by Lord Dunsany
There we found Dr. Rory returned, and I went in to ask him for a cup of tea.
“What’s going to happen at Lisronagh?” I asked him over the tea.
Dr. Rory was silent, as though trying to remember something. And then he said: “It’s no use telling you that I know. I’ve been studying scientific things all these years, and it’s no use pretending that I’m in touch with what’s going on, as I was once. It’s very seldom that the same man knows much of science, and about the things that were known before ever science came. I knew one man once that knew the two things, but it gave a queer twist to his brain, and in the end he had to be certified. If there’s things out there on the bog that aren’t in books you must ask someone that hasn’t puzzled his wits by reading, for there’s more things in books than any man could possibly believe or understand. It’s like trying to drink Niagara. And I’ve come in the last few years to think that I understand nothing. So you mustn’t ask me.”
And yet I saw that there was something in Dr. Rory’s mind that he would not tell me, because it was contrary to all his studies, and to deny them would be to deny his whole profession and the good work he had done in Clonrue for years.
“Can Mrs. Marlin save the bog?” I blurted out to him.
“Ah, what do I know?” said Dr. Rory. “What do I know?”
“You know a great deal,” I said.
“I know nothing,” he answered.
It is strange to reflect, looking back at it through the years, that the shadow that brooded over the far end of Clonrue, the feeling that prevented them going a yard along the road to Lisronagh, was the one hope that brightened those days for me. If Mrs. Marlin was all they feared, she could save the bog. That at least was the feeling I had in the twilight, driving away from Clonrue, but I do not think that it lasted long; and Reason, on the side of the doctor’s learned books, said: “She can do nothing.”
Those were anxious days, and I think that those who have somewhere amongst their heartstrings a deep love for any soil will understand how it was with me when I saw the willowy lands round the Marlins’ cottage already lost to sight under huts and machinery, and all their enchantment gone, and the menace that threatened the bog looming nearer and nearer. They will understand me because we have all of us one thing in common with oak-trees, the need of some soil to love, and though we are able to travel far away from it, and to spend years in cities, yet it is not so with our hearts; they send down tendrils deep into that soil, and pine when they are transplanted.
I went again to Lisronagh, riding the hunter, so as not to bring Ryan back there against his will. Again in Clonrue I found that curious turning away of everyone from the direction of Lisronagh, and found there from a few words with some of the men, rather from what they indicated than from what they actually said, that not only were they afraid of Mrs. Marlin herself, but they had a fear of meeting the men that were at work on the factory, or of associating with them; not because there was any boycott, but because they feared there was something that might befall these men, and feared to be entangled in it themselves. What could Mrs. Marlin’s curses do? I asked. What could curses in general do? And always I was met with the same answer: “Sure, I don’t know.” Or some variant of the same answer, with which these men guarded a secret. I dare say in London, if one asked a bank clerk how much money his bank possessed, one would meet there similar evasions.
As I rode on from Clonrue I found again the empty road and no one in the fields, no one between the village and Lisronagh, till I saw the men of the syndicate.
I found the foreman again and asked him more precisely what was going to be done to the bog. He gave my horse to one of the men to hold and walked with me along the face of the peat, where the bog rose sheer from the fields about Mrs. Marlin’s, and showed me where the darker stratum ran, below the layers of brown and saffron and ochre, and told me how they were going to quarry this out, and then cut shafts through the bog in every direction, so as to work as many surfaces as possible; for they only wanted the blackest layer that lay below the rest and had been already compressed by the bog above for tens and scores of centuries. Then they were going to compress it more by machinery.
Against this scheme the heather for miles and miles, at the height of its beauty and multiplied by the pools, seemed to cry out, but—alas—only to fancy, unless that beauty had so inspired Mrs. Marlin that it had some share in her voice now ringing wild through the evening, for it was the hour at which she paced the edge of the bog and cursed the Peat Development (Ireland) Syndicate. For a while I was a little ashamed of the trouble the foreman was taking and the consideration that he was showing me; then I looked away over the lovely heather, and my heart went out to Mrs. Marlin’s curses.
Passing the factory on the way back he would have told me how they were going to compress the peat, as he called what we call turf, but I only cared to hear how they would harm the bog, and asked him how far they were going to quarry into the bank. “Several feet,” he said. “Yards, where we get a specially good layer.”
“But how will you stop the bank falling in?” I asked.
“Shore it up with timber,” he said. “Quite easy.”
“The whole way along?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “there’s plenty of trees.”
So all those willows were going too, and probably those little groups of pines that marked the place of cottages far away, where they were gathered round those small and lonely dwellings to help them in the defence of man against wild and windy spaces of untamed heather.
“And then we’re going to cut a lot of lanes through the bog, sir,” he said; “and work both sides of them. We get that black layer at about seventeen feet.”
It is that that would tear the soul out of the bog, as my strange friend had said, and the guts of it. And in my despair I asked him when they would start on that.
“We should get going with half a dozen of the big laneways before Christmas,” he said. And, as though this were not enough, he added: “And we should push them across the bog in little over a year.”
It was then that my Irish heart sorrowfully regretted what my English education had taught me, to interfere with my friend who would have killed these men. But that was done now, and, having no more to say to the foreman, I got on my horse again and rode sadly away.
To whom could I go? Not to the man that had promised to help me. It would have been better to have left him to go his way when he first made the suggestion. It would be murder to go to him now. Not the doctor, for he had insisted he did not know. There was only Laura.
So to Cloghnacurrer I rode over next day, and had tea with Mrs. Lanley, and told Laura the bog was done for. We were walking, as I told her, in the heavy scent of limes, and the sunlight was oozing down through the myriad leaves, and a chorus of bees was glorying in the blossoms, and my doleful news seemed all the sadder against the splendour of summer. But Laura would not agree that the case was hopeless with the land that I so much loved.
“There is Mrs. Marlin,” she said.
“She can do nothing,” I answered sadly.
“But she promised to,” said Laura.
“To whom?” I asked.
“Those people,” said Laura.
It was true. I had told her of Mrs. Marlin’s compact with whatever she fancied drifted over the bog.
“She can do nothing,” I repeated, clinging to my melancholy as though there were anything good in it.
“Let’s ask her,” said Laura.
And so we arranged to drive over and see Mrs. Marlin one day that week, and a new hope rose in me from Laura’s belief in the powers of the Wise Woman.
The day came and Laura called for me in the afternoon, driving a dog-cart, as we used to call them, with a groom seated behind. That I was strangely exhilarated I remember still, even if I can no longer recall the actual feelings with which happiness came to one then. But the brilliant lights and the black shadows of youth cannot really be seen fro
m the twilight. I was happy to be with Laura, happy too in the brilliance of that sunshine of early August, on one of the last of the fine days of what was so far a glorious summer, and I was stimulated by the hope of help from Mrs. Marlin, renewed by Laura’s encouragement, though I had a feeling that it was the last of my hopes, like the last plan of an invaded people when defeat seems tainting the air.
“We’ll see the doctor too,” said Laura. “He seems to know something, from what you said.”
“He won’t say anything,” I told her.
“Never mind,” said Laura.
So we called on Dr. Rory, and found him in. And I think he nearly said to Laura what he would not say to me, when she asked him what there was that could save the bog. But all that he said in the end was: “If there’s anything in all I’ve been learning for fifteen years, the old woman’s mad; and if there are any powers roaming the bog that she has the knack of calling on, why then all I know is as no more than one pebble by the everlasting sea.”
“Ah well, I’m afraid she’s mad, Charlie,” said Laura.
“And a small pebble at that,” added the doctor. “And I wouldn’t say she was mad.”
We drove on, and the men that were standing about in Clonrue, though they took their caps off to Laura, said nothing, and watched us in a curious way when they saw the direction we took. And no more men or women did we see, till we came in sight of the men at work on the factory, moving amongst huge wheels and bars that had lately arrived, and that looked like the skeleton of some monstrous thing that had no concern at all with the animal kingdom. I think the sight troubled Laura, but she said nothing, and, leaving the trap with the groom, we went straight to Mrs. Marlin’s cottage. For all the dreadful change that was around us, the dim long room, with a window at each end and the great fireplace, remained the same as it ever was, as though I might yet shoot geese on the bog again. And there was Mrs. Marlin sitting before her fire, which she probably burned all through summer to keep out the damp from the bog.
“I’ve brought Miss Lanley to see you,” I said.
And she welcomed Laura and gave her a chair.
And at last I could speak straight out, with no concealments or subterfuges, for Mrs. Marlin loved the bog with a fiercer love than I did, and the trouble that had burdened my mind so long was a matter to speak of openly.
“They’re spoiling the bog, Mrs. Marlin,” I said.
And a fierce look entered her eyes, and it was a wild look too, and perhaps a little crafty.
“They wish to,” she said.
“Will they do it?” I asked her.
“It’s against the will of the bog and the north wind and the storm,” she answered.
Still I had learned no word of the fate of that glory of heather, and Laura sat saying nothing.
“Will you keep your compact,” I asked, “with those of whom you told me?”
Then she shot up from her chair with flashing eyes, standing tall and straight as the queens of whom Marlin dreamed. “Will I keep my compact?” she said. “I swore it by turf and heather, as they swore by blossom and twilight. Will I keep my compact with those that helped my son, rowing him over the sea with eight oars, and all of them queens? Did they keep their oath by blossom and twilight? And is Irish heather and Irish turf any less than the holy things of the Land of the Young? Will I keep my compact with them? Aye, while Ireland lasts. And what would I say on nights when they’re drifting over the bog, and what would I say to Tommy, if I could not swear an oath to the queens of the West and abide by the oath that I swore?”
Still Laura said nothing.
“Yes, I know that you’ll keep to your oath,” I said.
“Do they swear oaths and break them in Tir-nan-Og?” said she.
Still Mrs. Marlin was standing tall before me.
“No,” I answered.
“Then not in Ireland,” she said.
Gradually she calmed, and sat down again, and I had not really learned anything.
“They are going to begin cutting right through the bog before Christmas,” I said.
But she smiled and shook her head, and went on shaking it, still with the smile on her face.
“Mrs. Marlin,” I said, “I love the bog as you do.”
“It’s the heart of Ireland,” she answered.
“When will you save it?” I asked her.
And she was angry no longer, and said, as though she were trusting me with her plans: “I must wait for my allies, and only one’s here.”
And Laura helped me then.
“Have you great allies?” she asked.
“The giants of the earth,” Mrs. Marlin answered. “The bog and the north wind and the storm.”
“What will you do?” I asked.
“I wait for those that are not yet come,” she said.
She meant of course the north wind and the storm, but I saw that I had questioned her too directly, and that she would say no more. And so I rose, with my vague hope, and we left her.
I remember, as we drove back, a stupendous sunset; vast armies with banners, and monsters, rode by under wonderful mountains. And rain fell all that night, and all the next day; and for most of the night after that it was still raining.
CHAPTER XXXII
We had a cricket-ground at High Gaut, and a local team that throve when my father was young, and that throve again during my youth, and teams used to come over and play us from Gurraghoo and still further; but I remember we had no more cricket that summer. It rained a great deal in August, and then in September it settled down to rain for nearly the whole month. I hoped that it would hinder the work of the syndicate, but the work went remorselessly on. When it was near the time for me to return to Eton and the factory was nearly finished, I decided what for long had been daily perplexing me, which was that away from home I could not hope, and that without hope the anxiety I felt for the bog would be a greater burden than I could bear. In those long, glimmering evenings, with the soft wind blessing the grass, with huge clouds rolling inland like gods on the south-west wind, in the gentle light just before stars, among moths, with the owls hooting, and a curlew far away calling clear from the sky, I could hope that some help would come from the power of Mrs. Marlin. At Eton I knew that I could not. So I wrote to my guardian and begged him to take me away. I received a charming letter in reply: “I have come to a time of life,” it read, “when my own pleasures are nothing to me, and if anything I can do can increase the happiness of others, I am only too glad to do it. I am writing to the authorities at Eton and will see what can be done.”
So I was free to stay and watch the fate that was coming upon the bog, and at times to hope that Mrs. Marlin might save it; a hope I could never have hoped away from Ireland, out of sight of that strange apprehension she had already brought on Clonrue, and the loneliness she had made between Clonrue and Lisronagh. And all the while it rained. It rained through September, which was our worst month for wet; and during October we had as many days wet as fine.
At High Gaut they had given up all hope for the bog. Murphy tried to comfort me by telling me that there were plenty of snipe nearer than Lisronagh; which was true, but no consolation, with my heart-strings all entwined, as they were, with the heather. Ryan, although he had fear enough of the curses of Mrs. Marlin, never thought there was any chance of them frightening those workmen away, for he looked on the Englishmen as people that could not understand the ancient lore of witchcraft, and so to be no more moved by it than they could be alarmed by threats in a foreign language. Brophy, with the place to run for me, rather welcomed the idea of rent from the desecration. And young Finn, and Mary, the housemaid, and many another, said: “It’s the will of God.”
And not only did Mrs. Marlin’s curse deter no more men from working, once the Clonrue men had left, but more men came over from England during September; and throughout that month they were working on the dark lower layer of peat all along the face of the bank. So far in did they cut, that by the time October
came they could get shelter as they worked from the almost perpetual rain.
Sometimes I went over to see, but found little encouragement for my fading hopes in Lisronagh. Only in Clonrue was I heartened. There, unmistakably, had some power gone forth. Men were idle in the street who might have worked for the syndicate. If I spoke to them of Lisronagh, their answers avoided my questions, and they turned away from the subject as soon as they could. Some were silent altogether, and I saw none even looking in the direction Lisronagh lay. There nobody could have thought my flickering hopes about Mrs. Marlin fantastic: the lonely road to Lisronagh spoke of her power, the backs of the young men turned to it, and their silence, and the expression one sometimes caught on the faces of women, vanishing just as one looked at it. If the syndicate had relied on Clonrue for provisions, or any other assistance, the curse of Mrs. Marlin would have prevailed. And yet it was to others than the men of Clonrue that Mrs. Marlin looked, and to others than mortal men. For one day in November; about the time that the earliest geese would have come, though they came to the bog no more; and the leaf was gone from the trees and the winds of winter were rising; Mrs. Marlin went up to the top of the edge of the bog, as she did every evening. I saw her go, for I had heard that the machinery was all installed in the factory and had now started working. This, I felt, was the end; so I had driven with Ryan to Clonrue and walked on by myself, to see the last of Lisronagh. It was raining as usual, but I had a good waterproof. On my way from what was once the bohereen, across the level land that seemed once to me almost enchanted, I heard, above the clatter of machinery, the voice of the foreman calling to one of the men. “There she goes,” he was saying.