Part 38 (2/2)

It had been so easy after all.

And now when it was true, it was hard to credit. Within two weeks the s.h.i.+p would swing to port around Donegal, and they would enter the bay they had entered seven years ago, seven years and a month ago, to be exact. He wondered whether it would be a foggy morning, or a great golden afternoon. It was a pity it had to be on board a steams.h.i.+p, though. He would liefer have luffed in on board a boat of his own, a great suit of snowy canvas drawing joyously the Irish wind.

-- 2

Upstairs he could hear and distinguish the feet in the nursery. There was the patter of little Alan's feet, and the stumble of Robin Beg's.

There was the shuffle of the nurse-maid, and the firm light tread of Granya. Soon she would come down, after the children were safely to bed, and little Alan's prayers were heard. And they would go out to dinner in New York for the last time. It was a little pang to leave New York....

Ah, but Antrim!

He picked up his paper and read while waiting.... It was queer how he could hardly focus his attention on it, impatient for her as a schoolboy for his first love.... Always when she entered a room came beauty....

Well, she would come.... The type took form beneath his eyes.... The races at Sheepshead Bay: Tom Martin had captured the Twin City Handicap.... In Ireland they would go to the Curragh and Baldoyle to see the horses, and the Dublin horse-show, and the hunts on a frosty morning.... What was this? Heavy bets laid that Cleveland would be next President. The Irish wouldn't like that. They were all for Blaine. It was only the other night that Mrs. Delia Parnell, Parnell's mother, had attended the great Irish rally in the Academy of Music.... That was a mistake, mixing up Irish politics with American statesmans.h.i.+p. There would be folk to resent that, and rightly, too.... Too much talk of dynamite, and that horrible thing in Phoenix Park.... What an involved, emotional affair all this Irish matter was!... To understand Ireland one must understand Irishmen, that either hatred or love rule them.... Parnell, though, looked hopeful. No emotion, all brains and will.... He could not be side-tracked by preferment, or religion, or love for women. There was a man whose head was firm on his shoulders; he would never be wrecked.... Ah, here was something Granya would be glad to hear: Margaret Mather got a splendid reception in Pittsburg with her _Lady Macbeth_.... Whew! Cholera at Naples. That was serious! Not an over-clean people, the Italians.... Li Hung Chang degraded of his t.i.tles. Who the blazes was Li Hung Chang anyway, and what t.i.tles did he have?... And Major Kitchener disperses the Berber tribes.... How unimportant! Ah, here was something. Great gambling reported on the _City of Rome_. Ah, there was what he always contended, that steam would ruin everything. The great sea a resort for gamblers! In the old days, in sail, when a captain was a captain, he'd have had none of that on board clean timbers.... He was a little afraid the world was going to the dogs!

Och! Was that woman never coming down at all, at all?

He smiled to himself at how the Ulster speech came back to him at the thought of Ulster.... He turned to the paper with an effort of will....

An Indian outbreak feared in western Montana.... Stanley going to Egypt.... Policeman beaten up in Brooklyn; a tough place, Brooklyn!...

American schooner arrested by Russian corvette for selling rum to Bering Strait natives: a very strict modern people, the Russians.... Picnics on Staten Island blamed for ruin of young girls.... And Bismarck and the pope still sparring. Did that poor German think he could ever get the better of the subtle Romans ...? Och, what was keeping that woman?

The light had become so dim that he could hardly read. The tempo without quickened. People were hurrying now, on their way to the restaurants for the evening meal. From the restaurants to the theater.

Home to sleep. And a new day with the old work facing them. There was a fascination, a hypnosis to New York. He felt a pang at leaving it. It had been very friendly to him. And he would never see it again.... Ah, but he would remember it!

-- 3

It came to him with a sense of revelation that all his life he had been looking forward: always the new thing. And now he would be looking back.

Always before guessing. Looking back now, knowing, or not quite knowing, but having before him material from which to draw wisdom, truth. All his life it seemed he had been gathering something. Now was the time to sort it, make it.... And then, what was he to do with whatever he had made?

Toward what end? The paper he had in his hands dropped to his knees. His eyes fixed on the windows where the lights of the city began to s.h.i.+ne, saw a haze, saw nothing. His ears, listening to the _clop-clop-clop_ of the hansoms, heard only rhythm, then a faint harmony, then nothing....

Himself, within him, seemed to see old scenes, to be in old scenes. The little boy going down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, seeking an island he had seen in a mirage ... a mood of wonder.... There were feet, there was the world. Every tree was an emerald miracle, every house a mystery, all people were riddles.... Come, little boy, come and look! The instinct of the salmon for the sea. The river where he was sp.a.w.ned hurries to the sea, and his instinct is to go with it, not against it.... It deepens and broadens, and ahead is always a clearer pool, a more shadowy rock, a softer water-fern. It is pleasant to swim under the sallow-branches, and rapids whip.... And there is the lull of an estuary, and the _chush-chush_ of little waves, and he is in the sea.... And now he must lay his own course.... The lure of the river has brought him so far.

And Shane thought: I was born a salmon in a river. The stupid pretty trout remained in the river, and the secretive eels.... And the perch and the roach and the ponderous bream, and the pike that is long of snout, they remained by the gra.s.sy waters.... But those that are born salmon must go down to the sea....

A little shadow came into his face, and his breath was caught sharp. He was remembering Moyra, the wife he had, and he no older than a boy....

Like some strange fascination, ugly dream that came to him.... And queerly enough, the picture of Moyra's mother, the old wife of Louth, was clearer in his mind than his wife.... Moyra was like some troubled cloud, a thing that blotted out suns.h.i.+ne for a while, through no fault of its own, but the mother was sinister. An old woman keening, and the breath of whisky on her, and her eyes sobering in a bitter greed.... Why should Moyra have died? Fate: the act of G.o.d: whatever you care to call it. Why should he have been dragged into it, Shane wondered. If he hadn't, what would have happened? He didn't know. But he knew this, that in the marriage to Moyra he had been gripped by the shoulder, and looked in the eyes, and a voice had said: ”Wait. All is not wonder and mystery.

Life is not a child's toy. You must learn.”

Poor Moyra, he could hardly remember anything but her pleading, half-inimical eyes, her mouth that twisted easily to anger, her shame that her hands and feet were uncouth. And now she had loved him. And now hated him. He remembered one May evening when suddenly she had caught his hand and kissed it, and pressed it to her heart. And later that night she had cursed bitterly at him, saying black was the day she had set eyes on him, and black the day she married him, and her face was twisted into agonized ugliness. And when he went to sea a few days later he had found a symbol of her religion, an _Agnus Dei_, sewed into his coat to protect him against the terrors of the deep waters.

And she had died, poor tortured Moyra, suddenly. Why? Had What had fas.h.i.+oned her thought: That's not rightly done? No. That's poor. Wait.

I'll do it over....

Ah, well, G.o.d give her peace, wherever she wandered! How many years had it taken to get over, not her death, but their being married? A long time. Seven bitter years. He might have turned into a bitter, fierce old man, hating all things. The whole thing had been like a cruelty to a happy wondering child. And he had closed his heart, resentful, afraid.... And then had come Claire-Anne.

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