The Quiet Man and Other Stories

by Maurice Walsh

“Sorry to trouble—” I began.

  “I like this. V.A.D. nurse for two years.”

  “Likes a bit torture,” said her brother.

  The careful snip-snip of scissors, the dab of iodine, the pull of plaster, the manipulation of bandage, all followed the trained technique. As a doctor I knew that. She was very close to me as I sat, and there was some faint pleasant touch of perfume all about her; and, sometimes, I saw deft fingers and, sometimes, the small sympathetic twist of a mouth. And there were golden gleams in her dark red hair.

  Though she was smartly efficient, there was something excited in the dark blue eyes below the lashes that were almost black. And yet, she treated me quite impersonally, just as if I were a hurt puppy. Again I experienced that curious feeling of being remote from her and remote from her world. I did not like it. Her impersonality nettled me. That is why I spoke.

  “Sorry to distress you.”

  “Oh! This is nothing.”

  “Your hands tremble?”

  “That’s only temper.” And then she exploded on me. “Are all you Irishmen cowards?” I surely had drawn her.

  “Every last one of us—same as other men.”

  “Ay faith!” said her soldier brother, and chuckled. “Glad you don’t boast Christian meekness.”

  That made her madder. “I would rather be shot dead than bullied like that,” she cried, and whipped bandage firm.

  “I had that choice offered surely.”

  “And you chose to be bullied.”

  “It was not given me to choose the desirable,” said I.

  “Ho-ho!” This was the soldier. “What do you mean by that, young man? Clericals don’t usually appreciate that desirability—unless they be saints.”

  “A man I know,” said I, “says that death is the easiest choice to make.”

  “And where did he find that out?”

  “In the Great War.”

  “He would know.” He smoothed his chin with a slow hand and looked at me speculatively. “I wonder who said that?”

  I could have bitten my tongue off. Hugh Forbes was the man who had said it, and this man knew him; and Hugh had some pet phrases known to all his acquaintances. I rose to my feet and scrubbed my blue jowl with the towel.

  “Garner might have some reason in his madness,” said the soldier doubtfully. “Men of your cloth don’t usually resort to beer shops.”

  “Where else would a man get a drink on a warm day?”

  “A clerical student?”

  “Did you ever know one to look coldly on a tankard of brown stout?”

  “Just so!” He laughed, and then put a question carefully casual.

  “You are an Irishman, I suppose?”

  “Spent my youth in the States,” I told him, knowing that he had caught my touch of western drawl.

  The girl was looking at me curiously.

  “Where have I seen you before?” she murmured musingly, no longer quite impersonal.

  “Been about town several days,” said her brother.

  “No—not here. I seem to remember—the eyes.”

  I could have told her that there was a pane of glass between us that time, but, instead, I reached for my hat.

  “If you will excuse me.”

  “You are getting out of town, young man?” suggested the soldier.

  “On my way, Captain.”

  “And stay out.” That was an order by a British officer.

  They went with me as far as the porch of the hotel, and saw that the street was clear before they let me go. From the foot of the steps I looked up.

  “My thanks.” And then a thought struck me. “Some day I might show you where a good fish lies.”

  “You fish?”

  “Trying the Ullachowen this evening.”

  “Ah! now I remember,” said the girl.

  “Stick to fishing, reverend sir,” said the brother in satirical warning.

  I looked him in the eye then. “You are a MacDonald,” said I, “and there were MacDonalds before you, son of a great race—and the heather was not always above the myrtle. Somewhere you took the wrong turning.”

  I pulled my hat aside over bandage, and marched down the street. And I felt her eyes on my back. I would not see her again.

  Chapter III

  I

  H-S-S-T! Listen!”

  Hugh Forbes’s strong whisper went down the line, and a cold thrill went with it. From miles away, through the still noon air, came the staccato purr of the big cars.

  Hugh focused his glasses on a distant hillslope, and I, even with the naked eye, could see a white signal wink.

  “They come.” His deep voice boomed. “That’s for the turn at Boland’s Cross.”

  We were where there was no drawing back now. For a moment there was a hollow place in my breast where my heart should be, and, then, the old accustomed feeling came acrawl: the fear that I might show fear.

  I looked along the line of men manning the peat bank, and I envied them. Paddy Bawn Enright and his friend Matt Tobin of the bowler hat bent, heads together, over a Thompson gun, and there was only a live interest in their faces. Paddy Bawn had too often faced the tension of the squared ring ever to show any in his steadfast eyes, and Matt Tobin, hat on the back of his head, went over the mechanism of the gun as if it were a part of his threshing-machine. Others were bedding down their rifles in the heather and taking tentative long sights. Mickeen Oge Flynn looked across at me and smiled his friendly sardonic smile. Indomitable fighting men, every one. Only, here and there, eyes had gone strangely bleak, and the bosses of firm cheekbones stood out rigidly under drawn skin.

  “Jasus, Owen!” whispered Big Paudh Moran at my left shoulder. “Haven’t we got them where they live?”

  “And die,” murmured Hugh Forbes at my other side.

  Big Paudh, ordinarily a simple, ox-eyed, wondering soul, following me round like a corpulent shadow, was now serenely calm, full of a benign confidence. Here he was master of his task. He had propped two long sods of dry peat a foot apart in the heather, and his well-kept rifle pointed between them down the slope. Before the storm broke, his big head would cuddle down, his left hand move far out below the guard, and, no matter how long and how desperate the fray, his machine-like and deadly precision would never falter.

  I looked aside at our leader, Hugh Forbes. His face, too, before the issue was joined, was characteristic. He seemed to be pondering some particularly perplexing problem and be desperately, forlornly unsure of any solution. His rifle was propped against the peat bank before him, and he looked down at the capped ends of the wires he held in each hand. His voice was dejected.

  “Dammit! Maybe I shouldn’t do it.”

  Always had he said that, and always was it done.

  “Why do it, then?” I gave back in formula.

  He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder at the scattered lines of farmhouses showing their thatched roofs above the curve of the slope that, beyond, dipped into the verdant valley of the Ullachowen. Only yesterday I had killed a clean-run salmon down there, and, now, this still summer noon, I was set to kill men—or be killed.

  “Smoking walls and black rafters!” rumbled the deep voice.

  “And the fishing ruined for Owen Jordan,” added Mickeen Oge.

  “To the devil with him and his fishing!” Hugh cursed mildly and slung his binoculars to the front.

  “True for Mickeen Oge, all the same,” said Big Paudh in my ear. “The fishing’ll be gone all to hell.”

  “And you with it, likely.”

  “What harm? Man, Owen! there was a bull of a trout rose to me twice below the sally bush—you know the place. The tail of him made a wallop like a barn door.”

  “You never told me, you thief.”

  “An’ me keepin’ him for meself. I’d a got him but for breakin’ the tip. Whist! Paddy Bawn spliced it for me afore Hugh found out. Don’t be tellin’ him. Whisper! If I don’t come out o’ this try him with a brown nymph well sunk—an�
� strike like a sledge.”

  “Come out of it or not,” I warned, “if I catch you near that sally bush I’ll drown you.”

  “An’ me the fool to tell you.”

  “Christ!” Hugh’s voice exploded. His elbows were propped in the heather, and the reflection of the eye-pieces of the binoculars made circles of light on his cheeks. “There’s a woman in that leading car.” He twisted aside and thrust the glasses at me. “Take a look!”

  The big Crossley lorries had at last come into sight round the curve of the road a mile away, three of them in a close line. They were coming at a moderate speed, not in their usual reckless rush, and I had no difficulty in picking them up. Every lorry was fully manned: fifteen men to each, and every man a proved fighter. Two to one against us. Yet we held them in the hollow of our hands.

  On the wide driving-seat of the leading car were three people. One was a woman.

  “Yes!” I told Hugh. “Captain MacDonald and his sister.”

  “Oh, the damned fool!”

  The problem was Hugh Forbes’s and his only; and, in the doing of what he considered his duty, Hugh could be coldly ruthless. There was nothing I could say or do, and my heart might beat as heavily as it liked. I shut my mind away, and looked over the rifle-sights across the valley. A bare and shallow valley, with low curves of heather swelling up to the horizon, and bare black patches of peat that swallowed the sunlight; in the damp hollows the canna, the white bog cotton, hung on its stalk; one distant hillside drowsed under the hazed golden glory of the whin; and the high piping of a hill lark lifted above the roar of the approaching cars. But, below and behind all sounds, a brooding quiet lay heavily on that shallow valley.

  One hundred and fifty measured yards below us the brown moorland road swept in a wide curve, dykeless, ditchless, entirely without cover. Here and there, rotting posts, that once had carried wires, leaned at all angles, and on the backs of two of these, two hundred yards apart, scraps of white paper were pinned. Only we knew the deadliness that lay concealed between these two scraps.

  Hugh Forbes’s deepest voice boomed sternly down the line:

  “Let no man fire till I explode the mines. Let no man fire till then.”

  The contact wires were ready in his hands. Was he going to do it, then? None of my business. I was only third in command after Mickeen Oge Flynn. But my heart hurt me with its heavy beating.

  There was the leading car now. I did not let my eyes rest on the woman. The second car was close behind and I looked at that; fifteen men close-packed, Glengarry bonnets rakishly atilt, rifles pointing to the sky. They were singing in that car, a gay song with a marching tune; one of our own songs that used to keep our feet moving in the long night marches.

  “Eileen Oge, and that the girl’s name was;

  Through the barony her features they were famous.

  And if we loved her who was there to blame us?

  For wasn’t she the pride of Petravore?”

  The leading car was on the withinside of the first scrap of paper, and it was slowing down. It was slowing down. And slowly it came to a halt directly below us, the other cars close behind. Dead in the middle of our trap.

  I shut my mind close down, drew in a deep breath, and looked along the rifle-sights. A blue tunic perched and was steady on the foresight.

  “Low, down hill!” came Big Paudh’s rumbling advice. “An’ don’t jerk the pull.”

  II

  Captain MacDonald and his sister alighted from the driving-seat. I was not looking at them, yet I could see. There were the fishing creels being slung on shoulders; and the sound of voices, but not the words; and the engine went with an impatient roar as it accelerated.

  And then the cars moved, slowly, slowly, gathering speed and gathering speed, and, still gathering speed, roared and disappeared round the curve of the valley.

  Captain MacDonald and his sister—Margaid he called her—came up the slope on the narrow path that wound in the heather.

  Again came Hugh’s warning voice, but it was stern no longer.

  “Doggo! Lie close!”

  I crushed my face in amongst the twisted stems of bog myrtle, and did not feel the hurt; I pressed my body close to the breast of peat to still its trembling.

  Hugh’s palm came gently on my shoulder. “We owed that for your tough Yankee hide. God’s hand was in it, maybe.”

  “And Hugh Forbes’s hand as well,” murmured Mickeen Oge Flynn, “and not such a bad instrument in the hands o’ God.”

  I never looked up till I heard Hugh’s lifted voice.

  “Morning, Captain! A bright day for the fishing? Step down this way.”

  The captain, his sister behind him, was stepping down the brief slope to the bottom of the peat bank. His face had assumed the soldier’s mask to hide his astonishment—or something much deeper—and his voice was finely cool.

  “Good morning, Forbes! Glad to meet you again—even at a disadvantage.”

  Hugh, planted on wide-set bowed legs, head forward, looked at him underbrowed. We knew that attitude. Something was going to give in a minute.

  “The rumors were not so far out, after all.” The soldier was halted now, hand irresolute.

  “No—not very.” Hugh’s voice was still even. “Not a safe territory for a lady, is it?”

  “Safe enough till you came.”

  And there Hugh exploded.

  “Blast your stone face, MacDonald! Have you no more respect for your sister than to take her riding in a Tan lorry?” The sweeping gesture of his hand directed the other’s attention to the situation.

  I don’t think the soldier realized till then what he and his sister had escaped. He looked and saw: the cool appraising eyes of fighting men, the rifles bedded in the heather, the shelterless road open to sweep of fire, the contact wires projecting from the peat bank. The mask of his face could no longer hide the shock; his jaw lengthened as it fell. And then he did a nice thing. He turned to his sister at his shoulder and laid a hand on her arm.

  “Please forgive me, Margaid,” he said urgently. “I was a criminal fool.”

  “That’s better,” said Hugh Forbes.

  The other turned almost impulsively.

  “Thanks, Forbes, but—I deserve to be shot.”

  “Just about,” agreed Hugh.

  “Get on with it, then.”

  His foolish words shocked the girl. Up to now she had been curious, interested, no more than excited, not seeing what the eyes of her experienced brother saw. But . . . ! Was this really an ambush? Was her brother in the net and in danger? Were the horrific stories of the terrible Flying Columns true? I saw the intake of her breath, the widening of her eyes; she seemed to shrink within her riding-breeches and knee-boots. Hugh Forbes saw, too.

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Archie! Is this your sister?”

  “Yes. This is Hugh Forbes, Margaid.”

  She smiled a shade wanly, holding her brother’s arm, not yet able to trust her voice.

  “Up for the day’s fishing?” went on Hugh easily. “Faith, we have often watched ye at it, and once—you may remember, Miss MacDonald—you expressed a flattering desire to meet me.” He could be as courtly as the devil, this small dark man.

  “I remember,” she murmured, and her eyes came across to me. Till then I did not know that she was aware of my presence.

  Her brother looked at me, too, and nodded briefly. “Exactly! I might have known. How’s the head, reverend sir?” There was still a strip of plaster above my temple.

  “Thick as ever,” Hugh answered for me. “One good turn deserves another. But he is a doctor of medicine, not divinity.”

  “A doctor?” half-exclaimed the girl.

  “One of those low Yankee degrees. . . . But we are wasting your time.”

  Captain MacDonald glanced over his shoulder to where Mickeen Oge Flynn and Paddy Bawn had quietly occupied the path leading to the road; then he rubbed his long jaw—a habit of his—and looked up at the zenith.

 
; “Not much use trying the Ullachowen under that sky,” he suggested casually. “I think we’ll try that hill burn a mile or so back the road.”

  “If I were you,” said Hugh smoothly, “I’d wait for the evening rise on the Ullachowen.”

  They looked at each other warily, like fighting dogs in no hurry to come to the issue that was unavoidable.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” agreed the soldier.

  “And I would like to talk to you—of old times—while you are wasting foot-pounds of energy.” Hugh nodded towards me. “At the same time, Owen Jordan here might show Miss MacDonald where a good fish feeds.”

  “Jasus!” I heard Big Paudh’s whisper.

  “As you say,” agreed Captain MacDonald.

  III

  That afternoon’s fishing was no more than excuse. We fished some, indeed, but, except for a few small trout and more than enough of tantalizing parr, we caught nothing. Captain MacDonald, moreover, could not concentrate very well on the work in hand, or, rather, he was concentrating too much on what might happen next. He had no illusions about his position, and he knew that Big Paudh Moran and Paddy Bawn Enright, sort of playing at gillies, were with us merely as his guard.

  Mickeen Oge Flynn joined us late in the afternoon, and, as previously arranged, I then undertook the task of getting the girl out of earshot. We were to leave Captain MacDonald to be reasoned with by Hugh Forbes and his second in command.

  The sun was westering down into the wide mouth of the glen, and the feeding time of the big trout was at hand. Margaid MacDonald was fishing out a long run, throwing a nice cast off a nine-footer, and keeping a straight line out of the water; and, like all good anglers, she was still fishing carefully after vain hours. I worked down to her shoulder.

  “Care to try for a big fellow, Miss MacDonald?”

  “Are there any, Mr.—Doctor Jordan, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Up the river—”

  “Far?” She was not sure of us wild men for yet awhile.

  “Round the corner. A fish another fellow was keeping for himself.”

  She got my tone of confidence at once. “Lead me to him,” and there was mischief in her smile.