The Quiet Man and Other Stories

by Maurice Walsh

  “And abduction. But we had not much time to work in.”

  “You did not need a great deal, did you? I suppose it was your plan to rush me right off my feet—and you did.”

  “We had no plan at all. Act quickly and consider slowly—an old maxim. Plenty of time to consider here.”

  “No, I won’t think about that. I’ll ride the bay colt—if I’m let—and be a vegetable the rest of the time.” She looked directly at him. “Where will you be?”

  “Fishing the Ullachowen or Lough Aonach—there, beyond the mountains.”

  They smiled at each other, and the same idea was in both their minds.

  “If I were to come over once or twice,” he suggested, “sort of to wipe the blood off your nose—the bay might throw you—?”

  “That would be nice,” she agreed. “You have done a good deal of my considering already, and you might do some more. I like your detached attitude, Major. You can be so quiet—and you knew that I wanted quietness—I always did.” She smiled again. “But you can be explosive too.”

  “I would prefer that you remembered the quietness,” he requested.

  “I will.”

  “You had better be careful, my lad,” said Archibald MacDonald to himself.

  Chapter IV

  I

  NUALA KIERLEY and Archibald MacDonald sat on the clay fence, and looked over the plain and the sea. The woman held small Sean Enright on her lap, and the little fellow sat very quietly, his head against her breast.

  It was a warm day in late July with a translucent heat haze veiling the woods, dimming the mountain wall, fading pearl-blue sky into pearl-blue sea. But up here on the shelf of Knockanore a cool flow of air tempered the heat and moved softly in the woman’s hair. She was in riding-togs, and looked supple and boyish. Out in the paddock Paddy Bawn walked the bay colt up and down to cool off. The horse was after a hard schooling and was perspiring freely.

  “Isn’t he a good ’un!” she said.

  “With a crackerjack to ride him. Not once have I had to wipe your nose.”

  “I wish I could afford to buy him.”

  “I’ll buy him for you?”

  She opened her eyes at him. “You couldn’t—it would not be right.”

  “You mean that I have not the right?”

  “I do.” And she went on quickly, “Paddy Bawn is tempting me to ride the colt for the Lady Cup at the Horse Show in August. I would like to—”

  “Why not? You are not afraid to adventure Dublin?”

  “No—yes, I am. I would have no excuse to come back here.”

  “By the way—are you—?” He paused, finding words difficult to choose.

  “I have decided nothing,” she answered him. “One doesn’t—one just drifts along. Probably that means that the decision does not interest me.”

  “I know what you might decide.”

  “Well?”

  “You might decide to marry me. Then I could buy the colt for you.”

  He made the astonishing proposal in that tranquil voice of his. As he made it he rubbed a match briskly and held it to his pipe, not even looking at her.

  But she gave him a sudden intent look, drew in a long breath, and her arms tightened about the child. Then she shook her head slowly, sadly, and a woeful small smile came about her eyes. Her voice was as cool as his.

  “You are not a marrying man, Major.”

  “Think not?”

  “I know. I even know what is in your mind.”

  “Marry me, then.”

  “You have seen all your friends marrying all around you, and that has worried you. You are wondering if you should not follow precedent; and here is a poor lame dog with a few good looks left and—you know? I have a certain appeal, I suppose, and—well! no harm is done in being gallant.”

  “Will you marry me, then?”

  “I will not!” She shook that sad head again. “Do you not know that I am unlucky—that tragedy—?”

  “Dammit! Couldn’t we dare that bogey like sensible people?”

  “You know what happened to my husband—Martin Kierley?”

  “He was drowned?”

  “Is that all you know?”

  “Only surmises.”

  “He was betrayed—I betrayed him—and I knew what I was doing.”

  “The circumstances—”

  “You ask Sean Glynn. It was a woman’s work, and done in the only way a woman can do that work. You ask Sean Glynn how I betrayed my husband. . . . No, Major, we are not marrying people. Mind you, I do like you, and I am glad we can talk so reasonably about it. But I will not marry you—and after a week or two we may never see each other again.”

  “We are darned reasonable about it,” agreed Archibald MacDonald gloomily. And then, with some vigor, “but I do not believe for a moment we are not marrying people. I did think I was a pretty tough specimen, but I have been coming up to see you every week, sometimes twice a week, and—I am a man—a male, if you like. That’s putting it reasonably too. And I think you are wasting your life also.”

  He looked at the child nestling in her arms, and she understood that look. Color came into her face.

  “Don’t let us have any romantic illusions,” he went on. “The sense of tragedy—of loss—does not persist. You will marry, you must marry—you will even fall in love—though I may not be the man. But, all the same, I will not take this as your final answer. Don’t make it that. I will ask you again, sometime.”

  “Ask Sean Glynn.”

  Emotion was very near the surface with him and to hide it he got to his feet and turned away.

  “Very well,” he said, and walked across the field to meet Paddy Bawn.

  She looked after him steadily. Her face did not change, her look did not change, but her eyes darkened. Then her head sank, and her mouth whispered in the soft hair of the child:

  “He was too cool, Seaneen, and I am not used to that. I must be getting old; but, Seaneen boy, I would hate to be married calmly.”

  II

  Archibald MacDonald, in the long July evening, drove across from Lough Aonach, where he had been fishing, to Leaccabuie, and had supper with Sean and Joan Glynn.

  After supper the young matron left the two men to talk and smoke; and they talked a little of haymaking, and a good deal of fishing, and in time, worked round through horses to the subject that was in both their minds. Sean was the first to introduce it. He had been quietly observing his friend for a month, and was beginning to hope that a miracle would happen.

  “Been up to Paddy Bawn’s lately?” he inquired.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Nuala still training the colt?”

  “Yes.” MacDonald set match to pipe and took one or two pulls. “I proposed to her,” and took another pull or two.

  Sean Glynn sat up and stared at him. The matter-of-fact tone made him wonder if he had heard aright.

  “Say that again!”

  “I asked her to marry me.”

  Sean’s eyes narrowed, but he copied the other’s coolness.

  “From your tone I gather that she refused you.”

  “She did.”

  Sean tapped the arm of his chair. “I have known you a long time, Archie, and there is one thing I have noticed about you.”

  “Yes?”

  “You always insist on getting your own answer.”

  “An egotistic hog?”

  “To be sure. You will not take no for an answer?”

  “She referred me to you.”

  Sean nodded. “She would do that.”

  “She had some notion that I must ask you how she betrayed her husband.”

  “She did not betray her husband.”

  “It does not matter. I am not interested.”

  Sean threw himself back in his chair and ran his hand through his black hair. “It was a bad business,” he said gloomily.

  “She said I must ask you, but I do not want to hear it—really I don’t, Sean.”

  Sean co
nsidered that for a long time while the other smoked. At last he drew in a long breath. “You had better hear it from me, Archie, once and for all.”

  “Please yourself.”

  The two men lay back in their chairs, and Sean put down his pipe and did not again take it up; but the Scot went on smoking, hand over bowl, chin on breast, eyes fixed steadily on his outstretched feet.

  Sean told the story of Nuala Kierley as it has been related in the beginning of this chronicle.

  At the end he looked at his friend curiously, but MacDonald never looked up. His pipe, clenched in his teeth, was out now, and his brow was propped in his hand so that his eyes were hidden.

  “Let me explain,” said Sean.

  “Nothing to explain,” the other stopped him, a harsh note in his voice.

  “But you do not understand?”

  “I understand very well. There’s no need to grow sentimental over what the woman did. She did her job, and her husband destroyed himself—or was destroyed. Dramatic enough, I admit, but sordid as hell. We might have left her to the man Hanley.”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Archie!”

  “I suppose I am—I suppose I was.” The Scot seemed to have kicked over the traces, and was brutally destructive. “A blasted fool! When I saw her in a Dublin church I thought of her as one would think of a great saint, but another name was under the surface of my mind. Perhaps there is not much difference in your patriotic circles. The woman Ireland, worshiped—and despoiled—”

  “Shut up, blast you!” Sean, equally mad at himself and his friend, was on his feet pounding the table, his voice raised. “Listen to me!”

  MacDonald was on his feet too. “I have listened. You sold a woman for your cause—and you would explain it away!”

  “You deserve your teeth down your throat for that. Damn you! you are not fit to touch the hem of her garment.”

  They glared at each other. And at that moment Joan Glynn, having heard the raised voices, came in.

  Archibald MacDonald turned, bowed to the tall and lovely lady, and walked straight out of the room and out of the house.

  Chapter V

  I

  THE first Thursday in August was Lady Day at Dublin Horse Show—the big day of probably the greatest horse show in the world. The ladies, with a carriage dowered them by some ancient subtle devil and arrayed accordingly, make that day their very own—even in spite of the grand horses. They move lazily around the covered bandstand, lean on the backs of chairs, gather and move apart, stroll about the oval promenade below the huge stands, glide up the wide steps, come pacing down again, no evidence of a hard bone in lissome bodies. Tinted sunshades bob and whirl, arms gleam, eyes glisten or grow slumbrously speculative, red mouths smile or grow serious; and the men of Ireland and Britain and the world admire, and are diffident and awkward and restless as proper men should be.

  It was three of the afternoon and carriage horses were showing their paces in the ring; all types, all sizes—fourteen to seventeen hands—high-steppers, long-reachers, smooth-pacers, harnessed to gigs, traps, tubs, sulkies, phaetons; and as each spun by the grandstand a man might say, “Damn! you couldn’t get the beat of that one!” Only the judges knew better.

  The promenade was not yet crowded—as it would be when the big jumping event came on—and three men were able to walk abreast well away from the rails and below the grandstand. The three were Hugh Forbes, Sean Glynn, and Paddy Bawn Enright; lean, hard, brown men from the country, strangers in this half-foreign town, but at home here where horse was king. They were not greatly interested in the pacings of the women.

  Moving slowly below the grandstand, pausing now and then, their eyes went over it tier by tier, carefully, searchingly, looking for someone. Suddenly Paddy Bawn stopped dead.

  “Got him, be the powers!”

  They looked where he pointed.

  “ ’Tis himself, sure enough,” said Hugh Forbes. “I told you he’d be here.”

  Half-way up and to the right of the royal box, Major Archibald MacDonald sat slumped on the wooden bench, gloom in his very attitude. Paddy Bawn pulled off his tweed hat and waved it about his head, but the Scot was staring aimlessly out across the ring. And there Hugh Forbes, as unconcernedly as at home in his own Glounagrianaan, threw up his head and from his strong jaws came forth a brazen bellow that boomed and rolled in the girders of the roof.

  “Archie MacDonald! Hullo there!”

  The Major started—hundreds did the same—looked down, and saw Paddy Bawn’s waving hat.

  “Come down, we want you. Come down out o’ that!” the great easy voice ordered him.

  The Major came down hastily and in some embarrassment, for people laughed all round him, and some remnants of Scots dignity still stuck to him.

  “Take him easy,” Sean Glynn warned his friends. “Take him easy! He’s as stubborn as a mule—and we daren’t make a mistake.”

  The greetings were warm, though, possibly, there was a small shade of restraint between Sean Glynn and the Highlandman; but both knew it for the merest shadow on a lasting friendship.

  “We were looking for you,” said Hugh Forbes. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Scotland.”

  “And you thought you’d come over to see the show?”

  “Why not?” There was a little challenge in his voice.

  “Were you here yesterday?”

  “No. I only arrived by the evening boat.”

  “You missed some good leppin’,” said Hugh. “Come over here to the rails, all of us. Never mind your seat amongst the quality. They’ll be singing God Save the King in a short while—and I like to feel my hair bristle. An’ I wouldn’t condemn the King—or any man—to an hour in purgatory—well, maybe one or two men, and to hell I’d send them.”

  The rails were not yet crowded for the jumping, and the four, moving round, found a place to line up opposite the grass bank. MacDonald leaned on the rails between Hugh Forbes and Paddy Bawn. They idly watched the judging of the horses, and talked desultorily but with some undercurrent disturbing the idle flow.

  “Are you all well at Knockanore?” MacDonald inquired presently, his tone almost casual.

  “What’s left of us,” said Paddy Bawn heavily.

  “Mrs. Kierley has left, then?”

  “This week—she’s not coming back.”

  “No?”

  “No. She was quiet on us the last couple of weeks.”

  The Scot said nothing to that.

  “She was as quiet as God,” said Paddy Bawn.

  The Scot said nothing to that either, but it was a sore saying. If he thought it over long enough it would bring a lump into his throat. She was a woman who would take all hurt quietly; and she would know that Archibald MacDonald had judged her, and had found her wanting. . . .

  “H-s-s-h! Here come the jumpers,” said Hugh Forbes. “Will ye be quiet, now?”

  But no one had said a word for two minutes.

  The judges had chosen the winners in the harness class, and the three, sporting their rosettes, had paraded proudly to the applause. A military band had blared forth the lively air of The Kilruddery Hunt, and in from the barrier sidled and pirouetted the jumpers for the Lady Cup. Two dozen horses of the young hunter class, mostly raking sixteen handers with long heads, powerful shoulders and barrel ribs. All the riders were ladies, and quite half of these—the more experienced half at that—rode the orthodox side-saddle: hard-bitten, tanned women with wrists of steel. The girls riding astride were inclined to sit down hard in the saddle.

  The horses paraded and took a breather outside the jumps, and a coming “lepper,” here and there, was pointed out and discussed. There was one young horse rather out of its place amongst the big-boned hunters: a nice bay colt with a white stocking on the off fore and a small forehead star, long in the leg and light in the waist for class jumping, but with the smooth nervy action that told of jumping ancestry. He was ridden by a slender boy-like woman, riding American style with long
stirrups. She wore no hunting-cap, and the wind of her going tossed back from her brow a spray of short fine hair whiter than pale yellow. Loping easily down by the side of the jumps, she stood in the stirrups, her body alean like a slip of whalebone over the horse’s withers; and men clapped her as she swept by; for it was good to see a woman ride like a jockey—a toughened old steeplechase jockey giving his mount a breather down the straight.

  “A nicely matched pair?” said Hugh Forbes, and nudged the Scot in the ribs.

  “They are.” He leaned well over the railings, his eyes following horse and rider, and his face still—almost too still.

  “She was placed second yesterday in the young class,” Hugh told him; “and if the judges knew better she’d be first. A cob thing got by with trick jumping.—Any chance today, Paddy Bawn?”

  “No. He’s out of his class.” Paddy Bawn decided soberly. “He won’t be named even. I was offered a hundred and eighty for him last night, but I wanted to see how he went with the six-year-olds and a lady up.”

  The horses disappeared into the waiting yard; the megaphone blared forth its announcement; and the first couple of jumpers came pacing out. They jumped well, of course, but over that exacting circuit—hedge, hurdle, in-and-out, single bank, stone wall, double bank, water-jump, pole, and gate—they did not approach perfection.

  The bay colt came out in the fifth couple, tossing his starred head and prancing sideways.

  “Easy—easy you devil!” reprimanded Paddy Bawn. “That’s no way to face a hedge! Hold your hands down on him, my darling—and over he goes. . . . Nice—oh, nice! and did you see him change feet like a hound? . . . Oh, murder!”

  “Only a small bowler of a stone with the near hind,” said Hugh Forbes; “nothing at all . . . Change ’em, boy, change ’em . . . and over with him like a bird . . . and only for that lump of a stone sticking up—”

  “And a bit of a cat scramble at the double bank,” judged his cool owner. “He’s weak there—and I’m not sure but there was a spurt of sand at the water. He’ll maybe not be named for the second round.”

  “I’ll bet you a pound—”