The Quiet Man and Other Stories

by Maurice Walsh

  She had a white nape to her neck and short red hair above it, and Paddy Bawn liked the color and wave of that flame; and he liked the set of her shoulders, and the way the white neck had of leaning a little forward, and she at her prayers—or her dreams. And after the Benediction he used to stay in his seat, so that he might get one quick but sure glance at her face as she passed out. And he liked her face, too—the wide-set eyes like the sky of a quiet night, the cheekbones firmly curved, the lips austere and sensitive.

  And he smiled pityingly at himself that one of her name should make his pulses stir. For she was a Danaher of Moyvalla, and Paddy Bawn was enough Irish to dislike every bone of Red Will O’Danaher of that place who had snitched the Enright acres.

  “I’ll keep it to myself,” said Paddy Bawn. “ ’Tis only to pass the time.” And he did nothing.

  One person, only, in the crowded little chapel noted Paddy Bawn’s look and the thought behind the look. Not the girl—she barely knew who Paddy Bawn was. Her brother, Red Will himself. And that man smiled secretly—the ugly contemptuous smile that was his by nature—and, after another habit of his, tucked away his bit of knowledge in a mind corner against a day when it might come in useful for his own purposes.

  III

  The girl’s name was Ellen—Ellen Roe O’Danaher. But, in truth, she was no longer a girl. She was past her first youth into that second one that has no definite ending. She might be twenty-eight—she was no less—but there was not a lad in the countryside who would say she was past her prime. The poise of her and the firm set of her bones below clean flesh saved her from the fading of mere prettiness. Though she had been sought in marriage more than once, she had accepted no one, or, rather, had not been allowed to encourage any one. Her brother saw to that.

  Red Will O’Danaher was a huge, rawboned, sandy-haired man, with the strength of an ox, and a heart no bigger than a sour apple. An overbearing man given to berserk rages. Though he was a churchgoer by habit, the true god of that man was Money—red gold, shining silver, dull copper, these the trinity he worshiped in degree. He and his sister, Ellen Roe, lived on the big ranch farm of Moyvalla, and Ellen was his housekeeper and maid of all work. She was a careful housekeeper, a good cook, a notable baker, and she demanded no wage. Her mean brother saw that she remained without a sweetheart, and hinted at his inability to set her out with a dowry. A wasted woman.

  Red Will, himself, was not a marrying man. There were not many spinsters with a dowry big enough to tempt him, and the few there were had acquired expensive tastes—a convent education, the deplorable art of hitting jazz out of a piano, the damnable vice of cigarette smoking, the purse-emptying craze for motorcars—such things.

  But in due time the tocher and the place—with a woman tied to them—came under his nose, and Red Will was no longer tardy.

  His neighbor, James Carey, died of pneumonia in November weather, and left his fine farm and all on it to his widow, a youngish woman without children, and a woman with a hard name for saving pennies. Red Will looked once at Kathy Carey, and she did not displease him; he looked many times at her sound acres and they pleased him better, for he had in him the terrible Irish land-hunger. He took the steps required by tradition. In the very first week of the following Shrovetide he sent an accredited emissary to open formal negotiations.

  The emissary was back within the hour.

  “My soul!” said he to Red Will, “but she is the quick one. I hadn’t ten words out of me when she up and jumped down my throat. ‘I am in no hurry,’ says she, ‘to come wife to a house with another woman at the fire corner.’ ‘You mean Ellen Roe,’ says I. ‘I mean Ellen Roe,’ says she. ‘Maybe it could be managed—’ ‘Listen!’ says she: ‘When Ellen Roe is in a place of her own—and not till then—I will be considering what Red Will O’Danaher has to say. Take that back to him.’ And never asked me had I a mouth on me.”

  “She will, by Jasus!” Red Will mused. “She will so.”

  There now was the right time to recall Paddy Bawn Enright and the look in his eyes; and Red Will’s mind corner promptly delivered up its memory. He smiled that knowing contemptuous smile. Patcheen Bawn daring to cast a sheep’s eye at an O’Danaher! The little Yankee runt hidden away on the shelf of hungry Knockanore! Fighting man, moryah! Looter more like, and him taking the loss of the Enright acres lying down! . . . But what of it? The required dowry would be conveniently small, and Ellen Roe would never go hungry anyway . . . And that was Red Will far descended from many chieftains.

  He acted promptly. The very next market day at Listowel he sought out Paddy Bawn, and placed a great sandy-haired hand on the shoulder that hunched to meet it.

  “Paddy Bawn, a word with you! Come and have a drink.”

  Paddy Bawn hesitated. “Very well,” he said then. He disliked O’Danaher, but he would hurt no man’s feelings.

  They went across to Tade Sullivan’s bar and had a drink—and Paddy Bawn paid for it. Red Will came directly to his subject, almost patronizingly, as if he were conferring a favor.

  “I am wanting to see Ellen Roe settled in a place of her own,” said he.

  Paddy Bawn’s heart lifted into his throat and beat there. But that steadfast face, strong-browed, gave no sign; and, moreover, even if he wanted to say a word he could not, with his heart where it was.

  “You haven’t much of a place up there,” went on the big man, “but it is handy, and no load of debt on it—so I hear?”

  Paddy Bawn nodded affirmatively, and Red Will went on:

  “I never heard of a big fortune going to hungry Knockanore, and ’tisn’t a big fortune I can be giving Ellen Roe. Say a hundred pounds—one hundred pounds at the end of harvest—if prices improve. What would you say to that, Paddy Bawn?”

  Paddy Bawn swallowed his heart. Slow he was and cool he seemed.

  “What does Ellen say?”

  “I haven’t asked her. But what the hell would she say, blast it?”

  Paddy Bawn did not say anything for a long time.

  “Whatever Ellen Roe says, she will say it herself, not you, Red Will,” he said at last.

  But what could Ellen Roe say? She looked within her own heart and found it empty, she looked at the granite crag of her brother’s face and contemplated herself a slowly withering spinster at his fire corner; she looked up at the swell of Knockanore Hill and saw the white cottage among the green small fields below the warm brown of the heather—oh! but the sun would shine up there in the lengthening spring day, and pleasant breezes blow in sultry summer. And finally she looked at Paddy Bawn, that firmly-built, not-too-big man, with the clean-cut face and the deep-lit eyes below steadfast brow. . . . She said a prayer to her God, and sank head and shoulders in a resigned acceptance more pitiful than tears, more proud than the pride of chieftains. Romance? Well-a-day!

  Paddy Bawn was far from satisfied with that resigned acceptance, but he was well aware that he should have looked for no warmer one. He saw into the brother’s mean soul, and guessed what was in the sister’s mind; and knew, beyond all doubt, that, whatever he decided, she was doomed to a fireside sordidly bought for her. That was the Irish way. Let it be his own fireside then. There were many worse ones—and God was good. . . . So in the end his resignation to fate was equal to hers, whatever his hopes might be.

  Paddy Bawn and Ellen Roe were married. One small statement—and it holds the risk of tragedy, the probability of resigned acceptance, the chance of happiness: choices wide as the world. It was a hole-and-corner marriage at that. Red Will demurred at all foolish expense, and Paddy Bawn agreed, for he knew that his friends were more than a shade doubtful of the astounding and unexpected step he had taken. Except for Matt Tobin, his side man, there wasn’t a friend of his own at the wedding breakfast.

  But Red Will O’Danaher, for all his promptness, did not win Kathy Carey to wife. She did not wait for him. Foolishly enough, she took to husband her own cattleman, a gay night-rambler from Clare, who proceeded to give her the devil’s own ti
me and a share of happiness in the bygoing. For the first time Red Will discovered how mordant the wit of his neighbors could be; and, for some reason, to contempt for Paddy Bawn Enright he now added a live dislike.

  IV

  Paddy Bawn had got his precious red-haired wife under his own roof now; but he had no illusions about her regard for him. On himself, and on himself only, lay the task of molding her into wife and lover. Darkly, deeply, subtly, with gentleness, with understanding, with restraint beyond all kenning, that molding must be done; and she that was being molded must never know. He must hardly know himself.

  First, he turned his attentions to material things. He hired a small servant-maid to help her with the rough work, gave her her own housekeeping money, let her run the indoors as she thought best. She ran it well and liked doing it. Then he bought a rubber-tired tub-cart and a half-bred gelding with a reaching action. And on market days husband and wife used to bowl down to Listowel, do their selling and their buying, and bowl smoothly home again, their groceries in the well of the cart, and a bundle of second-hand American magazines on the seat at Ellen’s side.

  And in the nights, before the year turned, with the wind from the plains of the sea keening about the chimney, they would sit at either side of the fine-flaming peat fire, and he would read aloud strange and almost unbelievable things out of the high-colored magazines. Stories, sometimes, wholly unbelievable.

  Ellen Roe would sit and listen and smile, and keep on with her knitting or her sewing; and after a time it was sewing she was at mostly—small things. And when the reading was done, and the small servant-maid to bed, they would sit on and talk in their own quiet way. For they were both quiet. Woman though she was, or that she was, she got Paddy Bawn to do most of the talking. It could be that she, too, was probing and seeking, unwrapping the man’s soul to feel the texture of it, surveying the marvel of his life as he spread it diffidently before her.

  He had a patient, slow, vivid way of picturing for her the things he had seen and felt. He made her see the glare of molten metal lambent yet searing, made her feel the sucking heat, made her hear the clang; she could picture the roped square under the dazzle of the hooded arcs, with the updrifting smoke layer above, and the gleam of black and white going away up and back into the dimness; she came to understand the explosive restraint of the game, admire the indomitable resolution that in a reeling world held on and waited for the opportunity that was being led up to, and she thrilled when he showed her, the opportunity come, how to stiffen wrist for the final devastating right hook. And often as not, being Irish, the things he told her were humorous or funnily outrageous; and Ellen Roe would chuckle, or stare, or throw back her lovely red curls in laughter. It was grand to make her laugh.

  But they did not speak at all of the Black-and-Tan war. That was too near them. That made men frown and women shiver.

  And, in due course, Paddy Bawn’s friends, in some trepidation at first, came in ones and twos up the slope to see them. Matt Tobin the thresher from the beginning, and then Sean Glynn, Mickeen Oge Flynn, Hugh Forbes and others. Their trepidation did not last long. Ellen Roe put them at their ease with her smile that was shy and, at the same time, frank and welcoming; and her table was loaded for them with cream scones and crumpets and cheese-cakes and heather honey; and, at the right time, it was she herself brought forth the decanter of whisky—no longer the half-empty stone jar—and the polished glasses. Paddy Bawn was proud as sin of her.

  She would go out and about, then, at her own work and leave the men to their talk, but not for so long as to make them feel that they were neglecting her. After a while she would sit down amongst them, and listen to their discussions, and, sometimes, she would put in a word or two and be listened to; and they would look to see if her smile commended them, and be a little chastened by the tolerant wisdom of that smile—the age-old smile of the matriarch from whom they were all descended. And she would be forever surprised at the knowledgeable man her husband was: the turn of speech that summed up a man or a situation, the way he could discuss politics and war, the making of songs, the training of a racing dog, the breaking of colt and filly—anything worth talking about.

  Thus it was that, in no time at all, Hugh Forbes, who used to think, “Poor Paddy Bawn! Lucky she was to get him,” would whisper to Sean Glynn, “Flagstones o’ Hell! That fellow’s luck would astonish nations.” And the next time the two came up they brought their wives with them to show them what a wife should be to a man; and Hugh threatened his Frances Mary: “The next one will be a red-head, if God spares me.”

  Wait now!

  Woman, in the decadent world around us, captures a man by loving him, and, having got him, sometimes comes to admire him, which is all to the good; and, if Fate is not unkind, may descend no lower than liking and enduring. And there is the end of lawful romance. Look then at Ellen Roe! She came up to the shelf of Knockanore, and in her heart was only a nucleus of fear in a great emptiness; and that nucleus might grow and grow. Oh! horror—oh, disgust!

  But Glory of God! She, for reason piled on reason, found herself admiring this man Paddy Bawn; and, with or without reason, presently came a quiet liking for this man who was so gentle and considerate—and strong too. And then, one heart-stirring dark o’ night she found herself fallen head over heels, holus-bolus, in love with her own husband. There is the sort of love that endures, but the road to it is a mighty chancy one.

  V

  Pity, things did not stay like that! If they did Paddy Bawn’s story would finish here. It was Ellen Roe’s fault that they did not, and the story goes on.

  A woman, loving her husband, may or may not be proud of him, but she will play tiger if any one, barring herself, belittles him. And there was one man who belittled Paddy Bawn. Her own brother, Red Will O’Danaher. At fair or market or chapel that dour giant deigned not to hide his contempt and dislike. Ellen Roe knew why. Well she knew. He had lost a wife and farm; he had lost in herself a frugally cheap housekeeper; he had been made the butt of a biting humor, and that he liked least of all. In some twisted way he blamed Paddy Bawn. But—and here came in the contempt—the little Yankee runt, the I.R.A. ex-looter, who dared do nothing about the lost Enright acres, would not now have the gall or the guts to insist on the dowry that was due to him. Lucky the hound to steal a Danaher to hungry Knockanore! Let him be satisfied with that luck or, by God! he’d have his teeth down his throat. Thus, the big brute.

  So, one evening, before market day, Ellen Roe spoke to her husband.

  “ ’Tis the end of harvest, Paddy Bawn. Has Red Will paid you my fortune?”

  “Sure, there’s no hurry, girl,” deprecated Paddy Bawn.

  “Have you asked him?”

  “I have not, then. I am not looking for your fortune, Ellen.”

  “And that is a thing Red Will could never understand.” Her voice firmed. “You will ask him tomorrow.”

  “Very well so, agrah,” he agreed carelessly. He did not foresee any trouble about a few pounds back or fore, for the bad money lust had never touched him.

  And next day, in Listowel Square, Paddy Bawn, in that quiet, half-diffident way of his, asked Red Will.

  But Red Will was neither quiet nor diffident; he was brusk and blunt. He had no loose money, and Enright would have to wait till he had. “Ask me again, Patcheen—don’t be a dam’ bit shy,” he said, his face in a mocking grin, and, turning on his heel, plowed his great shoulders through the crowded square.

  His voice had been carelessly loud and people had heard. They laughed and talked amongst themselves, knowing their Red Will. “Begobs! did ye hear him?”

  “The divil’s own boy, Red Will!” “And money tight, moryah! ’Tisn’t one but ten hundred he could put finger on—and not miss it.” “What a pup to sell! Stealing the land and denying the fortune.” “Aye! and a dangerous man, mind you, that same Red Will! He would smash little Bawn at the wind of the word—and divil the care for his Yankee sparrin’ tricks!”

  Pad
dy Bawn’s friend, Matt Tobin the thresher, heard that last and lifted his voice: “I would like to be there the day Paddy Bawn Enright loses his temper.”

  “A bad day for him!”

  “It might, then,” said Matt agreeably, “but I would come from the other end of Kerry to see the badness that would be in it for someone.”

  Paddy Bawn had moved away with his wife, not hearing or not heeding.

  “You see, Ellen?” he said in some discomfort. “The times are hard on the big ranchers—and we don’t need the money, anyway.”

  “Do you think Red Will does?” Her voice had a cut in it. “He could buy you and all Knockanore, and not be on the fringe of his hoard.”

  “But, girl dear, I never wanted a fortune with you.”

  She liked him to say that, but, far better, would she like to win for him the respect and admiration that was his due. She must do that now, once the gage was down, or her husband would become the butt of a countryside never lenient to a backward man.

  “You foolish lad! Red Will would never understand your feelings, with money at stake. You will ask him again?”

  She smiled, and a pang went through him. For her smile held a trace of the contempt that was in the Danaher smile, and he did not know whether the contempt was for himself or for her brother.

  He asked Red Will again. He was unhappy enough in the asking, but, also, he had some inner inkling of his wife’s object; and it is possible that the fighting devil in him was not altogether subdued to his ideal of quietness—the fighting devil that lifted hackle despite him every time he approached Red Will.

  And he asked again a third time. Though Paddy Bawn tried to avoid publicity, Red Will called for it with his loud voice and guffawing attempts at humor. The big man was getting his own back on the little runt, and he seemed quite unaware that decent men thought less of him than ever.