III
Nuala Kierley and Sean Glynn were in a corner of the almost empty hotel lounge, at right angles to the door, and she was much the cooler of the two. She sat upright in a wicker chair, her long fine arms resting on a small glass-topped table, her hands easily clasped, and her eyes looking up at Sean Glynn. Sean was not looking at her; he stood biting his fingers, his eyes on the entrance. He would just stand about one minute more of this anxiety. . . . And there Archibald MacDonald came through the door and walked across to them. He was as cool as ever.
At once Sean’s spirits leaped sky-high.
“You got away?”
“The play was over, so I came away with the crowd,” said the cool man, and looked at the lady.
“Where is Sir Henry Hanley?” she asked him in a voice calm as his own.
He smiled at her equably. “No need to worry about him, Mrs. Kierley; he has probably secured lodgings for the night.”
“Well, I’m—sorry, Nuala!” apologized Sean. “For a prudent man, Archie, I’ll put my money on you every time.—This is Archie MacDonald, Nuala—but you’ve met him. He’s a Major now.”
“A policeman or two will be looking for us in the morning,” said the Major.
“We are in the one hotel where they will never look for a Highland thug,” said Sean.
Nuala Kierley retained her wonderful composure. “What do you think you—gentlemen—are doing with me?” she inquired without heat.
“We don’t know yet,” said Sean.
“Any reason why I shouldn’t get up and walk out of here?”
“We’d come with you—we’d tear Dublin apart—we’d burn the Custom House.—Wouldn’t we, Archie?”
“And the Four Courts,” added his friend.
Sean shook a finger under her nose. “If necessary, I’ll ring up”—he named a man high up in the Free State Government—“and he will not allow Nuala Kierley to make a fool of herself.”
“You think I am doing that?”
“We are taking the quickest way to find out, are we not?”
“I’ll say you are.” And then she leaned back in her chair and laughed. Her laughter was nearly as deep as a man’s, and there was only that small crinkling about the eyes. “Oh, Dublin! I might know that I am back in you. You are a lawless people, Sean, and you make your friends as bad.”
“Worse,” said Sean. “A lot worse.”
The lady did not ask any more questions. She showed neither surprise nor anger—nor that indignation that a woman should show at unmerited disaster to a man who proposed to marry her. She sat very still, the friends watching her, her eyes half-closed in some cogitation of her own. Then she drew a long deep breath and looked up at Sean Glynn.
“All right, Sean! I will play this silly game out with you, but I warn you that I will take my own way at the end. What comes next?”
“Supper,” said Sean. He looked at his friend. “Go and change your jacket, Archie, and plunge your head in cold water. You’ll have a fairish black eye by morning.”
“He deserves it,” said Nuala Kierley.
They had supper at a secluded table behind a pillar, and for a while the talk was commonplace and easy enough. But very carefully Sean was leading it in one direction—getting Nuala to tell something about the past years. She did not seem to mind. She was frank but brief. She had been to Paris for a while, in the States, Canada, back to London and the Provinces: at best only a medium success on the stage.
“I was never a versatile actress, as you know, Sean.”
“But, my Lord! some things you could do,” said Sean. “All the same, there is not a thing on the stage for you, Nuala.”
And then it came.
“I know. That is why I am thinking of getting married.”
“Thinking?”
“Your conduct tonight has put it beyond that stage probably.”
“Who is the man?”
“Sir Henry Hanley.”
“Where did you meet him again?”
“He owns the show—”
“But not you. You cannot marry him, Nuala.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t. He is the one man—”
“If you will look at it in another way, Sean,” she stopped him, “he is the only man.”
“You can’t, Nuala,” insisted Sean.
“Would you prefer me to be his mistress?” she asked him baldly.
“You will be that if you marry him; he is divorced, and you are a Catholic?”
“Does religion matter so much, Sean?”
He leaned across to her. “Tell me, Nuala, do you want to marry him?”
“I do not want to marry any man.” She said that in a slow toneless voice that was more convincing than any emphasis.
“Well then?”
“Harry Hanley is not a bad man—and he is sincere. And, as you say, there is nothing for me on the boards. Well?”
“But you have your friends—all of us—and a pension due you from the State.”
She shook her head. “I will never touch it. Ireland is still in serfdom.”
“But not for long. Look, Nuala! Come down with me to Leaccabuie.”
“You are married, are you not? I saw it in the press—”
“But Joan—”
Again she shook her head very definitely. “I am not coming. No use, Sean. I told you that already.”
Sean looked at Archie MacDonald, hopelessly, desperately. He would be angry in a minute, and anger would lead nowhere with that woman. A silence, slightly tense, settled on the table, while she poured coffee for them.
The Scot offered the lady a cigarette, held a match for her, lit Sean’s and his own, took one or two meditative pulls, and spoke in his calm way.
“Might I say a word, Mrs. Kierley?”
“Well, Major MacDonald?” She sat forward in her chair, leaned her elbows on the cloth, her chin in her hands, the cigarette smoke drifting about her hair, her contemplative eyes steady on him. It was exactly as if she said, “You may have something to say, but I am watching you carefully.” And he did not want her to have that antagonistic feeling.
“I am interested in Sean’s point of view,” he began, “but frankly I do not see—well, why he importunes you. You see, I know nothing.”
“I understand his point of view, Major MacDonald, but, really, there is no need for his anxiety. Well?”
“I would like you to know that I am quite disinterested in this.”
She smiled faintly. “You did not act as if you were, Major.”
“I was only interested in giving my friend a hand.”
“Then you are not disinterested.” She was going to make things as hard as possible for him.
“I am quite disinterested as far as you are concerned,” he said, bluntly firm. “You must accept that. Before today I saw you only once—for a minute at Lough Aonach.”
“I saw you two or three times, Major, though you did not see me. I recognized you at once today, and you know, I did follow you round, trying to make up my mind to speak to you. You made it easy for me.”
“I owe you an apology, Mrs. Kierley.”
“Never mind! You were quite nice. How are you going to help Sean out?”
“I would like to help you too—if I could.”
“I do not need help.”
That was a challenge, and he accepted it.
“Very well! there is no reason why I should say anything.”
He tapped his cigarette in the ash-tray and leaned back in his chair.
There was silence for a while. Sean understood his friend and kept hold on himself. Nuala Kierley, her chin on her hands, her eyes steady, thought her own thoughts.
“I would like to hear what you have to say, Major MacDonald,” she said at last.
“It is not much,” he said in a low voice, almost indifferently. “I am not pleading. You have seen enough of life not to have any illusions left.”
“Just one—the greatest illusion of all.�
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“Yes, Mrs. Kierley! I think I understand how you feel towards Ireland.”
That touched her. That brought her out of her uncompromising attitude towards him—an attitude that had in it something of self-defense.
“Quick of you, Major! Yes, Ireland has its pull; it may hurt us—but no matter, more was lost on Mohac’s Field. Go on, please!”
“I would merely ask you to consider your own attitude. You say that you do not want to marry any man, and that you are thinking of marrying Sir Henry Hanley. If that means anything it means that you have some difficulty in making up your mind.” He paused there, but she remained still, her eyes on his. “And you will have to make up your mind, you know. Perhaps I am old-fashioned in thinking that a decision on marriage is an important one. As a hardened bachelor, I think it is. A man of the world might say that it is not, that one should act on impulse and kick over the traces when one has a mind.”
“Or a man of the world might say the very opposite?”
“Quite so—seeing the many horrible examples. My point is that if you have difficulty in making up your mind you might cultivate the detached attitude, get out of the ruck, make up your mind in surroundings where your decision will not be swayed by anything—or any one, slip away by yourself for a few days, or a week, or a month, let no one know, and then—that’s all.”
That was clever pleading. It seemed so entirely without bias, without any apparent calculation, pressing on her what was a secret urge in her own mind.
“You would advise me to go away by myself?” she said musingly.
“I would.”
“Not Leaccabuie, then?”
“No.”
“Glounagrianaan?” murmured Sean. His mind had leaped to Lough Aonach, but that place had tragic memories.
She shook her head. “I know Hugh Forbes. He would tell me to go to hell, and make sure it was a heaven of his own choosing.” She looked at Archibald MacDonald and smiled. “Do you suggest any place, Major MacDonald?”
“Oddly enough a place has come into my mind this moment, but I would not advise you to go there.”
“What kind of place—where?”
“Forty miles from Leaccabuie—or any place you know—and off all roads; up on the shelf of a hill with the heather all round it. I was there only once, but I remember the great plain spread out below it, with the distant wall of the mountains, and the sea over there. But what I remember best is the quiet, the quiet that underlay the songs of birds and the humming of the bees.”
“The quiet!” said Nuala Kierley. “The quiet! You serpent!” but she smiled. “Why, my mind would be swayed there every hour of the day and night.”
“That is why I advise you not to go there.” And then he went on in that remote and reasonable way. “But after all, if anything sway you, why not let your own land do it? Nothing—no one else would. There is a place where you could stay, and you need see no one.”
“I will go to that place,” she said, as if she did not want to give herself time to change her mind. “I will arise and go—when?”
“Now,” said the Scot.
“Now—tonight?”
“Why not? It would save a lot of explanations—and Dublin will not be a wholesome place tomorrow for some of us. Sean has the car here, and we could have breakfast in Limerick, or beyond it.”
“And buy a bit of raw beef for your black eye,” said Sean, breaking his wise silence. He knew where they were going and the man that was there, but he said nothing to Nuala.
MacDonald thought it strange, in his own mind, that no least consideration had been expressed for Sir Henry Hanley: where he was, or what he might do, or what he would feel?
“This finishes me with the whole business,” he told himself definitely.
IV
Paddy Bawn Enright tumbled handily off the bay colt and patted the glistening neck.
“Good boy, yourself!” he praised. “Never a foot wrong, and eleven stone on top of you.”
A nice bay colt, on the light side, a finger under sixteen hands, with one white stocking and a small star, and the long, ugly, indomitable head of the Irish hunter breed.
Ellen Roe, Paddy Bawn’s wife, lifted young Sean into her arms and came across the corner of the paddock where her husband had been exercising the colt. The child crowed and reached hands to his father, who hefted him with one hand, and set him astride in the saddle.
“Mind you, Paddy Bawn,” warned Ellen Roe. “You had your breakfast well shaken in you this morning. I thought you were off at the double ditch beyond.”
“He is weak at the double ditch,” agreed Paddy Bawn, “and ’tis the only place he is weak. Man, Ellen Roe, if Joan Glynn wasn’t riding ten seven I’d put her up on him for the Lady Cup at Dublin Horse Show, and get a hundred and fifty for him. As it is, I’ll show him in the ring and get eighty, maybe. In two years’ time he’ll be carrying twelve stone at Punchestown—and I bred him.”
“Sh—listen!” said Ellen Roe. “There’s a car coming up the lane.”
An open touring-car topped the rise and bucketed slowly along the rough road leading to the cottage.
“That’s Sean Glynn’s car,” said Paddy Bawn, “and early he was up this morning. He has people with him—Joan, I think, and another man. Come on, girl!”
Holding their proud bantling on the saddle, they led the bay across the paddock and into the yard before the cottage. The car arrived at the same time.
“Happy day!” cried Paddy Bawn joyously. “If ’tisn’t the Major himself—and who is the lady?”
The colt was restive facing the car, and Paddy Bawn lifted his son down and handed him to his mother. When he turned round to the car the lady had alighted.
“Glory be to God! Look—I say, look who’s in it!”
The greetings were very friendly. Paddy Bawn, from past experience, had an almost idolatrous admiration for the Scot. “He’ll do to take along,” he used to say in one of his quaint American idioms.
“Ellen Roe,” said Sean Glynn, “this is my cousin, Nuala Kierley. Paddy Bawn is one of the old team of dog-stealers, Nuala.”
“God bless her!” said Paddy Bawn.
Nuala Kierley liked these two folk, the shy-smiling, red-haired woman, and the strong-shouldered, smallish man with the steady eyes below strong brows. She went across and touched the child’s chin softly. And then her eyes came to the horse, and interest was alive in them.
“A nice young hunter, Mr. Enright! Does he jump?”
“He’d lep the side of a house, ma’am. Rising five, and never saw a hound. You ride yourself, ma’am? He’s a lady’s horse.”
“Stop it,” shouted Sean Glynn. “Stop it now! I won’t have you two talking horse—you’ll have enough time to talk horse.” He placed a friendly arm across Ellen Roe’s shoulder. “Ellen Roe, I want ten words with you and your husband. Give me hold of my namesake, and come across to the stable. The ladeen is growing more like his da every day, God help him!—Come on, Bawn!”
They went across to the stable, Sean carrying the child, whose god-father he was. Paddy Bawn remarked:
“ ’Twasn’t you pegged the Major in the eye? You couldn’t do it, anyway.”
“The man that did that could knock your block off.”
“It has been done before now, but all the same I would like to see the lad that struck the blow. I might?”
“I hope not. I’ll tell you about it—and a lot more.”
Archibald MacDonald and Nuala Kierley looked at one another.
“This is nice,” she said inadequately. She swung full circle. “This is nice.”
“Care to take a look round—you’re not tired?”
“Not a bit.” She drew in a long breath. “This air has a kick—I can smell the heather and the sea.”
She did not look tired after the long drive through the night. There was even a faint color in her cheeks under the dry creamy tinge, and her lips were not wan as after a sleepless night. She had pulled her h
at off, and the soft morning air moved lightly in her wonderful light hair. And that strange aura, as of darkness, persisted, and abolished the insipidity of the blond.
They strolled together across the paddock. A pleasant sense of ease had grown up between her and this equable man—equable but explosive, as she knew. That sense had developed during the night. They had sat together in the back of the car, not talking much, dozing a little, waking up to say a few words, lapsing again into a silence in which, perhaps, their minds touched.
“There is the view I wanted you to see,” he said.
They had come to a clay fence at the end of the flat paddock, and the shelf of the hill steepened below them. They looked down over the great vale of North Kerry verdant with pasture, dark with woods, shining with ribbons of running water; and over there, far beyond, were the smoky, tall ramparts of the mountains; and the gleam of blue-green that caught her eye made her turn to the lifting plain of the sea shining between the promontories of Shannon Mouth. The air from the sea spun the flax of her hair on her brow, and all about her was the hum of Ellen Roe’s bees busy with the nectar of the bell-heather that bloomed along the margin of the ditch.
“And I stay in this place!” she wondered.
“As long as you please.”
“That will be longer than I may stay. These two nice people, Ellen Roe and Paddy Bawn—they won’t mind?”
“They won’t mind. They will spread green rushes under your feet. And Paddy Bawn will let you ride the bay. Get him to talk. He has a quiet way of talking and some good stories of his fighting days in the States. But you must be careful not to make his wife jealous.”
She laughed. “Poor me!”
“Perhaps you can’t help it,” he said.
“Help what?”
“Oh, nothing!”
She considered for a space, her eyes staring out over the great plain. Probably it was his reference to Paddy Bawn as a fighter that recalled to her mind the man left in Dublin.
“We were not very considerate,” she said. “I mean to Harry—to Sir Henry Hanley—you and Sean—and myself too. Street-brawling!”
The Quiet Man and Other Stories Page 24