After a long time I went to bed. Some woman was interested in Sean Glynn’s house—or in Sean Glynn. Did she need him, did he need her? Had she seen him knock the candles over? . . . I was a damned interfering Scotsman, and I would keep on being that. . . .
Chapter IV
I
PADDY BAWN and I went snipe shooting on Christmas day. I tried, almost to the point of anger, to persuade Sean to come with us, but the snipe moor was beyond his borders, and he would not be moved. This border-keeping began to obsess me too. I had a growing desire to drag him outside to see what might happen, and had some illogical notion that he would be rid of his trouble if I could once break down this obduracy of his.
I was brutal enough. “Don’t be an ass,” I told him shortly. “Get your gun and come along.”
For the first time I drew a flash from him. “Oh! go to blazes! You make me tired!”
I was nettled. “Very good! But let me tell you one thing first. Before a man can do what you are doing he must think a hell of a lot of himself.”
“So he must—so he has to—blast it all!” And he turned on his heel and left me.
The snipe moor was on the other side of the valley round the western flank of Leaccamore where it faces its brother mountain Barnaquila across the great glen of Grianaan. There Paddy Bawn and I spent two or three brisk hours, and, though I am not a deadly shot at snipe, made a very fair bag, thanks to the abundance of game, the admirable work of the setters, and the quickness of Paddy Bawn to knock over the bird I had missed. Parts of the peat moss fairly frightened me, for there appeared to be no more than a tough, but thin, skin over an unplumbed morass. Small red-edged pools, floating the broad leaves of the bog lily, were all round us; and, as we picked our way between, the moor quaked and little tremors ran across the pools.
“Divil a bit of fear,” said Paddy Bawn, “barrin’ you step in a bog-hole.”
“Plenty to step in.”
“Begor, ay! They have no bottom, them holes. They go down to—what do you call that place t’other side o’ the world?”
“The Antipodes?”
“That’s it. Dinny Byug Rua fell into one two years come Shrove Tuesday—the day he was to be married—an’ ’twas the last seen of him. He didn’t want to marry the woman anyway—and they say he fell in. And then his sister Maura had a letter from him from New Zealand where he came out. She says so herself, and she goes to the altar rails once a month, but you can take it or lave it.”
“A high dive that—or was it a long jump?”
“A bit of a jump I’m thinking—like this one.”
We had come to the hedged fence of the road here paralleling the bog, and Paddy Bawn took a short run and a flying leap between two bushes.
Immediately there followed a really frightful clatter of iron-shod hooves—exactly as if Paddy Bawn, in mid-air, had developed four shod feet, and, on alighting, had started to prance and buck all over the road. And then came a woman’s voice calling aloud. I jumped on the fence, and forced back a trail of briar to Paddy Bawn’s side. He was not prancing—and not even cursing.
II
I saw the blue-clad figure of a woman, short hair blown upright, swaying in a lady’s side-saddle, and, under her, a young chestnut horse rearing and pivoting and struggling to get its head.
I dropped my gun on the grass edging of the road. The heart of that cyclone was no place for a woman.
“Get hold of him!” I cried.
“She’s safe as a house,” said Paddy Bawn.
He was right. That young woman was quite adequate to the work in hand. She was welded to that side-saddle, and her gauntleted hands, down on her mount’s shoulders, held his neck curved into his breast and brought his head round to us time and time again, and her voice was not calling out in fear, but half in chiding, half in soothing.
The chestnut horse was young, but he was kindly grained and well broken, and, forced to face the object of his fear, soon grew manageable. His rider relaxed her grip, and, one hand patting his shoulder and her voice crooning, “Now, boy; now, boy—there now, boy!” she brought him close up to us, his eyes still wild and his nostrils quivering. She looked directly at Paddy Bawn and laughed with an unhappy bitterness.
“I suppose you wanted to break my neck, Paddy Bawn?”
“I did not, then, Miss Joan—not for a piece yet, anyway.”
There was a bleak humor in his voice that made me look at him. He had lifted his old deer-stalker, and, now, he stood stiff as a ramrod, his strong-boned face unsmiling, and his eyes unflinching. There and then that Irish fighting man was no other than one meeting a not-to-be-despised enemy.
“Thank you, Paddy Bawn.” She smiled faintly, appreciating some hidden meaning. “How are you keeping?”
“Good, miss—fine, fine.”
“And Sean? No one ever sees him now.”
“Not a hair out of him!” And then with sudden bluntness: “And small credit to you, Miss Joan.”
“I would hate you to be easy on me, Bawn,” she said quietly.
“I won’t either,” said Bawn hardily.
Her eyes had only touched me, as it were, up to now, but here she looked directly at me and smiled frankly.
“Captain MacDonald?” she said. “Do you not remember me?”
“Miss Joan Hyland of Janemount, Major MacDonald,” Paddy Bawn introduced us.
I had lifted my hat, and now I bowed. “I remember Miss Joan Hyland very well.”
“I am glad to meet you again—Major MacDonald.”
“I am glad too, Miss Hyland.”
Three years ago, when I had first met her, she was no more than a pretty slip of a country girl. Now she was a mature woman, and wise, and sad. She was that entirely Irish type, rather broad in the face, her eyes blue and long-lashed, not so much broad-set as deep-set; and her cheekbones, though finely formed, giving some undefinable Scythic flattening to the whole face. This flattening was emphasized by a slight downward curving of the nose-tip, a curve, that, carried farther, is seen in the old tragic Greek masks.
We looked at each other, and thoughts and conjectures were jumbled in my mind—the potent charm of that woman, Sean Glynn hiding within his own border, the things Paddy Bawn had said and implied. She must have had similar thoughts.
“You were Sean Glynn’s best friend,” she said. “He was always talking about you.”
“I have heard Sean Glynn speak about you too, Miss Hyland—but not for a long time.”
“I am the last one he would speak about now,” she said quietly. “Well, I must be going. Good-evening to you both!”
A touch of heel and a lift of reins, and she left us to watch her. The chestnut ambled smoothly on the grass edging of the road, and the figure in the saddle swayed easily with shoulders straight. Her fine fair hair waved and fluttered, and the white nape of her neck showed above her collar.
“The devil sweep women—every last one of them!” cursed Paddy Bawn familiarly, and there was excess of bitterness in his tone.
“You do hate that woman, don’t you?”
“Hate? I do not, then.”
“You sound darn like it,” I said in surprise.
“Hate is the last thing I have in my mind for her. Any hour of the day or the night I would spread green rushes under that one’s feet—in the house of Leaccabuie.”
“You blame her, then—not Sean Glynn?”
He scratched his head under his hat. “I dunno—I dunno at all. She has a dam’ foolish ould blether of a mother.”
“There was more than a lover’s tiff in it, Paddy Bawn?”
“There could be . . . If we don’t to be hurrying, Hugh Forbes and Mickeen Oge Flynn will be in the house before us.”
But I wasn’t quite finished with him yet, and as we walked on I remarked casually:
“Perhaps I was too hard on Sean?”
“ ’Tis hardness he wants.”
“That Kierley business was a rotten business?”
“It w
as all that,” agreed Paddy Bawn.
“Martin Kierley—what was he—a bad ’un?”
“I couldn’t tell you that. I wasn’t in the know, but I’m thinking where the rottenness was the rottenness was paid for.”
“And this Nuala Kierley—was she a bad ’un, too?”
“I couldn’t tell you that, either. ’Tisn’t badness you’d be thinking of with her before you—and I dunno about that, either.”
“I saw her only once.”
“You won’t forget her then—she stays in a man’s mind.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “Queer, too, but I feel I will see her again—some day.”
“God and the Mother o’ God protect you!” said Paddy Bawn fervently. “Look now! That woman brings trouble with her always. There’s something in her, I tell you. She’d be bad for you.”
“She was bad for Sean Glynn?”
“Maybe Sean Glynn was bad for her,” said Paddy Bawn.
“I’ll be hard on him,” said I.
III
Hugh Forbes and Mickeen Oge Flynn were at the house before us. They were glad to see me. And a third hard night was spent in the house of Leaccabuie.
Hugh Forbes, the Small Dark Man of Glounagrianaan, was a remarkable man, full of vital force; not tall, but powerfully built, and his broad-jawed, aquiline face the face of a warrior—except for the lustrous kindly eyes, that, time and again during the night, were turned anxiously on Sean Glynn getting drunk. He was worried about Sean, I saw, but he himself took his due share of the punch with no other effect than the enriching of his astonishing expletives.
Michael Flynn—Mickeen Oge Flynn, as he is known in all Ireland—was quite as remarkable a man as Hugh Forbes. Tall, lean, virile, with a lined, austere face, he held to his beliefs in all winds. He had spent three years reading divinity in Maynooth until the woman Erin possessed him; was an unconditional republican; had refused to accept the Treaty; was captured in the civil war; did forty days hunger-strike, escaped daringly from an internment camp, and took to the hills until peace came. Even now, it was known that he kept his I.R.A. organization alive underground, and was reputed to control several secret dumps of arms.
That was a night of talk in Leaccabuie, before, during, and after dinner; and good talk, too, remarkable and not unoriginal talk for that mountain land on the ultimate edge of Europe. Midnight came all too soon, and the clock in the hall chapped its twelve slow strokes. And there was Paddy Bawn in the doorway. A single glance at his white face and shining eyes showed that his year’s ration of whisky had done its little worst.
“Hugh Forbes,” said he, “your flivver is stone cold out in the yard; it smells like snow, and maybe your wife will be waiting up for you.”
“Go to hell, you broken-down pug!” Hugh said amicably. “I’ll go home when I like.”
“This is no place for a respectable married man on St. Stephen’s morning.”
“Blazes! but you’re right there, Bawn.” He looked round at us. “One—two—four hardshell old bachelors, the Lord forgive them! ’Tis a wonder Frances Mary let me out.”
“Any woman would,” remarked Mickeen Oge, “and call her soul her own for an hour or two.”
Hugh thrust forward his head in a way he had, and there was a wise, mocking kindly glint in his eye.
“You are a hardshell old bachelor, aren’t you, Mickeen Oge, boy?”
“So you say,” said Mickeen Oge equably. “You’ve been drinking, Paddy Bawn.”
“I will,” said Paddy Bawn.
“My brave fellow! Give him a drink, Sean.”
Sean turned a slow head. “White Patrick Enright,” he enunciated deliberately, “thirsty you will be tomorrow and thirsty you will remain.”
“God’s will be done—blast it! ’Twas the bargain we made—but I’ll absolve you tomorrow. No, begor! I won’t aither.”
“I know, brother. Not while you have Sean Glynn to put to bed. Very well so! We will have our last drink together for another year—another long year, Paddy Bawn. Hugh, take hold of that kettle, and leave Mickeen Oge Flynn alone; what does he know about women?”
“You’d wonder,” said Hugh, and poised the kettle.
Our visitors left after that sturdy final punch. I saw them out, while Paddy Bawn stayed behind to get Sean Glynn to bed.
We stood at the bonnet of the old flivver and they were in no hurry to go. We talked in low tones.
“We hope you’ll be good for him, Archie.” There was anxiety in Hugh’s voice. “What do you think?”
“Was it this—this lover’s quarrel that set him off?”
“There was that in it—”
“No—no!” protested Mickeen Oge firmly. “That was only the final straw. As you may have guessed, Major, he had to do something terrible during the war here, something that touched the very roots of his reason, and, as I see it, he is only taking his own way of holding himself in time and place.”
“Where is Nuala Kierley now?” I asked suddenly, and he nodded understandingly.
“We don’t know. She went abroad and left no trace.”
“We are searching for her high and low,” said Hugh. “Mickeen Oge has a theory about her and Sean.”
“With a risk in it. You see,” explained Mickeen Oge, “Sean’s obsession is that Nuala Kierley has gone wrong and himself to blame. My theory is that if we could show him that she has not—”
“But if she has?”
“Ah, then!” said Mickeen Oge gloomily. “That’s the risk.”
“I have a theory myself,” said Hugh, “and it is that the hurt caused by one woman can be cured by another.”
“Well?”
“He won’t see her. He builds up this damn border of his. We hoped you’d break it down. You haven’t?”
“No.”
“Hang on, Highlandman.”
And with that they left me.
Sean Glynn was not yet to bed when I got back to the dining-room. He lay back in his chair, Paddy Bawn standing by his side, and his brilliant dazed eyes met mine out of a sardonic face.
“What did my two guardians tell you, Archie?”
I made no reply, and he chuckled at me.
“They are my guardians, you know. They come over once a month to see how their keeper is doing his work.”
“Keeper be damned!” swore Paddy Bawn.
“Why stay here, then, and your quiet place waiting for you?”
“This place is quiet enough for me.”
“Sorry I haven’t enough grit to kick you out, but—but I can’t do without you, Bawn.” He turned to me. “Didn’t know I was a bit touched, Archie?”
“Bosh!”
“Well, I am. But I am keeping it to myself within my own border.”
So that was it. I could not meet his eye.
“This is a bad house, my brother,” he said sadly, “and you should leave it to this man and me. I’m sorry you came, and I’ll be sorry when you go.”
“It is not a bad house,” I said firmly. “It is a fine old house, but a lonely house for you alone, and not having what it wants, it must have something. Night after night—how long is it to go on, Sean?”
“Only God knows.”
“I know what this house wants.”
“So do I, Archie—and it will not get it by me. . . . Go to your bed, son! Come, Bawn!”
“Wait, Paddy Bawn,” I commanded, the last punch alive in me. “Did I come to this house to drink malt whisky or—?”
“You drink malt whisky damn well, anyway,” said Paddy Bawn, and then his voice changed. “But if God sent you to us, Major MacDonald, maybe God will show it. Come, achara!”
Chapter V
I
IT was Paddy Bawn’s fault that I shot that hare. He forgot to warn me.
Sean, he, and I had left the house about noon on Boxing Day—or St. Stephen’s day, as it is called in the south—after a visit from the “Wren Boys,” masked youths in fancy costumes, carrying a wren in a ribboned bush,
and dancing intricately dexterous step-dances. After a long and not very successful drive through the sallys of Killersheragh, Paddy Bawn proposed a beat over the dry rolling moors behind on the chance of picking up an old grouse.
“You two nefarious scoundrels do it,” suggested Sean. “I’ll trot back to the house and do some accounts.”
I had a sarcastic comment on the tip of my tongue, but succeeded in swallowing it.
When he had left us I put one or two questions to Paddy Bawn.
“How far are we from the Leaccabuie border?”
“Over there—a mile and a half—good.”
“Whose ground is beyond?”
“The Hylands’ of Janemount.” He looked sideways at me.
“Exactly! Well, let us get on with this illegal slaughter of ours.”
But the old cock grouse were wary and wild as hawks, and we were lucky to wing a brace at long range.
In the night there had been a sprinkling of snow on these higher grounds, and while the winter sun had already licked most of it up a drift or two still snuggled in the northern folds of the moor. It was close to one of these wreaths, some time late in the afternoon, that Boroimhe, the big setter, pointed and put up a hare, so light in color that I took it for one of our own white mountain breed. As a matter of course I brought gun to shoulder, for in the Highlands we blaze away at hares if we happen to beat them up.
And at that an amazingly anguished yell from Paddy Bawn startled me. “No-o! Oh! Lord Almighty!”
But brain had already given the signal to finger, and the shot went on its errand. The hare pitched over, was on its feet again, stumbled, and was off on three legs amongst the tall heather tussocks.
“Down, Bor’u—down! Black Vilette, you bastard!” And the well-trained dogs stopped dead, crouching.
“What the devil do you mean, Bawn?” I was angry.
Paddy Bawn was not looking at me. His old cap was in one hand, his gun in the other, and both were held away from his body; his head was craned forward and his eyes searching the landscape, while his expression was compounded of fear, dismay and a little hope. He swung full circle, and then, his face clearing, drew in a long breath.
The Quiet Man and Other Stories Page 11