Very soon the issue between the brothers-in-law became a notorious one in all that countryside. Men talked about it, and women too. Bets were made on it. At fair or market, if Paddy Bawn was seen approaching Red Will, men edged closer, and women, pulling shawls over heads, moved away. Some day, men said, the big fellow would grow tired of being asked, and, in one of his terrible rages, half kill the little lad as he had half killed stronger men. A great shame to the world! Here and there a man advised Paddy Bawn to give up asking and put the affair in a lawyer’s hands. “I wouldn’t care to do that,” said Paddy Bawn. Our quiet man was getting dour. None of his prudent advisers were among his close friends. His friends frowned and said little, and were never far away.
Right enough, the day at last came when Red Will O’Danaher grew tired of being asked. That was the big October cattle fair at Listowel. All Kerry was there that day. Sean Glynn of Leaccabuie was there to buy some winter stores, and Mickeen Oge Flynn to sell some, and Matt Tobin to hire out his threshing-machine among the farmers. Red Will had sold twenty head of polled-Angus crossbreds at a good price, and he had a thick wad of banknotes in an inner pocket when he saw Paddy Bawn and Ellen Roe coming across to where he was bargaining with Matt Tobin for a week’s threshing. Besides, the day being dank, he had inside him a drink or two more than was good for him, and the whisky loosened his tongue and whatever he had of discretion.
The first flare in the big man’s mind urged him to throw the money in Paddy Bawn’s face, and then kick him out of the market. No! be the powers! That would be foolish; but, all the same, it was time and past time to deal with the little gadfly and show him up before the crowd. He strode to meet Paddy Bawn, and people parted out of his savage way, and closed in behind so as not to lose any of this dangerous game.
Red Will caught the small man by a hunched shoulder—a rending grip—and bent down to grin in his face.
“What is it, Patcheen? Don’t be ashamed to ask.”
Mickeen Oge Flynn was, perhaps, the only man there to notice the ease with which Paddy Bawn shook his shoulder free—that little explosive jerk with the snap of steel—and Mickeen Oge smiled grimly. But Paddy Bawn did nothing further and said no word; and his eyes were steadfast as ever.
Red Will showed his teeth mockingly.
“Go on, you little cleg! What do you want?”
“You know, O’Danaher.”
“I do. Listen, Patcheen!” Again he brought his hand-clap on the hunched shoulder. “Listen, Patcheen, and let it be heard! If I had a fortune to give Ellen Roe ’tisn’t a throw-out like Paddy Bawn Enright of hungry Knockanore would get her. Go to hell out o’ that!”
His great hand gripped, and he flung Paddy Bawn backwards as if he were no more than the shape of a man filled with chaff.
Paddy Bawn went backwards but he did not fall. He gathered himself like a spring, feet under him, arms half raised, head forward with chin behind hunched shoulder . . . But quickly as the spring coiled as quickly it slackened, and he turned away to his wife. She was there facing him, tense and keen, her face gone pallid, and a gleam of the race in her eye.
“Woman, woman!” he said in his deep voice. “Why would you and I shame ourselves like this?”
“Shame!” she cried. “Will you let him shame you now?”
“But your own brother, Ellen—before them all—?”
“And he cheating you—”
“God’s glory, woman!” His voice was distressed and angry too. “What is his dirty money to me? Are you a Danaher, after all?”
That stung her, and she stung him back in one final hurting effort. She placed a hand below her breast, and looked close into his face. Her voice was low and bitter.
“I am a Danaher. It is a great pity that the father of this, my son, is an Enright coward.”
The bosses of Paddy Bawn’s cheekbones were hard as marble, but his voice was soft as a dove’s.
“Is that the way of it? Let us be going home then, in the name of God!”
He placed a hand on her arm, but she shook it off. Nevertheless, she walked at his side, head up, through the jostle of men that broke apart for them. Her brother mocked her with his great bellowing laugh.
“That fixes the pair of ye,” he cried, brushed a man who laughed with him out of his way, and strode off through the market place.
There was talk then—plenty of it. “Murdher! but that was a narrow squeak!” “Did you see the way he flung him?” “I’ll wager he’ll give Red Will a wide road after this day—and he by way of being a boxer!” “That’s a pound you owe me, Matt Tobin.”
“I’ll pay it,” said Matt Tobin. He stood wide-legged, looking at the ground, his hand ruefully rubbing the back of his head under his tilted bowler hat, blank dismay on his face. His friend had failed him in the face of the people.
Then Mickeen Oge Flynn spoke.
“I’ll take over that bet, friend, and double it.”
The man looked at him doubtfully. He knew Mickeen Oge. Every one did.
“Is the I.R.A. in it?” he inquired.
“No. Paddy Bawn himself only.”
“Right, begod! You’re on.” The man was a sportsman. “An’ I won’t care a dam’ if I lose, aither.”
“You’ll lose, all right, honest man,” said Mickeen Oge, “and we’ll spend the money decently.”
Sean Glynn of Leaccabuie touched him on the shoulder, and the two friends went away together.
“Paddy Bawn is in the narrows at last,” said Sean sadly. “Maybe we were right to be against it in the beginning.”
“We were not,” said Mickeen Oge.
“He will have to do something now?”
“He will.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll stand by him as he stood by me. I’m not going home tonight, Mickeen Oge.”
“No?”
“No. I’ll go out to see him tomorrow.”
“Very good!” said Mickeen Oge. “I’ll go with you. I have the old car here.”
VI
Paddy Bawn and Ellen Roe went home in their tub-cart, and had not a single word or a glance for each other on the road. And all that evening, at table or at fireside, a heart-sickening silence held them in its unloosening grip. And all that night they lay side by side still and mute. There was but one disastrous thing in both their minds, and on that neither would speak. He was an Enright and she was a Danaher, and the feud was on. They slept little.
Ellen Roe, her heart desolate, lay on her side, her dry eyes closed, repentant for the grievous thing she had said, yet knowing that she could not unsay it. Disproof had to come first—but how—how?
Paddy Bawn lay on his back, his open eyes staring into the dark, and his inner vision seeing things with a cold clarity. He realized that he was at the fork of life, and that a finger pointed unmistakably. There was only one thing to do. He must shame man and woman in the face of the world. He must shatter his own happiness in this world and the next. He must do a thing so final and decisive that never again could it be questioned. . . . And there was just one small hope that a miracle would take place. He cursed himself. “Damn you, you fool! You might have known that you should never have taken a Danaher without first breaking O’Danaher.”
He rose early in the morning at his usual hour, and went out as usual to his morning chores—rebedding and foddering his few cattle, rubbing down the half-bred, helping the servant-maid with the creaming pans—and at the usual hour he came into breakfast, and ate it unhungrily and silently, which was not usual. Thereafter, he again went out to the stable, harnessed the gelding and hitched him to the tub-cart. Then he returned to the kitchen and spoke to his wife for the first time that morning.
“Ellen Roe, will you come down to Moyvalla with me to see your brother?”
She threw her hands wide in a hopeless, helpless gesture, as much as to say: “What’s the use?”
“I must go,” said he. “Will you come, please?”
She hesitated. “Very well,” she said then, tonelessly. “But, if I set f
oot inside Moyvalla, there I may stay, Paddy Bawn.”
“That is on me,” he said bleakly, “and I will take the blame now or later. ’Tis Enright or Danaher this day—and Enright it is before the face of God!”
“I will be ready in a minute,” said Ellen, and her heart stirred in her.
And they went the four miles down into the vale towards the farm of Moyvalla. It was a fine clear mid-October morning and a perfect day for harvesting the potato crop or threshing corn. As they turned out of the crossroads at Lisselton they met Sean Glynn and Mickeen Oge Flynn chugging along in an ancient touring-car.
“A slack season of the year,” lied Sean, “and being as far as Listowel we thought we would come out and see ye.”
“Ye are welcome,” said Ellen Roe, and looked at her husband.
Paddy Bawn’s heart had lifted in his breast at the sight of his two friends. Whatever befell, these men would stand by him—and God was good, after all.
“I am glad to see ye,” he said. “Will ye come with me now and be my witnesses, and”—he fixed them with his eye—“leave it in my hands?”
“Anywhere—anyhow,” said Mickeen Oge.
The gelding went off at its reaching trot, and the car couldn’t do much better than hold its place. So, they drove into the big square of cobbled yard of Moyvalla, and found it empty.
On one side of the square was the long, low, lime-washed farmhouse; on the opposite side, fifty yards distant, the two-storied line of steadings with a wide arch in the middle; and through the arch came the purr and zoom of a threshing-machine.
As Paddy Bawn tethered the half-bred to the wheel of a farm cart, a slattern servant-girl leaned over the kitchen half-door and pointed through the arch. The master was beyont in the haggard—an’ would she run for him?
“Never mind, Colleen,” called Paddy Bawn. “I’ll get him . . . Ellen, will you go in and wait?”
“I’ll come with you,” said Ellen quietly, and, when her husband was not looking, she beckoned with her head to his two friends—and hers, she hoped. She knew the man her brother was.
As they went through the arch the purr and zoom grew louder, and, turning a corner, they walked into the midst of activity. A long double-row of cone-pointed corn-stacks stretched across the haggard, and, between, Matt Tobin’s portable threshing-machine was working full steam. The smooth-flying eight-foot driving-wheel made a sleepy purr, and the black driving-belt ran with a sag and sway to the red-painted thresher. Up there on the platform, bare-armed men were feeding the drum with unbound corn-sheaves, their hands moving in a rhythmic swing; and as the toothed drum bit at the ears it made a gulping snarl that changed and slowed to a satisfied zoom. The wide conveying-belt was carrying the straw up a steep incline to where many men were building a long rick; other men were perched forking on the truncated cones of the stacks; still more men were attending to the corn-chutes, and shoulder-bending under the weight of full sacks as they ambled across to the granary. Matt Tobin himself bent at the face of his engine, his bowler hat on his back hairs, feeding the fire-box with divots of black hard peat. In all, there were not less than two score men about the place, for, as was the custom, Red Will’s friends and neighbors were choring him at the threshing—the “day in harvest” that is half work, half play, full of wit, devilment, and horseplay, with a dance in the evening and a little courting on the side.
Red Will O’Danaher came round the flank of the engine and swore. He was open-necked, in his shirtsleeves, and his broad chest and great forearms were covered with sandy hair.
“Hell and blazes! Look who’s here!”
He was in the worst of tempers this fine morning that was made for pleasant labor and the shuttle-play of Kerry wit. The stale dregs of yesterday’s whisky had put him in a humor that, as they say, would make a dog bite its father. He took two slow strides and halted, feet apart and head truculently forward.
“What is it this time?” he shouted—an un-Irish welcome, indeed.
Paddy Bawn and Ellen Roe came forward steadily, Sean and Mickeen Oge pacing behind; and, as they came, Matt Tobin slowly throttled down his engine. Red Will heard the change of pitch and looked angrily over his shoulder.
“What the devil do you mean, Tobin? Get on with the work!”
“To the devil with yourself, Red Will! This is my engine.” And Matt drove the throttle shut, and the purr of the fly-wheel slowly sank.
“We’ll see in a minute,” threatened the big man, and turned to the two near at hand.
“What is it?” he growled.
“A private word with you,” said Paddy Bawn. “I won’t keep you long.”
“You will not—on a busy morning,” sneered Red Will. “You ought to know by now that there is no need for private words between me and you.”
“There is need,” urged Paddy Bawn. “It will be best for you to hear what I have to say in your own house.”
“Or here on my own land. Out with it! I don’t care who hears.”
He looked over Paddy Bawn’s head at Mickeen Oge and Sean Glynn, his eyes fearless.
“Is the I.R.A. in this, too?” he inquired contemptuously.
“We are here as Paddy Bawn’s friends,” said Sean mildly.
“The I.R.A. is not in this, O’Danaher,” said Mickeen Oge, and he threw up his lean head and looked slowly round the haggard. There was something in that bleak look that chilled even Red Will. “If the I.R.A. were in this not even the desolation of desolations would be as desolate as Moyvalla,” that look seemed to say.
Paddy Bawn looked round him, too. Up on the thresher, up on the stacks, over there on the rick, men leaned on fork handles and looked at him; here and there about the stackyard men moved in to see, as it might be, what had caused the stoppage, but only really interested in the two brothers-in-law. He saw that he was in the midst of the Clan Danaher, for they were mostly of the Danaher kin: big, strong, blond men, rough, confident, proud of their breed. Mickeen Oge, Sean Glynn, Matt Tobin, were the only men he could call friends. Many of the others were not unfriendly, but all had contempt in their eyes, and, what was worse, pity.
Very well so! The stage was set, and Red Will wanted it so. And it was not unfitting that it be set here amongst the Danaher men. Deep down in Paddy Bawn a hackle lifted.
He brought his eyes back to Red Will. Deep-set eyes that did not waver.
“O’Danaher,” said he, and he no longer hid his contempt, “you set great store by money?”
“No harm in that. You do yourself, Patcheen.”
“Take it so. It is the game I am forced to play with you till hell freezes.” In stress he used strange little Americanisms. “You bargained away your sister and played cheat, but I will not be cheated by any Danaher that ever sucked miser’s milk. Listen, you big brute! You owe me a hundred pounds. Will you pay it?”
There was some harsh quality in his voice that was actually awesome. Red Will, ready to start forward overbearingly, took a fresh thought, and restrained himself to a brutal playfulness.
“Oho! Yankee fighting cock! I will pay what I like when I like.”
“One hundred pounds—today.”
“No. Nor tomorrow.”
“Right! That breaks all bargains.”
“What’s that?”
“If you keep your hundred pounds you keep your sister.”
“What is it?” shouted Red Will. “What’s that you say?”
“You heard me. Here is your sister Ellen. Keep her!”
“Fires o’ hell!” He was astounded out of his truculence. “You can’t do that.”
“It is done,” said Paddy Bawn Enright.
VII
Ellen Roe had been quiet as a mouse at Paddy Bawn’s shoulder. But now, slow like doom, she faced him, and he was compelled to look at her. Eye to eye, and behind the iron of his she saw the pain.
“To the mother of your son, Paddy Bawn Enright?” Only he heard that whisper.
“To my treasure of the world—before the face of Go
d. Let Him judge me.”
“I know—I know. Let him direct you.”
That is all she said, and walked quietly across to where Matt Tobin stood at the face of the engine. Her two friends went with her, and Sean Glynn placed a firm hand on her arm.
“Give him time, Ellen Roe,” he whispered. “This had to be, and all he needs is time. He’s slow to start, maybe, but he’s death’s tiger when he moves.”
“Praises be to all the saints and devils that brought me here this day!” said Matt Tobin.
Mickeen Oge Flynn said nothing.
Red Will O’Danaher was no fool. Except when in a berserk rage he knew as well as any man how far he could go; and, somehow, the berserk rage was chilled in him at birth this morning. Some indomitable quality in the small man warned him that brute force would not serve any purpose. He used his head . . . Whatever disgrace might come to Paddy Bawn, public opinion would flay himself alive. He could never lift head again—and all over one hundred pounds. His inner vision saw mouths twisted in sly laughter, eyes leering in derision. The scandal on his name! Even now, that would come, but there might be time yet to lay the foundation of his future attitude—just a bit of fun at a Yankee upstart. . . . That was it.
Thus the thoughts shuttled in his mind, while he thudded the ground with iron-shod heel. Suddenly, then, he threw up his head and bellowed his laugh.
“You dam’ little fool! Don’t be taking things so seriously. I was only having my fun with you. What the hell are your dirty few pounds to the likes of me? Stay where you are, blast you!”
He ground round on his heel, strode off with a furious swing of shoulder, and disappeared through the arch.
Paddy Bawn stood alone in that wide ring of men. The workers had come down off rick and stack to see closer; and with the instinct of the breed they knew that no man dared interfere now. They moved back and aside, looked at one another, looked at Paddy Bawn and Ellen Roe, at her friends, frowned and shook their heads. This smallish man from Knockanore was at last displaying the force that was in him. They looked at him again and wondered. Could he fight? Oh, bah! They knew their Red Will, and they knew that, yielding up the money, his savagery might break out into an explosion in which this little man’s boxing tricks would be no more use than a rotten stick. They waited, most of them, to prevent that savagery going too far.
The Quiet Man and Other Stories Page 15