Part 9 (1/2)

”_Gloir do'n Athair, agas do'n Mhac, agas do'n Spiorad Naomh_,” went the drone of the rosary within. ”Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, Amen!”

-- 10

And the house that he had known in a dream was no more in reality than a cold strange dwelling; all was there, the whitewash, the thatch, the delft on the dresser, but as a home it was stillborn. The turf did not burn well and the swallows shunned the eaves, feeling, in nature's occult way, that the essential rhythm was wanting. Nor would bees be happy in the skips, but must swarm otherward. One would have said the house was built on some tragic rock....

Only the old dog was faithful, and stayed where his master put him.

And the face he had dreamed would not look toward him over the illimitable ocean. Seek as he would, it was never there, with warm gravity. His eyes might strive, but all they would see was the oily swell of the Dogger Bank, and the great plowed field of Biscay Bay, and the smash of foam against the Hebrides. Never would a s.p.a.ce in the watery horizon open and show him a threshold of beauty with quiet, brooding face.... And when he came home, either late or early, or on time to the moment, it was, ”Och, is it yourself?” And the only interruption to the house was the little more trouble he caused. And his gifts were treated tepidly, though with cupidinous eyes. In the evening, if he stood on the threshold, it was: ”Wisha, is it going out you are?

And isn't it enough of the fresh air you have, and you on the salt water?” And her embraces were half chast.i.ty, half sin, tepidly pa.s.sionate, unintimate ... so that shame was on him, and no pride or joyousness.... Cold! cold! cold!... A cold house, a cold woman.... No light or warmth or graciousness....

And the old woman whom he had thought of as warm and peaceful by the fire was a hag with a peasant's cupidity: ”And isn't it a little more you can be leaving us, darling lad, what with the high price that does be on things in this place and you not spending a brown ha'penny aboard s.h.i.+p?... And herself might be taken sick now, and wouldn't it be a grand thing, a wee store of money in the house? Or the wars might come, find you far on the sea! An extra sovereign now, brave fellow, a half-sovereign itself!”

And when he left it was of less import than the cow going dry. Only one mourned him, the old dog. Only one remembered him, the half-blind badger hound, that dreamed of ancient hunting days....

And he would go down to his s.h.i.+p, heartbroken, when none was looking a mist of tears in his eyes,--he was not yet twenty-one,--but in a day or so that would pa.s.s, and the sea that was so strong would give him of its strength and heal him, so that after a few days he could stand up and say: ”Well.... Huuh.... Well....”

A trick had been played him, like some tricks the sea and sun play. Afar off he had seen an island like an appointed dancing place, like the Green of Fiddlers, and he had asked to be put ash.o.r.e there, to live and be a permanent citizen. And when he was landed, he found that his dancing place was only a barren rock where the seagulls mourned. Past the glamour of the sun and sea mists, there were only cold, searching winds and dank stone....

But he came of a race that are born men, breed men, and kill men. Crying never patched a hole in a brogue, and a man who's been fooled is no admirable figure, at least to Antrim men. So shut your mouth! When a master loses a s.h.i.+p he gets no other. That is the inexorable rule of the sea. So when a man wrecks his life....

What he had decided was this: go ahead. He had been fooled; pay the forfeit. Retreat into his own heart, and go ahead. Thirty, forty years.... He had himself to blame. And it wasn't as if he had to live in the house all the time; he had only to come back there. All that was killed was his heart. His frame was still stolid, his eye clear....

There would be little oases here and there, some great record of a voyage broken, friends bravely made, a kiss now and then, freely, gallantly given.... But ... go ahead!

And then suddenly death had come, and the scheme of life was broken, like a piece from the end of a stick. Death he had seen before, but never so close to him. A good man had died and he had said: ”G.o.d!

there's a pity!” though why he didn't know. And a young girl might die, and it would seem like a tragedy in a play. And a child would die, and he would feel hurt and say, ”Yon's cruelty, yon!” And death had seemed to be an ultimate word.

But never before now had he seen the ramifications of death. Life had seemed to him to be a straight line, and suddenly he was inspired to the knowledge that it was a design, a pattern, a scheme.... And now he felt it was only a tool, like a knife, or scissors, in the hands of what?...

What? Destiny?... or what?...

-- 11

”_A chraoibhin aoibhinn!_ O pleasant little branch, is there regard in you for the last words of the dead woman?” The old _cailleach_ had come again to ruffle the grave silence about young Shane in the haggard.

”Was it--was it anything for me?”

”And whom would it be for, _acushla veg?_ Sure the love of her heart you were, the white love of her heart. You and me she was thinking of, her old mother that saw a power of trouble. Ill-treated I was by Sergeant Dolan, who fought old Bonaparte in the foreign wars, and took to drinking in the dreadful days of peace. Harsh my life was, and peaceful should my end be, the like of a day that does be rainy, and turns fine at evening-time. And that was what she wanted, _a charaid bhig_, little friend o' me.”

”What now?”

”She said to me, and she dying in my arms and the blue spirit coming out of the red lips of her--och! achanee!--'Sure it's not in that grand Northern lad to see you despised in your old age, and the grannies of the neighborhood laughing at you who boasted often. The wee house he'll give you--the wee house is comfortable for an old woman--'”

”But the house isn't mine. It's Alan Donn Campbell's. It isn't mine to give, and I haven't the money to buy it. All the money I have is my pay and what my uncles give me--and they won't see you want.”

”But isn't it the grand rich Northern family you are? And won't there be money coming to you when your uncles and mother die?”

”I suppose so.”