The Quiet Man and Other Stories

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The Quiet Man and Other Stories Page 12

by Maurice Walsh


  “We’d be ruinated all to hell if any one saw that.”

  “Damn it, man! It was only a hare.”

  At that he threw his cap on the ground and kicked it. “Oh! the thunderin’ fool I am! I ought to have warned you.”

  “Of what?”

  He cooled down to explain. “All my own fault, Major. Look now, would they be shooting foxes in England beyond?”

  “Phew!” I whistled. “Beagles?”

  “Greyhounds—coursing. All the tenants of the four glens are in an association, and, be damned! if I am not their head-keeper. Any lad caught coursing out o’ season or shooting a hare pays his five pounds fine—and glad to get off with it.”

  “I am very sorry, old chap,” I apologized. “We think nothing of shooting hares in the North. You’ll fine me that fiver, of course?”

  His face relaxed in a grin. “Faith! an’ I did that same the minute you pulled the trigger. We need the money.” But again gloom came over him. “But ’tis worse than killing a hare, Major. Between us we have ruined the famousest hare in Munster. You saw that fellow?”

  “An ordinary mountain hare—smallish.”

  “No—he’s a sport. That’s the Lua-Bawn-Shee—the Fairy Hare, as he’s called. He was coursed five time last season with picked dogs—Master Ross himself was one—and ne’er a dog took more than two turns out of him. An’ now he’s off with a leg hangin’, and if any one saw us I’ll never lift head again.”

  Once more he scrutinized the slopes all round us, and I looked as keenly as he did.

  “You could never be telling,” he said glumly. “Some bocagh might be watching us over a boss of heather—and if he’s seen going round on three legs—” He looked at me hopefully. “A lie would come hard on you maybe?”

  “It would. I never heard of any hare called the Fairy Hare. I never fired a shot at a hare in all my life—and I despise any man that would. But did you see that fine buck rabbit I bowled over?”

  “I did so. A tame lad gone wild—I lost him myself in harvest time.”

  “And forby, I’ll not have him going round on three legs. You scout round with Vilette, and I’ll take Bor’u. He can’t have gone far.”

  “You might be seen.”

  “My lookout—and five pounds’ worth.”

  “Well, maybe it’s the best way. Make sure of him this time with both barrels. Oh, our bloody luck!”

  II

  That stalk led me on a longer trail than I had bargained for.

  Sometimes I wonder if the Fairy Hare was not really that, and ordained to lead me where it led me that evening. For it led me as no wounded hare should. A wounded hare invariably circles in its own territory, but this one went straight and true a full mile and more. The big setter never once faltered on the scent, but pressed steadily forward between the heath and blaeberry clumps, and, putting my best foot foremost, I kept within striking-distance without slowing him down.

  In half a mile or so we came to a sagging wire fence, and I threw a leg over and followed on. I guessed I was now trespassing on Janemount ground, but I had made up my mind to get that hare or break a bone.

  We had no time to waste. The sun was a red ball down on the crown of the moors, and Leaccabuie was, even now, an hour’s tramp away. Concentrated on the dog, I was not too careful of where I set foot, and gave myself one good tumble over a short peat bank and a head-over roll into a drift of snow. The dog was going so well at the time that I did not take time to curse, but scrambled out and hurried on.

  And then we came round the flank of a slope, and, over there, not a hundred yards away, was a thatched bothy. I whistled Boroimhe his down-signal, and the wise dog crouched on the scent and waited. I ran an eye over the place. Its back was to me; it was old and the lime-wash peeling off its clay walls; its thatch was ridged and pitted; the red glow of sunset showed where broken panes had been replaced with match boarding, and no plume of smoke came from its ruined chimney. A vacant and forlorn cottage—probably a disused shooting bothy.

  I clicked tongue to the setter and went on, curving towards the front of the house; and I had a queer fancy that the Lua-Bawn-Shee might use this hut for its form, and within it resume its fairy shape. I got a more startling surprise. For, coming into a side-view of the front of the house, I saw a chestnut saddle-horse tied at the door. And at that very moment Boroimhe stiffened at point, a foreleg lifted and feathered tail out behind. Not ten yards from his muzzle, the white hare was crouched into a ball, its ears flat and its great eyes fixed. I suppose the dour spirit in which I had pursued the little wounded beast and my desire to end its pain were uppermost, for, without hesitation, I threw up the fowling piece, looked along the barrels, and touched trigger.

  The terrific bang, the flaming flash within my head, and a clanging darkness shot with stars were all mixed together. . . .

  III

  I opened my eyes in a half darkness, and the dimly-yellow light of a tallow candle wavered on the edge of a black hob.

  I had the strange impression that I was again looking along the path of light from my window at Leaccabuie, and that the woman in the hooded cloak was looking at me. There were the same black pools of the eyes and the same lift of chin. And then the face came close and the light shone on it. It was the face of Joan Hyland.

  I was lying on my back on a dry clay floor, and Joan Hyland’s riding-habit was folded under my head.

  “What is it?”

  “Take your time—you are doing nicely. You’ll be all right in a minute.” There was soothing in her low-pitched voice.

  I turned on my side, got an elbow under, and a wave of dizziness tremored over me. At once her hand was steadying me.

  “Easy now—easy!”

  But I persisted, and sat up. The wall was behind me, and, very expertly, she whipped her riding-habit behind my head and pressed me gently back.

  “So! Don’t rush it now. You very nearly did for yourself.”

  “When—how?”

  “Your gun burst—out there—twenty minutes—half an hour ago.”

  “Oh!” I remembered then. When I had fallen in that snow-drift I must have choked the barrels, and had been in too big a hurry to look.

  I lifted a hand to an ache above my right temple and flinched; and she caught my hand in hers and drew it away; and I noticed that her hands were big and finely made—strong hands.

  “Leave it be,” she chided soothingly. “The skin is not broken, and it’s a nice little duck egg.”

  She straightened up and stood looking down at me for a moment; and then she went across the narrow floor and sat on a rough plank supported on two big stones.

  “No hurry!” she said.

  My brain was slowly clearing, and I gradually came alive to a stouning head. I moved my eyes around. Except for that plank seat there were no furnishings in the place, and there was that cold odor of long-quenched peat fires. The black-coupled roof swallowed the dim light from the inch of tallow candle. The door opposite me, near her shoulder, was wide open, and outside it was the winter twilight fast falling into darkness. . . . Half an hour would be about right! And where the devil was Paddy Bawn?

  “How did I get here—Paddy Bawn—?”

  “No. I brought you. At first I thought you were dead. You know, the gun barrels were gone at the stock. And then I could not bring you round. So, before going for help, I brought you in here.”

  “You brought me in by yourself?”

  “You are no lightweight, either; but I am strong.”

  She had the fine shoulders and supple lines of vigor. I contemplated myself clasped in those long arms. She now wore a short white blouse, light riding-breeches and long boots; and she might be taken for a long-legged youth till one looked at her face; and her face was the face of a woman. That wide, strangely Eastern face, deep of eye, with the curved-in, finely cut nose and the saturnine mouth—a mouth too serious for youth.

  And, again, looking at her in that dim light, I had that strange feeling of look
ing on the hooded woman in the gateway of Leaccabuie House that night when Sean Glynn knocked over the Christmas candles that were lit to light woman, and she in her need.

  I suppose when a man has been completely knocked out and is coming round, his mind, not yet normal, fixes on the problem that had most strongly possessed him, and treats that problem in some abnormal fashion. That is what my mind did.

  Here now was Joan Hyland alone with me in this bothy, and my mind at once gathered in Sean Glynn. He had been in love with this girl and had lost her. Was he in love with her now? With a complete sureness I decided that he was. She was a woman made to be loved, and, losing her, a man would have a torment added to his already heavy burden. I had been unfair to my friend. He was stronger than I knew: grimly fighting his trouble, not yielding to it, retaining his own secret dignity, keeping some unquenchable spark alive above the lifting tide.

  And there I was sorry for Sean Glynn. And with that sorrow came an intense desire to rid him of his trouble that, only now, I fully understood. I felt my stouning head moving on my shoulders with the force of perplexity and desire.

  Joan Hyland moved restlessly, drew her feet in, and swayed her body forward. She was feeling the disturbance in my mind.

  “What were you shooting at?” she asked suddenly, as if to avoid her own thoughts.

  “A rabbit.” I could not fail Paddy Bawn. “A white buck rabbit.”

  “Not the Lua-Bawn-Shee, I hope?”

  “If that was the name of Paddy Bawn’s tame rabbit that went wild on him in harvest time.” Unconsciously I used his very brogue.

  “We Irish are famous liars,” she remarked shrewdly. “I hope you didn’t kill it.”

  “Nearly did that for myself. It was very lucky for me, Miss Hyland, that you were riding in this wilderness.”

  “Oh, I often ride this way. This is our land, you know—the boundary is back there—and I was taking a look at the fences.”

  “Do you ever ride over the border?”

  She did not answer. She was leaning forward, her hands on the plank, and her eyes on the clay floor—in a web of thought that I could not break. But I had the talk in the airt I wanted and would not be baulked.

  “I know a man,” I told her, “who will not cross his own border for god, dog, or devil—or for woman either.”

  She jerked her head quickly, just as if I had clipped her sharply under the chin.

  “Do you ever see that man as you ride your own borders?”

  “No. I never see him,” she replied simply.

  There was a line or two I remembered from somewhere and I said them slowly. “She rides alone in the wilderness, her eyes on the horizon of the moors, empty like the heart that waits him.”

  “That is a hard thing to say,” she murmured.

  She did not resent my boldness, nor was she surprised. I was only voicing her own thoughts, long dwelt on. This girl was in the narrows too, and I would go on testing her nearer the core.

  “Paddy Bawn Enright tells me,” I said, “that tall candles are lit on Christmas Eve to light the Mother o’ God and she in her need. We had two wax candles at Leaccabuie, and a hooded woman looked in at them—and she had crossed her own borders.”

  Her face flamed at me, but she had courage. “The candles were quenched as she looked.”

  “What need was on her, Joan Hyland?”

  “You think you know,” she said bitterly, “but you do not understand.”

  “I might surprise you,” I gave back grimly.

  She was roused now to something of my own abnormality and would take a hand in the game, and in her own direct way.

  “Is it true that Sean Glynn is drinking himself to death?”

  “No. He is only drinking to keep himself alive. But you did not answer my question?”

  She could not, and I knew that. She swerved away from it.

  “Look here, Major MacDonald! We have nearly four miles to walk to Janemount—”

  “Janemount? Haven’t you your horse—?”

  She laughed without much mirth. “You frightened Laddo thoroughly this time—he’ll be in Janemount by this time and my mother wondering. He broke his bridle when your gun exploded.”

  “I am very sorry,” I said.

  But I was not sorry. That clouted headpiece of mine was working admirably and went on doing its duty.

  “Is not Leaccabuie quite as near as Janemount?”

  “Nearer—a mile or two—but—” she looked at me hesitatingly—“could you make it by yourself?”

  “I wouldn’t care to try just yet.” And then I tempted her. “Paddy Bawn would drive you home in twenty minutes behind the stepper.”

  “No! No-o!” But she was tempted.

  I had this girl here like a salmon in a pool, my line fast to her; and even my enemies will admit that I can play a salmon. I gave her a little more line.

  “To walk to Janemount would be foolish, and, moreover, Paddy Bawn cannot be far away. We were on the moor together, and Bor’u, the setter, will bring him this way looking for me.”

  “In that case we will wait a little,” she said and eased herself on the plank. “Are you quite comfortable?”

  “Quite.”

  I turned my eyes to the open door, and there was Paddy Bawn himself. He stood, still as a stock, just outside the threshold, within the slanting ray of the candlelight, and the setters crouched, one behind each knee. I looked at Joan Hyland. Her gaze was again downwards, and her heel was tapping restlessly on the clay floor; wondering where my next thrust would come from. My eyes still on her, I lifted my hand slowly, placed finger to lip, and gave thumb a sideward twist. When I looked back at the doorway Paddy Bawn was gone, and his nailed brogues had made no smallest click on the cobbles. A sound scout, this Paddy Bawn.

  “Your mother will be anxious, Miss Hyland,” I said.

  “It will do no harm,” she answered with a touch of unfilial hardness. A dam’ foolish ould blether of a mother, Paddy Bawn had said.

  “If Paddy Bawn would only come,” I went on, “we could send him on ahead to Leaccabuie, to meet us at the hill road with the pony.”

  I looked at her suggestively, and she nodded her head in agreement.

  “And it might save time,” I went on, “if we set out on the road I came; the dogs will easily find us.”

  “Do you think you could manage—?”

  “Fine that! with a hand occasionally.”

  She came quickly to my assistance as I reached my feet and swayed, one hand on the wall. There was really no need for me to sway, for I possess a hard Scots head, and, at a pinch, could have made Leaccabuie under my own steam. And the abnormal excitement or incitement that I was holding down deadened for a time the shock to my headpiece.

  She slipped into her riding-habit. I took a firm grip of her arm—and we went out into the deepening night, leaving the candle-end to gutter itself out on the hob.

  IV

  I grasped her arm firmly, her shoulder against mine, and occasionally I let my weight lean on that sound prop—and I kept from wishing that I was Sean Glynn.

  “You know the way?” I queried.

  “Of course. There is a right of way and a good path down by the boundary fence.”

  “And a good path down to Janemount too?”

  “There is.”

  “I thought so.”

  She felt my inward chuckle. “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Yes,” she said simply, “Sean and I used often meet at the bothan.”

  “That plank seat puzzled me for a bit,” I said. “Would it take much to make you meet there again?”

  “Nothing the world holds,” she said mournfully. “You don’t know Sean.”

  “I’ll make a guess,” said I, “and put my shirt on it.”

  We held on our way steadily. The rolling, black-silhouetted breasts of the moor lifted against the green-lit western sky, and, now and then, a small, fresh, cold air blew about us. There was n
o sign or sound of the dogs or of Paddy Bawn. Once I thought I saw a clump of heath on the skyline shift and fade, and once I thought I heard the swish of dogs’ feet across shallow water. That was all. Paddy Bawn had not been a guerilla fighter for nothing.

  I held her arm with a holding grip and put my next question to her suddenly.

  “Did you know Nuala—Mrs. Kierley, Miss Hyland?”

  I felt her arm quiver, so I knew I was near her trouble.

  “No. I saw her once or twice.”

  “She was good-looking?”

  “She was very beautiful.” And, if one might judge by her tone, beauty was Nuala Kierley’s worst fault.

  “From what appeared in the press at the time, I gathered that she was a distant relative of Sean’s.”

  “A second cousin, once removed—her own name was O’Carroll.” Like all the Gael, this girl was versed in kinship.

  “Was she—I mean—her reputation was all right?”

  “I—oh! how do I know? How could I know?”

  “Of course not. Apparently she left or ran away from her husband—a queer one, I believe—with Sean, and stayed some time at Leaccabuie.”

  “And they went away together.”

  “That was all?”

  “Was it not enough?”

  “Did you make sure that it was enough?”

  It was a hard question and she did not answer it.

  “Ah, well! If you did not—”

  “I was foolish, I know, and Sean—Sean was rotten about it—oh! I don’t know! My mother—”

  Her voice hardened at that name.

  “Yes? Your mother?”

  “She said that Sean—I was very young—that he was a bad Catholic—neglecting his duty—losing his faith—his soul lost—”

  “And his friends would follow him to hell tomorrow.”

  “You are very hard on me, Major MacDonald,” she said almost humbly. “I know you despise—and hate me, like all his friends, Hugh Forbes, Mickeen Oge Flynn and Paddy Bawn. You are very loyal.” Her voice was wistful. “You men can be so unfailingly loyal to each other. And we—I could do so little—after the trouble—after we——Sean has such a temper, and mine was worse. I was young—what could I do?”

 

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