Part 9 (2/2)

”Well now, agra, a few of us have been thinking. And Ma.n.u.s McGinty, the priest's brother, is willing to advance you the money at interest, to be paid him when your people die. And you can buy the house, and a slip of a pig I can be fattening against the Christmas market.”

”No!”

”Och, agra,” she whined, ”you wouldn't go back on the words of the poor girl, and her dying in my arms? And she was thinking of you when she should have been thinking of her G.o.d! And the grand subtle things she said of you, that only a woman can understand! Sure it was of love for you she died, you being away so long from her on the salt and bitter sea--”

”Listen, woman Dolan. I heard how Moyra died as I came through the village. She died as she was beating my poor old hound. She dropped dead from the pa.s.sion in her, like a shot man. So where's all your love and your long dying wishes as she lay in your arms?”

He arose and walked away from her, through the haggard, under the sky, where the southeast cloud-banks rolled steadily toward the placid moon.

And there was silence for an instant, so speechless he left her. And then suddenly her ancient shrill voice cut the air like a drover's whip:

”You Orange b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”

-- 12

The feeling that was uppermost in him as he sat outside the thatched cottage in the moonlight while the wake was within was not grief at his wife's death; not a shattered mind that his life so carefully laid out not twelve months before was disoriented; not any self-pity; not any grievance against G.o.d such as little men might have. But a strange dumb wonder.... There she lay within, in her habit of a Dominican lay sister, her hands waxy, her face waxy, her eyelids closed. And six guttering candles were about her, and woman droned their prayers with a droning as of bees. There she lay with her hands clasped on a wooden crucifix. And no more would the robins wake her, and they fussing in the great hawthorn-tree over the coming of dawn. No longer would she rake the ash from the peat and blow the red of it to a little blaze. No longer would she beat his dog out of the house with the handle of the broom. No longer would she forgather with the neighbors over a pot of tea for a pleasant vindictive chat. No longer would she look out to sea for him with her half-loving, half-inimical eyes. No longer in her sharpish voice would she recite her rosary and go to bed.

And to-morrow they would bury her--there would be rain to-morrow: the wind was sou'east,--they would lower her, gently as though she were alive, into a rectangular slot in the ground, mutter alien prayers in an alien tongue with business of white magic, pat the mound over as a child pats his castle of sand on the sea-sh.o.r.e--and leave her there in the rain.

A month from now they would say a ma.s.s for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life--with the fussy excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; with each thing; with everything....

And here was the wonder of it, the strange dumb wonder, that the snapping of her life meant less in reality to him than the snapping of a stay aboard s.h.i.+p. The day after to-morrow he would mount the deck of Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few crisp orders would set out on the eternal sea, as though she were still alive in her cottage, as though, indeed, she had never even lived, and northward he would go past the purple Mull of Cantyre; past the Clyde, where the Ayrs.h.i.+re sloops danced like bobbins on the water; past the isles, where overhead drove the wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle-field; past the Hebrides, where strange arctic birds whined like hurt dogs; northward still to where the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black winter nights; eastward and southward to where the swell of the Dogger Bank rose, where the fish grazed like kine.... Over the great sea he would go, as though nothing had happened, not even the snapping of a stay--down to the sea, where the crisp winds of dawn were, and the playful, stupid, short-sighted porpoises; the treacherous, sliding icebergs; and the gulls that cried with the sea's immense melancholy; and the great plum-colored whales....

PART THREE

THE MOUTH OF HONEY

-- 1

It was all like a picture some painter of an old and obvious school might have done. First, there was the port, with the white s.h.i.+ps riding at their moorings in the blue sea. Then grayish white Ma.r.s.eilles, with its two immense ribbons, the Cannebiere running northward, and the Rue de Rome and the Prado intersecting it. The great wooded amphitheater rising like a wave and little Notre Dame de la Garde peeking like a sentry out to sea. And eastward from the quays were the little jagged islands the Phenicians knew, If, and Rion, Jaros, strange un-French names ... the suns.h.i.+ne yellow as a lamp, and the sea blue as flax, and the green woods, and the ancient grayish white city--all a picture some unimaginative painter would have loved. Next to Belfast, Ma.r.s.eilles was to Shane Campbell a second home. There it was, like your own house!

Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he went ash.o.r.e, the swarming, teeming life of it struck Shane like a current of air. Along the quays, along the Cannebiere, was a riot of color and nationality unbelievable from on board s.h.i.+p. Here were Turks dignified and shy. Here were Greeks, wary, furtive. Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, Livonians, droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here were Algerians, black African folk, sneering, inimical. Here were Spaniards, with their walk like a horse's lope. Here were French business men, very important.

Here were Provencals, cheery, short, tubby, excitable, olive-colored, black-bearded, calling to one another in the _langue d'oc_ of the troubadours, _”Te, mon bon! Commoun as? Quezaco?”_

And the bustle of the shops and the bustle of cafes, until Shane was forced to go out to the olive-lined roads to the rocky summit of La Garde, and once there, as if drawn by a magnet, Shane would enter the chapel in the fort, where the most renowned Notre Dame of the Mediterranean smiles mawkishly in white olive-wood. After the blinding sun of the Midi, the cool dark chapel was like a dungeon to him, so little could he see anything; but in a while the strange furniture of the place would take form before his eyes: the white statue of the Virgin, the silver tunny-fish, the daubs of sea hazards whence the Virgin had rescued grateful mariners, the rope-ends, the crutches....

And though none might be in the chapel, yet it was full of life, so much did the pathetic ex-votos tell.... And he would come out of the chapel, and again the Midi sun would flash in a shower of gold, and he could see the blue Mediterranean, p.r.i.c.ked with minute lateen-sails, and the grayish town beneath him, so old and yet so vital, and the calm harbor, with the forest of spars, and Monte Cristo, white as an egg....

A queer town that, as familiar as a channel marking, teeming as an ant-hill, and when darkness came over it, and he viewed it from the after deck, mystery came, too.... For a while there was a hush, and around the hills gigantic ghosts walked.... One thought of the Phocaeans who had founded it, and to whom the Cannebiere was a rope-walk, where they made the sheets for their s.h.i.+ps.... And one thought of Lazarus, who had been raised from among the silent dead and who had come there, so legend read, a gray figure in ceramic garments, standing in the prow of a boat....

One thing Robin More had told him remained in his mind and captured his fancy, and that was that Pontius Pilate had been governor of Ma.r.s.eilles after his office in Judea. And of him Shane would think when the mysterious dusk came on the Midi hills ... Pilate, who had smiled, ”What is truth?” and who had turned Christ over to the mob.... A big man, he imagined the Roman to have been, with clever eyes, and a great black beard covering a weak chin.... A man who knew all the subtleties of mind, and had no backbone.... And he could see the Roman, sitting on his villa porch in the dusk with tortured eyes, and fingering his beard with fingers that shook.... Paul was going through Greece and Rome like a flame, and the Pilate wondered.... Could it have been possible?...

Ridiculous! a Jewish carpenter! A crazy man!.... And yet.... Could it have been possible.... No! no! no! And yet.... People had seen Him walk on the waves.... But people never knew what they saw, exactly.... No!

How foolis.h.!.+... He raised a man from the dead they said.... And that centurion--what was his name?--his daughter!... No, a stupid Jewish legend.... And yet.... Could it be possible? Could it? Could it?

”Lights! Lights! Do you hear me! Bring lights! Lights!” Pilate would all but scream, panic-stricken in the Midi dusk....

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