful appeal for the Herd. It stirred a feeling of passion within him as he hurried through the rain.
How they must have lacerated her, a poor brute chained to the sod, at the mercy of their abuse! The red row of marks along her gams, raw and terrible, sprang to his sight out of the darkness. Vengeance, vengeance! He gripped his powerful hands, opening and closing the fists. Then he was conscious of something in the storm and the darkness that robbed him of his craving for personal vengeance. All that belonged to the primitive man welled up in him. He knew that in the heart of the future there lurked a reckoning—something, somebody—that would count the tally at the appointed time. Then he had turned round the gable of the stable. He saw the ghostly white thing, shadowy in the blackness, lying prostrate before the door. He stood still, his breath drawn inward.
There was a movement in the white shape. He could discern the blurred outline of the head of the animal as she raised it up a little. There was a low moan followed by a great cry. The Herd stood still, terror in his heart. For he interpreted that cry in all the terrible inarticulate consciousness of his own being. That cry sounded in his ears like an appeal to all the generations of wronged dumb things that had ever come under the lash of the tyranny of men. It was the protest of the brute creation against humanity, and to the Herd it was a judgment. Then his eyes caught a murky gleam beside the fallen white shape, and the physical sense of things jumped back to his mind.
He remembered that in wet weather a pool of water always gathered before the stable door. He remembered that there was a glimmer of it there when he had led the white goat into the stable. He remembered how she had shown fear of it.
He stooped down over the white goat where she lay. Thin wisps of her hair floated about looking like dim wraiths against the blackness of the pool. He caught a look of the brown eyes and was aware that the udder and teats bulged up from the water. He sank down beside her, the water making a splash as his knees dropped into the place. The animal raised her head a little and with pain, for the horns seemed to weigh like lead. But it was an acknowledgment that she was conscious of his presence; then the head fell back, a gurgle sounding over one of the ears.
The Herd knew what had happened, and it was all very tragical to his mind. His wife had come out to the stable for something, and had left the door open behind her. The white goat, goaded by the growing pain, had staggered out the door, perhaps feeling some desire for the open fields in her agony. Then she had seen before the threshold of the door that which had always been a horror to her—a pool of water. The Herd could see her tottering and swaying and then falling into it with a cry, fulfilling her destiny. He wondered if he himself had the same instinct for the things that would prove fatal to him? Why was he always so nervous when he stooped to or lay upon the ground? Why did it always give him a feeling that he would be trampled under the hooves of stampeding cattle rounded up for treatment for the warble fly? He trembled as he heard the beat of hooves on the ground behind him. He peered about and for a while did not recognise the shape that moved restlessly about in the darkness. He heard the neigh of the brood mare. He knew then she had been hovering about the stable afraid to go in out of the storm. She was afraid to go in because of the thing that lay before the stable door. He heard the answering call of the young foal in the stable, and he knew that it, too, was afraid to come out even at the call of its dam. Death was about in that night of storm, and all things seemed conscious of it.
He stooped down over the white goat and worked his hands under her shoulders. He lifted her up and felt the strain all over his frame, the muscles springing tense on his arms. She was a dead weight, and he had always prided on her size. His knees dug into the puddle in the bottom of the pool as he felt the pressure on his haunches. He strained hard as he got one of his feet under him. With a quick effort he got the other foot into position and rose slowly, lifting the white form out of the pool. The shaggy hair hung from the white goat, limp and reeking, numerous thin streams of water making a little ripple as they fell. The limbs of the Herd quivered under the weight, he staggered back, his heavy boots grinding in the gravel; then he set his teeth, the limbs steadied themselves, he swayed uncertainly for a moment, then staggered across the stable door, conscious of the hammer strokes of the heart of the white goat beating against his own heart. He laid her down in the bed of straw and heard the young foal bounding out of the stable in terror. The Herd stood in the place, the sweat breaking out on his forehead, then dropping in great beads.
The white goat began to moan. The Herd was aware from the rustling of the straw that her limbs were working convulsively. He knew from the nature of her wounds that her death would be prolonged, her agonies extreme. What if he put her out of pain? It would be all over in a moment. His hand went to his pocket, feeling it on the outside. He made out the shape of the knife, but hesitated.
One of the hooves of the white goat struck him on the ankle as her limbs worked convulsively. His hand went into his pocket and closed around the weapon. He would need to be quick and sure, to have a steady hand, to make a swift movement. He allowed himself some moments to decide. Then the blade of the knife shot back with a snap.
The sound seemed to reach the white goat in all its grim significance. She struggled to her feet, moaning more loudly. The Herd began to breathe hard. He was afraid she would cry out even as she had cried out as she lay in the pool before the stable door. The terror of the things that made up that cry broke in upon the Herd. He shook with fear of it. Then he stooped swiftly, his fingers nervously feeling over the delicate course of the throat of the white goat. His hands moved a little backwards and forwards in the darkness. He felt the hot stream on his hands, then the animal fell without a sound, her horns striking against the wall. He stood over her for a moment and was conscious that his hands were wet. Then he remembered with a shudder that the whole tragedy of the night had been one of rains and pools and water and clinging damp things, of puddles and sweats and blood. Even now the knife he held in his fingers was dripping. He let it fall. It fell with a queer thud, sounding of flesh, of a dead body. It had fallen on the dead body of the white goat. He turned with a groan and made his way uncertainly for the stable door.
At the door he stood, thoughts crowding in upon him, questions beating upon his brain and giving no time for answer. Around him was darkness, mystery, Death. What right had he to thrust his hand blindly into the heart of this mystery? Who had given him the power to hasten the end, to summon Death before its time? Had not Nature her own way for counting out the hours and the minutes? Had not she, or some other power, appointed an hour for the white goat to die? She would live, even in agony, until they could bear her up no longer; and having died Nature would pass her through whatever channel her laws had ordained. Had not the white goat made her last protest against his interference when she had risen to her feet in her death agony? And if the white goat, dumb beast that she was, had suffered wrong at the hands of man, then there was, the Herd now knew, a Power deliberate and inexorable, scrupulous in its delicate adjustment of right and wrong, that would balance the account at the appointed audit.
He had an inarticulate understanding of these things as he moved from the stable door. He tripped over a barrow unseen in the darkness and fell forward on his face into the field. As he lay there he heard the thudding of hooves on the ground. He rose, dizzy and unnerved, to see the dim shapes of some cattle that had gathered down about the place from the upland. He felt the rain beating upon his face, the clothes hung dank and clammy to his limbs. His boots soaked and slopped when he stepped. A boom of thunder sounded overhead and a vivid flash of lightning lit up for an instant a great elm tree. He saw all its branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs, their noise, all the ribaldry of men merry in their drink.
The Herd groped through the darkness for his house like a half-blind man, his arms out before him, and a sudden gust of wind that swept the hillside shrieked about the blood of the white goat that was still wet upon his hands.
A man wearing the grey frieze coat and the soft black hat of the peasantry rode up to the Monastery gate on a wiry, long-tailed nag. When he rang the bell at the hall-door there was a clatter of sandals on a flagged hall inside.
The door was opened by a lay Brother in a brown habit, a girdle about the waist from which a great Rosary beads was suspended. The peasant turned a soft black hat nervously in his hands as he delivered his message. The Friar who visited ailing people was, he said, wanted. A young man was lying very ill away up on the hills. Nothing that had been done for him was of any account. He was now very low, and his people were troubled. Maybe the Friar would come and raise his holy hands over Kevin Hooban?
The peasant gave some account of how the place might be reached. Half an hour later the Spanish Friar was on a side-car on his way to the mountain. I was on the other side of the car. The Spanish Friar spoke English badly. The peasantry—most of whom had what they calledBéarla briste(broken English)—could understand only an occasional word of what he said. At moments of complete deadlock I, a Mass server, acted as a sort of interpreter. For this, and for whatever poor companionship I afforded, I found myself on the sick call.
The road brought us by a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that was sere. It was a very still afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring. Sheep looking bulky in their heavy fleeces lay about in the grass, so motionless that they might be the work of a vigorous sculptor. The branches of the trees were so still, so delicate in their outlines against the pale sky, that they made one uneasy; they seemed to have lost the art of waving, as if leaves should never again flutter upon them. A net-work of low stone walls put loosely together, marking off the absurdly small fields, straggled over the face of the landscape, looking in the curious evening light like a great grey web fantastically spun by some humorous spider. The brown figure of a shepherd with a sheep crook in his hand rose up on a distant hill. He might be a sacred figure in the red chancel of the western sky. In a moment he was gone, leaving one doubtful if he had not been an illusion. A long army of starlings trailed rapidly across the horizon, a wriggling motion marking their course like the motion in the body of a gigantic snake. Everything on the hills seemed, as the light reddened and failed, to grow vast, grotesque. The silence which reigned over it all was oppressive.
Stray cabins skirted the roadside. Some people moved about them, leaving one the impression of a remoteness that was melancholy. The women in their bare feet made little curtesies to the Friar. Children in long dresses ran into the cabins at sight of the strangers, like rabbits scuttling back to their burrows. Having found refuge they looked out over the half-doors as the car passed, their eyes sparkling, humorous, full of an alert inquisitiveness, their faces fresh as the wind.
A group of people swung along the road, speaking volubly in Irish, giving one the impression that they had made a great journey across the range of hills. They gave us a salutation that was also a blessing. We pulled up the car and they gathered about the Friar, looking up at him from under their broad-brimmed black hats, the countenances for the most part dark and primitive, the type more of Firbolg than Milesian origin.
When the Friar spoke to them they paused, shuffled, looked at each other, puzzled. Half unconsciously I repeated the priest's words for them.
"Oh, you are heading for the house where Kevin Hooban is lying sick?"
"Yes."
"The priest is going to read over him?"
"Yes."
"And maybe they are expecting him?"
"Yes."
"We heard it said he is very low, a strangeness coming over him."
"Is the house far?"
"No, not too far when you are once a-past the demesne wall, with the ivy upon it. Keep on the straight road. You will come to a stream and a gullet and a road clipping into the hills from it to the right; go past that road. West of that you will see two poplar trees. Beyond them you will come to a boreen. Turn down that boreen; it is very narrow, and you had best turn up one side of the car and both sit together, or maybe the thorny hedges would be slashing you on the face in the darkness of the place. At the end of the boreen you will come to a shallow river, and it having a shingle bottom. Put the mare to it and across with you. Will you be able to remember all that?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Very well. Listen now. When you are across the river with the shingly bottom draw up on the back meadow. You will see a light shining to the north. Let one bawl out of you and Patch Keetly will be at hand to take the mare by the head. He will bring you to the house where Kevin Hooban is lying in his trouble. And God grant, Father, that you will be able to reach out a helping hand to him, and to put your strength in holy words between him and them that has a hold of him; he is a fine young man without fault or blemish, and the grandest maker of music that ever put a lip to the fideóg. Keep an eye out for the poplar trees."
"Very good. God be with you."
"God speed you kindly."
We drove on. As we did so we tried to piece the directions together. The two poplar trees appeared to touch some curious strain of humour in the Spanish Friar. But it all came to pass as the prophet had spoken. We came to the ivy wall, to the stream, the gullet, the road that clipped into the hills to the right, and a long way beyond it the two poplar trees, tall, shadowy, great in their loneliness on the hills, sentinels that appeared to guard some mountain frontier. The light had rapidly gone. The whole landscape had swooned away into a vague, dark chaos. Overhead the stars began to show, the air was cutting; it bit with frost. And then we turned down the dark boreen, the mare venturing into it with some misgiving. I think the Friar was praying in an undertone in his native Basque as we passed through the narrow mountain boreen. At the end of it we came to the shallow river with the shingly bottom. Again the mare required some persuasion before she ventured in, the wheels crunching on the gravel, her fetlocks splashing the slow-moving, chocolate-coloured water. On the opposite bank we reached a sort of plateau, seen vaguely in the light. I "let a bawl out of me." It was like the cry of some lonely, lost bird on the wing. The Friar shook with laughter. I could feel the little rock of his body on the springs of the car. A figure came suddenly out of the darkness and silently took the mare by the head. The car moved on across the vague back meadow. Patch Keetly was piloting us to a light that shone in the north.
People were standing about the front of the long, low-thatched house. Lights shone in all the windows, the door stood open. The people did not speak or draw near as we got down from the car. There was a fearful silence about the place. The grouping of the people expressed mystery. They eyed us from their curiously aloof angles. They seemed as much a part of the atmosphere of the hills, as fixed in the landscape as the little clumps of furze or the two lonely poplars that mounted guard over the mouth of the boreen.
"Won't the holy Father be going into the house?" Patch Keetly asked. "I will unyoke the mare and give her a share of oats in the stable."
The Friar spoke to me in an undertone, and we crossed to the open door of the house.
The door led directly into the kitchen. Two women were standing well back from the door, something respectful, a little mysterious and a little fearful in their attitude. Their eyes were upon the Friar, and from their expressions they might have expected some sort of apparition to cross the threshold. They made a curtesy to him, dipping their bodies in a little sudden jerk. Nobody else was in the kitchen, and, despite the almost oppressive formality of their attitude, they somehow conveyed a sense of the power of women in the household in time of crisis. They were in supreme command, the men all outside, when a life had to be battled for. The elder of the women came forward and spoke to the priest, bidding him welcome. The reception looked as if it had been rehearsed, both women painfully anxious to do what was right.
There appeared some little misunderstanding, and I was too dazed with the cold—which I had only fully felt when I got off the car and found my legs cramped—to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly superior person, one who might patronise them, make a flutter in their home, appal them by expecting a great deal of attention, in short, be "very Englified." The Spanish Friar had very quick intuitions and some subtle way of his own for conveying his emotions and his requirements. He was in spirit nearer to the peasantry than many of the Friars who themselves came from the flesh of the peasantry. And these two peasant women, very quick in both their intuitions and their intelligence, seemed at the very moment of the breakdown of the first attempt at conversation to understand him and he to understand them. The elder of the women led the priest into a room off the kitchen where I knew Kevin Hooban lay ill.
The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments. Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed some little surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if reassuring me. There was something that inspired confidence in her manner. I took the glass and sipped the liquid. It left a half-burned, peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its flavour. I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of grouping themselves around the lighted house. The peaty liquid seemed a brew out of the same atmosphere. I knew it was poteen. And in a moment I felt it coursing through my body, warming my blood. The young woman stood by the fire, half in shadow, half in the yellow flame of the turf fire, her attitude quiet but tense, very alert for any movement in the sick room.
The door of the room stood slightly open, and the low murmur of the Friar's voice reciting a prayer in Latin could be heard. The young woman sighed, her bosom rising and falling in a quick breath of pain. Then she made the sign of the Cross.
"My brother is very low," she said, sitting down by the fire after a time. Her eyes were upon the fire. Her face was less hard than the faces I had seen on the hills. She looked good-natured.
"Is he long ill?"
"This long while. But to look at him you would conceit he was as sound as a trout. First he was moody, moping about the place, and no way wishful for company. Hours he would spend below at the butt of the meadow, nearby the water, sitting under the thorn bush and he playing upon the fideóg. Then he began to lose the use of his limbs, and crying he used to be within in the room. Some of the people who have knowledge say he is lying under a certain influence. He cannot speak now. The holy Friar will know what is best to be done."
When the Friar came out of the room he was divesting himself of the embroidered stole he had put over his shoulders.
The white-capped old woman had excitement in her face as she followed him.
"Kevin spoke," she said to the other. "He looked up at the blessed man and he made an offer to cross himself. I could not hear the words he was speaking, that soft they come from his lips."
"Kevin will live," said the younger woman, catching some of the excitement of her mother. She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire, gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live. She moved suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and disappeared into the room.
The priest sat by the fire for some time, the old woman standing by, respectful, but her eyes riveted upon him as if she would pluck from him all the secrets of existence. The priest was conscious, a little uneasy, and a little amused, at this abnormal scrutiny. Some shuffling sounded outside the house as if a drove of shy animals had come down from the mountain and approached the dwelling. Presently the door creaked. I looked at it uneasily. The atmosphere of the place, the fumes of the poteen in my head, the heat of the fire, had given me a more powerful impression of the mysterious, the weird. Nothing showed at the door for some time, but I kept my eye upon it. I was rewarded. A cluster of heads and shoulders of men, swarthy, gloomy, some awful foreboding in the expression of their faces, hung round the door and peered silently down at the Friar seated at the fire. Again I had the sense that they would not be surprised to see any sort of apparition. The heads disappeared, and there was more shuffling outside the windows as if shy animals were hovering around the house. The door creaked again, and another bunch of heads and shoulders made a cluster about it. They looked, as far as I could see them, the same group of heads, but I had the feeling that they were fresh spectators. They were taking their view in turn.
The priest ventured some conversation with the woman of the house.
"Do you think will Kevin live, Father?"
"He should have more courage," the Friar said.
"We will all have more courage now that you have read over him."
"Keep the faith. It is all in the hands of God. It is only what is pleasing to Him that will come to pass."
"Blessed be His Holy Name." The woman inclined her head as she spoke the words. The priest rose to go.
The young girl came out of the room. "Kevin will live," she said. "He spoke to me." Her eyes were shining as she gazed at her mother.
"Could you tell what words he spoke?"
"I could. He said, 'In the month of April, when the water runs clear in the river, I will be playing the fideóg.' That is what Kevin said."
"When the river is clear—playing the fideóg," the elder woman repeated, some look of trouble, almost terror, in her face. "The cross of Christ between him and that fideóg!"
The priest was moving to the door and I followed. As I did so I got a glimpse, through the partly open room door, of the invalid. I saw the long, pallid, nervous-looking face of a young man on the pillow. A light fell on his brow, and I thought it had the height, and the arch, the good shape sloping backward to the long head, of a musician. The eyes were shining with an unnatural brightness. It was the face of an artist, an idealist, intensified, idealised, by illness, by suffering, by excitement, and I wondered if the vision which Kevin Hooban had of playing the fideóg by the river, when it ran clear in April, were a vision of his heaven or his earth.
We left the house. Patch Keetly was taking the loop from a trace as he harnessed the mare in the yellow light of a stable lantern. We mounted the car. The groups of men drew about us, their movements again sounding like the shuffling of shy animals on the sod, and they broke silence for the first time.
There was more said about Kevin Hooban. From various allusions, vague and unsubstantial, little touches in the kind, musical voices, I gathered that they believed him to be under the influence of the Good People. The sense of mystery and ill-omen came back to me, and I carried away a memory of the dark figures of the people grouped about the lonely lighted house, standing there in sorrow for the flute-player, the grass at their feet sparkling with frost.
Obeying a domestic mandate, Padna wrapped a pair of boots in paper and took them to the shoemaker, who operated behind a window in a quiet street.
The shoemaker seemed to Padna a melancholy man. He wore great spectacles, had a white patch of forehead, and two great bumps upon it. Padna concluded that the bumps had been encouraged by the professional necessity of constantly hanging his head over his knees.
The shoemaker invited Padna to sit down in his workshop, which he did. Padna thought it must be very dreary to sit there all day among old and new boots, pieces of leather, boxes of brass eyelets, awls, knives, and punchers. No wonder the shoemaker was a melancholy-looking man.
Padna maintained a discreet silence while the shoemaker turned his critical glasses upon the boots he had brought him for repair. Suddenly the great glasses were turned upon Padna himself, and the shoemaker addressed him in a voice of amazing pleasantness.
"When did you hear the cuckoo?" he asked.
Padna, at first startled, pulled himself together. "Yesterday," he replied.
"Did you look at the sole of your boot when you heard him?" the shoemaker asked.
"No," said Padna.
"Well," said the shoemaker, "whenever you hear the cuckoo for the first time in the spring always look at the sole of your right boot. There you will find a hair. And that hair will tell you the kind of a wife you will get."
The shoemaker picked a long hair from the sole of Padna's boot and held it up in the light of the window.
"You'll be married to a brown-haired woman," he said. Padna looked at the hair without fear, favour, or affection, and said nothing.
The shoemaker took his place on his bench, selected a half-made shoe, got it between his knees, and began to stitch with great gusto. Padna admired the skilful manner in which he made the holes with his awl and drew the wax-end with rapid strokes. Padna abandoned the impression that the shoemaker was a melancholy man. He thought he never sat near a man so optimistic, so mentally emancipated, so detached from the indignity of his occupation.
"These are very small shoes you are stitching," said Padna, making himself agreeable.
"They are," said the shoemaker. "But do you know who makes the smallest shoes in the world? You don't? Well, well!... The smallest shoes in the world are made by the clurichaun, a cousin of the leprechaun. If you creep up on the west side of a fairy fort after the sun has set and put your ear to the grass you'll hear the tapping of his hammer. And do you know who the clurichaun makes shoes for? You don't? Well, well!... He makes shoes for the swallows. Oh, indeed they do, swallows wear shoes. Twice a year swallows wear shoes. They wear them in the spring, and again at the fall of the year. They wear them when they fly from one world to another. And they cross the Dead Sea. Did you ever hear tell of the Dead Sea? You did. Well, well!... No bird ever yet flew across the Dead Sea. Any of them that tried it dropped and sank like a stone. So the swallows, when they come to the Dead Sea, get down on the bank, and there the clurichauns have millions of shoes waiting for them. The swallows put on their shoes and walk across the Dead Sea, stepping on bright yellow and black stepping-stones that shine across the water like a lovely carpet. And do you know what the stepping-stones across the Dead Sea are? They are the backs of sleeping frogs. And when the swallows are all safe across the frogs waken up and begin to sing, for then it is known the summer will come. Did you never hear that before? No? Well, well!"
A cat, friendly as the shoemaker himself, leapt on to Padna's lap. The shoemaker shifted the shoe he was stitching between his knees, putting the heel where the toe had been.
"Do you know where they first discovered electricity?" he asked.
"In America," Padna ventured.
"No. In the back of a cat. He was a big buck Chinese cat. Every hair on him was seven inches long, in colour gold, and thick as copper wire. He was the only cat who ever looked on the face of the Empress of China without blinking, and when the Emperor saw that he called him over and stroked him on the back. No sooner did the Emperor of China stroke the buck cat than back he fell on his plush throne, as dead as his ancestors. So they called in seven wise doctors from the seven wise countries of the East to find out what it was killed the Emperor. And after seven years they discovered electricity in the backbone of the cat, and signed a proclamation that it was from the shock of it the Emperor had died. When the Americans read the proclamation they decided to do whatever killing had to be done as the cat had killed the Emperor of China. The Americans are like that—all for imitating royal families."
"Has this cat any electricity in her?" Padna asked.
"She has," said the shoemaker, drawing his wax-end. "But she's a civilised cat, not like the vulgar fellow in China, and civilised cats hide their electricity much as civilised people hide their feelings. But one day last summer I saw her showing her electricity. A monstrous black rat came prowling from the brewery, a bald patch on his head and a piece missing from his left haunch. To see that fellow coming up out of a gullet and stepping up the street, in the middle of the broad daylight, you'd imagine he was the county inspector of police."
"And did she fight the rat?" Padna asked.
The shoemaker put the shoe on a last and began to tap with his hammer. "She did fight him," he said. "She went out to him twirling her moustaches. He lay down on his back. She lay down on her side. They kept grinning and sparring at each other like that for half an hour. At last the monstrous rat got up in a fury and come at her, the fangs stripped. She swung round the yard, doubled in two, making circles like a Catherine-wheel about him until the old blackguard was mesmerised. And if you were to see the bulk of her tail then, all her electricity gone into it! She caught him with a blow of it under the jowl, and he fell in a swoon. She stood over him, her back like the bend of a hoop, the tail beating about her, and a smile on the side of her face. And that was the end of the monstrous brewery rat."
Padna said nothing, but put the cat down on the floor. When she made some effort to regain his lap he surreptitiously suggested, with the tip of his boot, that their entente was at an end.
A few drops of rain beat on the window, and the shoemaker looked up, his glasses shining, the bumps on his forehead gleaming. "Do you know the reason God makes it rain?" he asked.
Padna, who had been listening to the conversation of two farmers the evening before, replied, "I do. To make turnips grow."
"Nonsense!" said the shoemaker, reaching out for an awl. "God makes it rain to remind us of the Deluge. And I don't mean the Deluge that was at all at all. I mean the Deluge that is to come. The world will be drowned again. The belly-band of the sky will give, for that's what the rainbow is, and it only made of colours. Did you never know until now what the rainbow was? No? Well, well!... As I was saying, when the belly-band of the sky bursts the Deluge will come. In one minute all the valleys of the earth will be filled up. In the second minute the mountains will be topped. In the third minute the sky will be emptied and its skin gone, and the earth will be no more. There will be no ark, no Noah, and no dove. There will be nothing only one great waste of grey water and in the middle of it one green leaf. The green leaf will be a sign that God has gone to sleep, the trouble of the world banished from His mind. So whenever it rains remember my words."
Padna said he would, and then went home.
When Padna called on the shoemaker for the boots that had been left for repair they were almost ready. The tips only remained to be put on the heels. Padna sat down in the little workshop, and under the agreeable influence of the place he made bold to ask the shoemaker if he had grown up to be a shoemaker as the geranium had grown up to be a geranium in its pot on the window.
"What!" exclaimed the shoemaker. "Did you never hear tell that I was found in the country under a head of cabbage? No! Well, well! What do they talk to you at home about at all?"
"The most thing they tell me," said Padna, "is to go to bed and get up in the morning. What is the name of the place in the country where they found you?"
"Gobstown," said the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of your boots. How could that be? I'll tell you that.
"In Gobstown the tenants rose up and demanded a reduction of rent; the good landlord gave it to them. They rose up again and demanded another reduction of rent; he gave it to them. They went on rising up, asking reductions, and getting them, until there was no rent left for anyone to reduce. The landlord was as good and as poor as our best.
"And while all this was going on Gobstown was surrounded by estates where there were the most ferocious landlords—rack-renting, absentee, evicting landlords, landlords as wild as tigers. And these tiger landlords were leaping at their tenants and their tenants slashing back at them as best they could. Nothing, my dear, but blood and the music of grape-shot and shouts in the night from the jungle. In Gobstown we had to sit down and look on, pretending, moryah, that we were as happy as the day was long.
"Not a scalp was ever brought into Gobstown. No man of us ever went out on an adventure which might bring him home again through the mouth of the county jail. Not a secret enterprise that might become a great public excitement was ever hatched, not to speak of being launched. We had not as much as a fife-and-drum band. We did not know how to play a tin whistle or beat upon the tintinnabulum. We never waved a green flag. We had not a branch of any kind of a league. We had no men of skill to draft a resolution, indite a threatening letter, draw a coffin, skull, and cross-bones, fight a policeman, or even make a speech. We were never a delegate at a convention, an envoy to America, a divisional executive, a deputation, or a demonstration. We were nothing. We wilted under the blight of our good landlord as the green stalk wilts under the frost of the black night.... Hand me that knife. The one with the wooden handle.
"In desperation we used rouse ourselves and march into the demonstrations on other estates. We were a small and an unknown tribe. The Gobstown contingent always brought up the rear of the procession—a gawky, straggling, bad-stepping, hay-foot, straw-foot lot! The onlookers hardly glanced at us. We stood for nothing. We had no name. Once we rigged up a banner with the words on it, 'Gobstown to the Front!' but still we were put to the back, and when we walked through this town the servant girls came out of their kitchens, laughed at us, and called out, 'Gobstown to the Back of the Front!'
"The fighting men came to us, took us aside, and asked us what we were doing in Gobstown. We had no case to make. We offered to bring forward our good landlord as a shining example, to lead our lamb forward in order that he might show up the man-eaters on the other estates. The organisers were all hostile. They would not allow us into the processions any more. If we could bring forward some sort of roaring black devil we would be more than welcome. Shining examples were not in favour. We were sent home in disgrace and broke up. As the preachers say, our last state was worse than our first.
"We became sullen and drowsy and fat and dull. We got to hate the sight of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each other's backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day, we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it. Our good landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, as intelligent as Corkmen. They were thin and eager and good-tempered. They ate very little, drank water, slept well, men with hard knuckles, clean bowels, and pale eyes. Anything they hit went down. They were always ready to go to the gallows for each other.
"I had a famous cousin on one of these estates, and I suppose you heard of him? You didn't! What are they teaching you at school at all? Latin grammar? Well, well!... My cousin was a clumsy fellow with only a little of middling kind of brains, but a bit of fight in him. Yet look at the way he got on, and look at me, shodding little boys like yourself! I was born under a lucky star but my cousin was born under a lucky landlord—a ferocious fellow who got into a garret in London and kept roaring across at Ireland for more and more blood. Every time I thought of that old skin of a man howling in the London garret I said to myself, 'He'll be the making of my cousin.' And so, indeed, he was. Three agents were brought down on my cousin's estate. State trials were running like great plays in the courthouse. Blood was always up. They had six fife-and-drum bands and one brass band. They had green and gold banners with harps and streamers, and mottoes in yellow lettering, that took four hardy men to carry on a windy day. The heads of the Peelers were hardly ever out of their helmets. The resident magistrate rose one day in the bosom of his family, his eyes closed, to say grace before meals, and from dint of habit he was chanting the Riot Act over the table until his wife flew at him with, 'How dare you, George! The mutton is quite all right!' Little boys no bigger than yourself walking along the roads to school in that splendid estate could jump up on the ditch and make good speeches.
"My cousin's minute books—he was secretary of everything—would stock a book-shop, and were noted for beautiful expressions. He was the author of ten styles of resolution construction. An enemy christened him Resolving Kavanagh. Every time he resolved to stand where he always stood he revolved. Everybody put up at his house. He was seen in more torchlight processions than Bryan O'Lynn. A room in his house was decorated in a beautiful scheme of illuminated addresses with border designs from the Book of Kells. The homes of the people were full of the stumps of burned-down candles, the remains of great illuminations for my cousin whenever he came out of prison. I tell you no lie when I say that that clumsy cousin of mine became clever and polished, all through pure practice. He had the best of tutors. The skin of a landlord in the London garret, his agents, their understrappers, removable magistrates, judges, Crown solicitors, county inspectors of police, sergeants, constables, secret service men,—all drove him from fame to fame until in the end they chased him out the only gap that was left open to the like of him—the English Parliament. Think of the streak of that man's career! And there was I, a man of capacity and brains, born with the golden spoon of talent in my mouth, dead to the world in Gobstown! I was rotting like a turnip under the best and the most accursed of landlords. In the end I could not stand it—no man of spirit could.
"One day I took down my ashplant, spat on my fist, and set out for my cousin's place. He gave me no welcome. I informed him as to how the land lay in Gobstown. I said we must be allowed to make a name for ourselves as the producers of a shining example of a landlord. My cousin let his head lie over a little to one side and then said, 'In this country shining examples ought only be used with the greatest moderation.' He looked out through the window and after some time said, 'That Gobstown landlord is the most dangerous lunatic in all Ireland.' 'How is that?' said I. 'Because,' said my famous cousin, 'he has a perfect heart.' He put his head over to the other side, looked at me and said, 'If Gobstown does not do something he may be the means of destroying us all.' 'How?' said I. 'He may become contagious,' said my cousin. 'Only think of his example being followed and Ireland turned into one vast tract of Gobstowns! Would not any fate at all be better than that?' I who knew said, 'God knows it would.'
"My cousin sighed heavily. He turned from me, leaving me standing there in the kitchen, and I saw him moving with a ladder to the loft overhead. This he mounted and disappeared in the black rafters. I could hear him fumbling somewhere under the thatch. Presently down he came the ladder, a gun in one hand, and a fistful of cartridges in the other. He spoke no word, and I spoke no word. He came to me and put the gun in my hand and the handful of cartridges in my pocket. He walked to the fire and stood there with his back turned. I stood where I was, a Gobstown mohawk, with the gun in my hand. At last I said, 'What is this for?' and grounded the gun a little on the floor. My cousin did not answer at once. At last he said without moving, 'It's for stirring your tea, what else?' I looked at him and he remained as he was and, the sweat breaking out on the back of my neck, I left the house and made across the fields for home, the cartridges rattling in my pocket every ditch I leapt, the feel of the gun in my hand becoming more familiar and more friendly.
"At last I came to the summit of a little green hill overlooking Gobstown, and there I sat me down. The sight of Gobstown rose the gorge in me. Nothing came out of it but weak puffs of turf smoke from the chimneys—little pallid thin streaks that wobbled in the wind. There, says I, is the height of Gobstown. And no sound came up out of it except the cackle of geese, and then the bawl of an old ass in the bog. There, says I, is the depth of Gobstown. And rising up from the green hill I made up my mind to save Ireland from Gobstown even if I lost my own soul. I would put a bullet in the perfect heart of our good landlord.
"That night I lay behind a certain ditch. The moon shone on the nape of my neck. The good landlord passed me by on the road, he and his good wife, chattering and happy as a pair of lovers. I groped for the gun. The queerest feeling came over me. I did not even raise it. I had no nerve. I quaked behind the ditch. His footsteps and her footsteps were like cracks of this hammer on my head. I knew, then, in that minute, that I was no good, and that Gobstown was for ever lost.... What happened me? Who can say that for certain? Many a time have I wondered what came over me in that hour. I can only guess.... Nobody belonging to me had ever been rack-rented. I had never seen any of my own people evicted. No great judge of assize had ever looked down on me from his bench to the dock and addressed to me stern words. I had never heard the clang behind me of a prison door. No royal hand of an Irish constabularyman had ever brought a baton down on my head. No carbine had ever butted the soft places of my body. I had no scars that might redden with memories. The memories I had and that might give me courage were not memories of landlords. There was nothing of anger in my heart for the Gobstown landlord, and he went by. I dragged my legs out of the ditch and drowned my cousin's gun in a boghole. After it I dropped in the handful of cartridges. They made a little gurgle in the dark water like blood in a shot man's throat. And that same night I went home, put a few things in a red handkerchief, and stole out of Gobstown like a thief. I walked along the roads until I came to this town, learned my trade, became a respectable shoemaker, and—tell your mother I never use anything only the best leather. There are your boots, Padna, tips and all ... half-a-crown. Thanks, and well wear!"