THE WOMAN stood at the foot of the lane, her right hand resting on the gate, her left fumbling at the neck of her blouse. Her face was lined, particularly about mouth and forehead; it was a face that rarely smiled, but was soft for all that, and plump and warm. She was quite grey. From a distance, this made her seem old; close at hand it had precisely the opposite effect, and tended to emphasize sharply what youthfulness still lingered in her, so that one thought of her as having suffered terribly at some time in the past.
The man came down the road, whistling a reel, the crisp, sprinkled notes of which were like the dripping of water in a cistern. She could hear his footsteps from a long way off, keeping irregular time to the elfin music, and drew aside a whitehorn bush by the gateway to watch him from cover. Apparently satisfied by her inspection, she kicked away the stone that held the gate in place, and, as he drew level with her, stepped out into the roadway. When he saw her he stopped, bringing down his ash plant with a twirl, but she did not look up.
‘Morrow, ma’am,’ he cried jovially.
Then she did look up, and a helpless blush that completely and utterly belied the apparent calculation of her previous behaviour flowed over her features, giving them a sudden, startling freshness. ‘Good morrow and good luck,’ she answered in a low voice.
‘Is it far to Ballysheery, ma’am?’
‘ ’Tis seven miles.’
‘Seven Irish, ma’am?’
‘Seven English.’
‘That’s better.’
She drew her tongue across her lips to moisten them. The man was young. He was decently dressed, but flaunted a rough, devil-may-care expression. He wore no hat, and his dark hair was all a tangle. You were struck by the length of his face, darkened by hot June suns; the high-boned nose jutting out rather too far, the irregular, discoloured teeth, the thick cracked lips, the blue eyes so far apart under his narrow, bony forehead that they seemed to sink back into the temples. A craggy face with high cheekbones, all hills and hollows, it was rendered extraordinarily mobile by the unexpected shadows that caught it here and there as the pale eyes drew it restlessly about. She judged him to be about twenty-six or -seven.
‘You seemed to be belting it out fine enough.’
‘How’s that, ma’am?’
‘I heard you whistling.’
‘That’s to encourage the feet, ma’am.… You’ll pardon my asking, is there any place around a man would get a cup of tea, ma’am?’
‘There’s no one would grudge you that, surely.’
Another would have detected the almost girlish timidity of the answer, but not he. He appeared both puzzled and disappointed.
‘I’ll go a bit farther so,’ he said stiffly.
‘What hurry is on you?’
‘ ’Tis my feet gets cramped.’
‘If you come with me you can rest them a while.’
‘God increase you, ma’am,’ he replied.
They went up the boreen together. The house was on top of a hill, and behind it rose the mountainside, studded with rocks. There were trees about it, and in front a long garden with a hedge of fuchsia, at one side of which ran a stream. There were four or five apple trees, and beside the kitchen garden were a few flower-beds with a profusion of tall snapdragon, yellow, red and white.
She put on the kettle and turned the wheel of the bellows. The kitchen filled with blue turf smoke, and the man sat beside the door, almost invisible behind a brilliant column of dust motes, whirling spirally in the evening sunlight. But his hands lay on his knees in a pool of light, great brown hands with knuckles like polished stones. Fascinated, she watched them, and as she laid the table she almost touched them for sheer pleasure. His wild eyes, blue as the turf smoke, took in everything about the kitchen with its deal table, chairs and dresser, all scrubbed white; its delft arranged with a sort of pedantic neatness that suggests the old maid.
‘This is a fine, fancy place, ma’am,’ he said.
‘ ’Tis a quiet place.’
‘ ’Tis so. The men are all away?’
‘There are no men.’
‘Oh!’
‘Only a boy that does turns for me.’
‘Oh!’
That was all he said before he turned to his meal. He was half-starved, she decided, as she watched him wolf the warm, crumbling bread. He saw her grey eyes fixed on him and laughed brightly.
‘I has a great stroke, ma’am.’
‘You have, God bless you. I might have boiled you another egg.’
When tea was over he sighed, stretching himself in his chair, and lit his pipe.
‘Would you mind if I took off my boots, ma’am?’ he asked shyly.
‘Why would I? Take them off and welcome.’
‘My feet is crucified.’
She bent and took up the boot he removed.
‘No wonder. Your boots are in need of mending.’
He laughed at her expressive politeness.
‘Mending, ma’am? Did you say mending? They’re long past praying for.’
‘They are, that’s true. I wonder.… There’s an old pair inside these years and years. They’d be better than the ones you have if they’d fit you.’
She brought them in, good substantial boots but stiff, and a trifle large for him. Not that he was in a state to mind.
‘God, but they’re grand, ma’am, they’re grand! One little patch now, and they’d be as good as new. Better than new, for they’re a better boot than I could ever buy in a shop. Wait now! Wait!’ With boyish excitement he foraged in his pockets, and from the lining of his coat produced a piece of leather. He held it up with the air of a professional conjurer. ‘Watch me now. Are you watching?’ The leather fitted over the slight hole and he gave a whoop of joy. She found him last and hammer; he provided tacks from a paper bag in a vest pocket, and set to mending the damage with something like a tradesman’s neatness.
‘Is that your trade?’ she asked curiously.
‘One of my trades, ma’am. Cobbler, carpenter, plumber, gardener, thatcher, painter, poet; everything under the sun and moon, and nothing for long. But a cobbler is what I do be most times.’
He walked the kitchen in his new boots with all a child’s inconsequent pleasure. There was something childlike about him, she decided, and she liked it. He peered at the battered alarm clock on the smoky heights of the mantelpiece and sighed.
‘I’d like to stop here always,’ he said wistfully, ‘but I suppose I’d better be going.’
‘What hurry is on you?’
‘Seven miles, ma’am. Two hours. Maybe more. And I have to be in the old doss early if I want to get a place to sleep.’
But he sat down once more and put a match to his pipe.
‘Not, mind you, ma’am, that there’s many could put me out of a warm corner if I’d a mind to stay in it. No indeed, but unless I had a drop in me I’d never fight for a place. Never. I’m apt to be cross when I’m drunk, but I never hit a man sober yet only once. That was a foxy tinker out of the Ranties, and the Ranties are notorious cross men, ma’am. You see, there was a little blind man, ma’am, trying to sleep, and this Ranty I’m talking about, whenever he saw the blind man dozing, he’d give his beard a tug. So I got that mad I rose up, and without saying as much as by your leave, I hit him such a terrible blow under the chin the blood hopped out on me in the dark. Yes, ma’am, hopped clean out on me. That was a frightful hard blow.’ He looked at her for approval and awe, and saw her, womanlike, draw up her shoulders and shiver. His dramatic sense was satisfied.
It was quite dark when he rose to go. The moon was rising over the hills to the left, far away, and the little stream beside the house sounded very loud in the stillness.
‘If there was e’er an old barn or an outhouse,’ he said as if to himself.
‘There’s a bed inside,’ she answered. He looked round at her in surprise.
‘Ah, I wouldn’t ask to stop within,’ he exclaimed.
Suddenly her whole manner changed. All the brightness, if brightness it could be called, seemed to drop away from her, leaving her listless, cold and melancholy.
‘Oh, please yourself,’ she said shortly, as if banishing him from her thoughts. But still he did not go. Instead, he sat down again, and they faced one another across the fireplace, not speaking, for he too had lost his chatter. The kitchen was in darkness except for the dwindling glow of the turf inside its cocoon of grey dust, and the wan nightlight above the half-door. Then he laughed, rubbing his palms between his knees.
‘And still you know, I’d ask nothing better,’ he added shyly.
‘What’s that?’
‘I’d ask nothing better than to stop.’
‘Go or stop as you like.’
‘You see,’ he went on, ignoring her gathering surprise, ‘I’m an honest fellow. I am, on my oath, though maybe you wouldn’t think it, with the rough talk I have, and the life I lead. You could leave me alone with a bag of sovereigns, not counting them, and I’d keep them safe for you. And I’m just the same other ways. I’m not a bit forward. They say a dumb priest loses his benefit, and I’m just like that. I’m apt to lose me benefit for want of a bit of daring.’
Then (and this time it was he who was surprised) she laughed, more with relief, he thought, than at anything he had said. She rose and closed the door, lit the lamp and hung up the heavy kettle. He leaned back in his chair with a fresh sigh of pleasure, stretching out his feet to the fire, and in that gesture she caught something of his nostalgia. He settled down gratefully to one of those unexpected benefits which are the bait with which life leads us onward.
When she rose next morning, she was surprised to find him about before her, the fire lit, and the kettle boiling. She saw how much he needed a shave, and filled out a pan of water for him. Then when he began to scrub his face with the soap, she produced a razor, strop and brush. He was enchanted with these, and praised the razor with true lyric fire.
‘You can have it,’ she said. ‘Have them all if they’re any use to you.’
‘By God, aren’t they though,’ he exclaimed reverently.
After breakfast he lit his pipe and sat back, enjoying to the full the last moments which politeness would impose upon hospitality.
‘I suppose you’re anxious to be on your road?’ she asked awkwardly. Immediately he reddened.
‘I suppose I’m better to,’ he replied. He rose and looked out. It was a grey morning and still. The green stretched no farther than the hedge; beyond that lay a silver mist, flushed here and there with rose. ‘Though ’tis no anxiety is on me – no anxiety at all,’ he added with a touch of bitterness.
‘Don’t take me up wrong,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m not trying to hunt you. Stop and have your dinner. You’ll be welcome.’
‘I chopped a bit of kindling for you,’ he replied, looking shyly at her from under lowered lids. ‘If there was something else I could be doing, I’d be glad enough to stop, mind you.’
There was. Plenty else to be doing. For instance, there was an outhouse that needed whitewashing, and blithely enough he set about his task, whistling. She came and watched him; went, and came again, standing silently beside him, a strange stiff figure in the bright sunlight, but he had no feeling of supervision. Because he had not finished when dinner was ready he stayed to tea, and even then displayed no hurry to be gone. He sang her some of his poems. There was one about Mallow Races, another about a girl he had been in love with as a boy, ‘the most beautiful girl that was ever seen in Kerry since the first day,’ so he naively told her. It began:
I praise no princesses or queens or great ladies
Or figures historical noted for style,
Or beauties of Asia or Mesopotamia,
But sweet Annie Bradie, the rose of Dunmoyle.
A sort of confidence had established itself between them. The evening passed quickly in talk and singing – in whistling too, for he was a good whistler, and sometimes performed for dancing: to judge by his own statements he was a great favourite at wakes and weddings and she could understand that.
It was quite dark when they stopped the conversation. Again he made as if to go, and again in her shy, cold way she offered him the chance of staying. He stayed.
For days afterward there seemed to be some spell upon them both. A week passed in excuses and delays, each morning finding him about long before she appeared with some new suggestion, the garden to be weeded, potatoes to be dug, the kitchen to be whitewashed. Neither suggested anything but as it were from hour to hour, yet it did not occur to the man that for her as for him their companionship might be an unexpected benefit.
He did her messages to the village whenever Dan, the ‘boy’, a sullen, rather stupid, one-eyed old man, was absent, and though she gave no sign that she did not like this, he was always surprised afresh by the faint excitement with which she greeted his return; had it been anyone else one might have called her excitement gaiety, but gay was hardly a word one could apply to her, and the emotion quickly died and gave place to a sullen apathy.
She knew the end must come soon, and it did. One evening he returned from an errand, and told her someone had died in the village. He was slightly shocked by her indifference. She would not go with him to the wake, but she bade himself go if he pleased. He did please. She could see there was an itch for company on him; he was made that way. As he polished his boots he confessed to her that among his other vocations he had tried being a Trappist monk, but stuck it only for a few months. It wasn’t bad in summer, but it was the divil and all in winter, and the monks told him there were certain souls like himself the Lord called only for six months of the year (the irony of this completely escaped him).
He promised to be back before midnight, and went off very gay. By this time he had formed his own opinion of the woman. It was not for nothing she lived there alone, not for nothing a visitor never crossed the threshold. He knew she did not go to Mass, yet on Sunday when he came back unexpectedly for his stick, he had seen her, in the bedroom, saying her Rosary. Something was wrong, but he could not guess what.
Her mood was anything but gay and the evening seemed to respond to it. It was very silent after the long drought; she could hear the thrush’s beak go tip-tap among the stones like a fairy’s hammer. It was making for rain. To the north-west the wind had piled up massive archways of purple cloud like a ruined cloister, and through them one’s eyes passed on to vistas of feathery cloudlets, violet and gold, packed thick upon one another. A cold wind had sprung up: the trees creaked, and the birds flew by, their wings blown up in a gesture of horror. She stood for a long while looking at the sky, until it faded, chilled by the cold wind. There was something mournful and sinister about it all.
It was quite dark when she went in. She sat over the fire and waited. At half past eleven she put down the kettle and brewed herself tea. She told herself she was not expecting him, but still she waited. At half past twelve she stood at the door and listened for footsteps. The wind had risen, and her mind filled slowly with its childish sobbing and with the harsh gushing of the stream beside the house. Then it began to rain. To herself she gave him until one. At one she relented and gave him another half-hour, and it was two before she quenched the light and went to bed. She had lost him, she decided.
She started when an hour or more later she heard his footsteps up the path. She needed no one to tell her he was alone and drunk: often before she had waited for the footsteps of a drunken old man. But instead of rushing to the door as she would have done long ago, she waited.
He began to moan drowsily to himself. She heard a thud followed by gusty sighing; she knew he had fallen. Everything was quiet for a while. Then there came a bang at the door which echoed through the house like a revolver shot, and something fell on the flagstones outside. Another bang and again silence. She felt no fear, only a coldness in her bowels.
Then the gravel scraped as he staggered to his feet. She glanced at the window. She could see his head outlined against it, his hands against its frame. Suddenly the voice rose in a wail that chilled her blood.
‘What will the soul do at the judgment? Ah, what will the soul do? I will say to ye, “Depart from me into everlasting fire that was prepared for the divil and his angels. Depart from me, depart!” ’
It was like a scream of pain, but immediately upon it came a low chuckle of malice. The woman’s fists clenched beneath the clothes. ‘Never again,’ she said to herself aloud, ‘never again!’
‘Do you see me, do you?’ he shouted. ‘Do you see me?’
‘I see you,’ she whispered to herself.
‘For ye, for ye, I reddened the fire,’ went on the man, dropping back into his whine, ‘for ye, for ye, I dug the pit. The black bitch on the hill, let ye torment her for me, ye divils. Forever, forever! Gather round, ye divils, gather round, and let me see ye roast the black bitch that killed a man.… Do you hear me, do you?’
‘I hear you,’ she whispered.
‘Listen to me!
“When the old man was sleeping
She rose up from her bed,
And crept into his lone bedroom
And cruelly struck him dead;
’Twas with a hammer she done the deed,
May God it her repay,
And then she … then she …”
‘How does it go? I have it.
“And then she lifted up the body
And hid it in the hay.”
Suddenly a stone came crashing through the window and a cold blast followed it. ‘Never again,’ she cried, hammering the bedframe with her fists, ‘dear God, never again.’ She heard the footsteps stumbling away. She knew he was running. It was like a child’s malice and terror.
She rose and stuffed the window with a rag. Day was breaking. When she went back to bed she was chilled and shaken. Despairing of rest, she rose again, lit a candle and blew up the fire.
But even then some unfamiliar feeling was stirring at her heart. She felt she was losing control of herself and was being moved about like a chessman. Sighing, she slipped her feet into heavy shoes, threw an old coat about her shoulders, and went to the door. As she crossed the threshold she stumbled over something. It was a boot; another was lying some little distance away. Something seemed to harden within her. She placed the boots inside the door and closed it. But again came the faint thrill at her heart, so light it might have been a fluttering of untried wings and yet so powerful it shook her from head to foot, so that almost before she had closed the door she opened it again and went out, puzzled and trembling, into a cold noiseless rain. She called the man in an extraordinarily gentle voice as though she were afraid of being heard; then she made the circle of the farmhouse, a candle sheltered in the palm of her hand.
He was lying in the outhouse he had been whitewashing. She stood and looked down at him for a moment, her face set in a grim mask of disgust. Then she laid down the candle and lifted him, and at that moment an onlooker would have been conscious of her great physical strength. Half lifting, half guiding him, she steered the man to the door. On the doorstep he stood and said something to her, and immediately, with all her strength, she struck him across the mouth. He staggered and swore at her, but she caught him again and pushed him across the threshold. Then she went back for the candle, undressed him and put him to bed.
It was bright morning when she had done.
That day he lay on in bed, and came into the kitchen about two o’clock looking sheepish and sullen. He was wearing his own ragged boots.
‘I’m going now,’ he said stiffly.
‘Please yourself,’ she answered coolly. ‘Maybe you’d be better.’
He seemed to expect something more, and because she said nothing he felt himself being put subtly in the wrong. This was not so surprising, because even she was impressed by her own nonchalance that seemed to have come suddenly to her from nowhere.
‘Well?’ he asked, and his look seemed to say, ‘Women are the divil and all!’ One could read him like a book.
‘Well?’
‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’
‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’ she retorted. ‘I had enough of your blackguarding last night. You won’t stop another hour in this house unless you behave yourself, mark me well, you won’t.’
He grew very red.
‘That’s strange,’ he answered sulkily.
‘What’s strange?’
‘The likes of you saying that to me.’
‘Take it or leave it. And if you don’t like it, there’s the door.’
Still he lingered. She knew now she had him at her mercy, and the nonchalance dropped from her.
‘Aren’t you a queer woman?’ he commented, lighting his pipe. ‘One’d think you wouldn’t have the face to talk like that to an honest man. Have you no shame?’
‘Listen to who’s talking of shame,’ she answered bitterly. ‘A pity you didn’t see yourself last night, lying in your dirt like an old cow. And you call yourself a man. How ready you were with your stones!’
‘It was the shock,’ he said sullenly.
‘It was no shock. It was drink.’
‘It was the shock I tell you. I was left an orphan with no one to tell me the badness of the world.’
‘I was left an orphan too. And I don’t go round crying about the badness of the world.’
‘Oh, Christ, don’t remind me what you were. ’Tis only myself, the poor fool, wouldn’t know, and all the old chat I had about the man I drew blood from, as if I was a terrible fellow entirely. I might have known to see a handsome woman living lonely that she wouldn’t be that way only no man in Ireland would look at the side of the road she walked on.’
He did not see how the simple flattery of his last words went through her, quickening her with pleasure; he noticed only the savage retort she gave him, for the sense of his own guilt was growing stronger in him at every moment. Her silence was in part the cause of that; her explanation would have been his triumph. That at least was how he had imagined it. He had not been prepared for this silence which drew him like a magnet. He could not decide to go, yet his fear of her would not allow him to remain. The day passed like that. When twilight came she looked across at him and asked:
‘Are you going or stopping?’
‘I’m stopping, if you please,’ he answered meekly.
‘Well, I’m going to bed. One sleepless night is enough for me.’
And she went, leaving him alone in the kitchen. Had she delayed until darkness fell, he would have found it impossible to remain, but there was no suspicion of this in her mind. She understood only that people might hate her; that they might fear her never entered her thoughts.
An hour or so later she looked for the candle and remembered that she had left it in his room. She rose and knocked at his door. There was no answer. She knocked again. Then she pushed in the door and called him. She was alarmed. The bed was empty. She laid her hand to the candle (it was lying still where she had left it, on the dresser beside the door) but as she did so she heard his voice, husky and terrified.
‘Keep away from me! Keep away from me, I tell you!’
She could discern his figure now. He was standing in a corner, his little white shirt half-way up his thighs, his hand grasping something, she did not see what. It was some little while before the explanation dawned on her, and with it came a sudden feeling of desolation within her.
‘What ails you?’ she asked gently. ‘I was only looking for the candle.’
‘Don’t come near me!’ he cried.
She lit the candle, and as he saw her there, her face as he had never seen it before, stricken with pain, his fear died away. A moment later she was gone, and the back door slammed behind her. It was only then he realized what his insane fear had brought him to, and the obsession of his own guilt returned with a terrible clarity. He walked up and down the little room in desperation.
Half an hour later he went to her room. The candle was burning on a chair beside the bed. She lifted herself on the pillow and looked at him with strangely clear eyes.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered. ‘I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m sorry. I’m queer. I’ll go in the morning and I won’t trouble you any more.’
‘Never mind,’ she said, and held out her hand to him. He came closer and took it timidly. ‘You wouldn’t know.’
‘God pity me,’ he said. ‘I was distracted. You know I was distracted. You were so good to me, and that’s the way I paid you out. But I was going out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Sure you couldn’t.’ She drew him down to her until his head was resting on the pillow, and made him lie beside her.
‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t,’ he said into her ear. ‘I wint raving mad. And I thought whin you came into the room —’
‘I know, I know.’
‘I did, whatever came over me.’
‘I know.’ He realized that she was shivering all over.
She drew back the clothes from him. He was eager to explain, to tell her about himself, his youth, the death of his father and mother, his poverty, his religious difficulties, his poetry. What was wrong with him was, he was wild; could stick to no trade, could never keep away from drink.
‘You were wild yourself,’ he said.
‘Fifteen years ago. I’m tame now in earnest.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said eagerly, ‘talk to me, can’t you? Tell me he was bad. Tell me he was a cruel old uncle to you. Tell me he beat you. He used to lock you up for days, usedn’t he, to keep you away from boys? He must have been bad or you’d never had done what you did, and you only a girl.’
But still she said nothing. Bright day was in the room when he fell asleep, and for a long while she lay, her elbow on the pillow, her hand covering her left breast, while she looked at him. His mouth was wide open, his irregular teeth showed in a faint smile. Their shyness had created a sort of enchantment about them, and she watched over his sleep with something like ecstasy, ecstasy which disappeared when he woke, to find her the same hard quiet woman he knew.
After that she ceased making his bed in the small room, and he slept with her. Not that it made any difference to their relations. Between them after those few hours of understanding persisted a fierce, unbroken shyness, the shyness of lonely souls. If it rasped the nerves of either, there was no open sign of it, unless a curiously irritable tenderness revealed anything of their thoughts. She was forever finding things done for her; there was no longer any question of his going, and he worked from morning until late night with an energy and intelligence that surprised her. But she knew he felt the lack of company, and one evening she went out to him as he worked in the garden.
‘Why don’t you go down to the village now?’ she asked.
‘Ah, what would I be doing there?’ But it was clear that it had been on his mind at that very moment.
‘You might drop in for a drink and a chat.’
‘I might do that,’ he agreed.
‘And why don’t you?’
‘Me? I’d be ashamed.’
‘Ashamed? Ashamed of what? There’s no one will say anything to you. And if they do, what are you, after all, but a working man?’
It was clear that this excuse had not occurred to him, but it would also have been clear to anyone else that she would have thought poorly of such as gave it credit. So he got his coat and went.
It was late when he came in, and she saw he had drunk more than his share. His face was flushed and he laughed too easily. For two days past a bottle of whiskey had been standing on the dresser (what a change for her!) but if he had noticed it he had made no sign. Now he went directly to it and poured himself out a glass.
‘You found it,’ she said with a hint of bitterness.
‘What’s that?’
‘You found it, I say.’
‘Of course I did. Have a drop yourself.’
‘No.’
‘Do. Just a drop.’
‘I don’t want it.’
He crossed to her, stood behind her chair for a moment; then he bent over and kissed her. She had been expecting it, but on the instant she revolted.
‘Don’t do that again,’ she said appealingly, wiping her mouth.
‘You don’t mind me, do you?’ he sniggered, still standing behind her.
‘I do. I mind it when you’re drunk.’
‘Well, here’s health.’
‘Don’t drink any more of that.’
‘Here’s health.’
‘Good health.’
‘Take a drop yourself, do.’
‘No, I tell you,’ she answered angrily.
‘By God, you must.’
He threw one arm about her neck and deliberately spilt the whiskey between her breasts. She sprang up and threw him away from her. Whatever had been in her mind was now forgotten in her loathing.
‘Bad luck to you!’ she cried savagely.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Already he was growing afraid.
‘You didn’t mean it,’ she retorted mockingly. ‘Who thought you to do it then? Was it Jimmie Dick? What sort of woman do you think I am, you fool? You sit all night in a public-house talking of me, and when you come back you try to make me out as loose and dirty as your talk.’
‘Who said I was talking of you?’
‘I say it.’
‘Then you’re wrong.’
‘I’m not wrong. Don’t I know you, you poor sheep? You sat there, letting them make you out a great fellow, because they thought you were like themselves and thought I was a bitch, and you never as much as opened your mouth to give them the lie. You sat there and gaped and bragged. That’s what you are.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘And then you come strutting back, stuffed with drink, and think I’ll let you make love to me, so that you can have something to talk about in the public-house.’
Her eyes were bright with tears of rage. She had forgotten that something like this was what she knew would happen when she made him go to the village, so little of our imagination can we bear to see made real. He sank into a chair, and put his head between his hands in sulky dignity. She lit the candle and went off to bed.
She fell asleep and woke to hear him stirring in the kitchen. She rose and flung open the door. He was still sitting where she had seen him last.
‘Aren’t you going to bed at all tonight?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ he replied. The drunkenness had gone, and he did look both sorry and miserable. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘You’d better. Do you see the time?’
‘Are you still cross? I’m sorry, God knows I am.’
‘Never mind.’
‘ ’Twas all true.’
‘What was true?’ She had already forgotten.
‘What you said. They were talking about you, and I listened.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Only you were too hard on me.’
‘Maybe I was.’
She took a step forward. He wondered if she had understood what he was saying at all.
‘I was fond of you all right.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You know I was.’
‘Yes.’
She was like a woman in a dream. She had the same empty feeling within her, the same sense of being pushed about like a chessman, as on the first night when she carried him in. He put his arm about her and kissed her. She shivered and clung to him, life suddenly beginning to stir within her.
*
One day, some weeks later, he told her he was going back home on a visit; there were cousins he wished to see; something or other; she was not surprised. She had seen the restlessness on him for some time past and had no particular belief in the cousins. She set about preparing a parcel of food for him, and in this little attention there was something womanly that touched him.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, and meant it. He could be moved easily enough in this fashion, and she saw through him. It was dull being the lover of a woman like herself; he would be best married to a lively girl of eighteen or so, a girl he could go visiting with and take pride in.
‘You’re always welcome,’ she said. ‘The house is your own.’
As he went down the boreen he was saying to himself ‘She’ll be lost! She’ll be lost!’ but he would have spared his pity if he had seen how she took it.
Her mood shifted from busy to idle. At one hour she was working in the garden, singing, at another she sat in the sun, motionless and silent for a long, long time. As weeks went by and the year drifted into a rainy autumn, an astonishing change took place in her, slowly, almost imperceptibly. It seemed a physical rather than a spiritual change. Line by line her features divested themselves of strain, and her body seemed to fall into easier, more graceful curves. It would not be untrue to say she scarcely thought of the man, unless it was with some slight relief to find herself alone again. Her thoughts were all contracted within herself.
One autumn evening he came back. For days she had been expecting him; quite suddenly she had realized that he would return, that everything was not over between them, and very placidly accepted the fact.
He seemed to have grown older and maturer in his short absence; one felt it less in his words than in his manner. There was decision in it. She saw that he was rapidly growing into a deferred manhood, and was secretly proud of the change. He had a great fund of stories about his wanderings (never a word of the mythical cousins); and while she prepared his supper, she listened to him, smiling faintly, almost as if she were not listening at all. He was as hungry now as the first evening she met him, but everything was easier between them; he was glad to be there and she to have him.
‘Are you pleased I came?’ he asked.
‘You know I’m pleased.’
‘Were you thinking I wouldn’t come?’
‘At first I thought you wouldn’t. You hadn’t it in your mind to come back. But afterward I knew you would.’
‘A man would want to mind what he thinks about a woman like you,’ he grumbled good-humouredly. ‘Are you a witch?’
‘How would I be a witch?’ Her smile was attractive.
‘Are you?’ He gripped her playfully by the arm.
‘I am not and well you know it.’
‘I have me strong doubts of you. Maybe you’ll say now you know what happened? Will you? Did you ever hear of a man dreaming three times of a crock of gold? Well, that’s what happened me. I dreamt three times of you. What sign is that?’
‘A sign you were drinking too much.’
‘ ’Tis not. I know what sign it is.’
He drew his chair up beside her own, and put his arm about her. Then he drew her face round to his and kissed her. At that moment she could feel very clearly the change in him. His hand crept about her neck and down her breast, releasing the warm smell of her body.
‘That’s enough love-making,’ she said. She rose quickly and shook off his arm. A strange happy smile like a newly open flower lingered where he had kissed her. ‘I’m tired. Your bed is made in there.’
‘My bed?’
She nodded.
‘You’re only joking me. You are, you divil, you’re only joking.’
His arms out, he followed her, laughing like a lad of sixteen. He caught at her, but she forced him off again. His face altered suddenly, became sullen and spiteful.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘ ’Tis a change for you.’
‘ ’Tis.’
‘And for why?’
‘For no why. Isn’t it enough for you to know it?’
‘Is it because I wint away?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is it?’
‘I don’t know whether ’tis or no.’
‘And didn’t I come back as I said I would?’
‘You did. When it suited you.’
‘The divil is in ye all,’ he said crossly.
Later he returned to the attack; he was quieter and more persuasive; there was more of the man in him, but she seemed armed at every point. He experienced an acute sense of frustration. He had felt growing in him this new, lusty manhood, and returned with the intention of dominating her, only to find she too had grown, and still outstripped him. He lay awake for a long time, thinking it out, but when he rose next morning the barrier between them seemed to have disappeared. As ever she was dutiful, unobtrusive; by day at any rate she was all he would have her to be. Even when he kissed her she responded; of his hold on her he had no doubt, but he seemed incapable of taking advantage of it.
That night when he went to bed he began to think again of it, and rage grew in him until it banished all hope of sleep. He rose and went into her room.
‘How long is this going to last?’ he asked thickly.
‘What?’
‘This. How long more are you going to keep me out?’
‘Maybe always,’ she said softly, as if conjuring up the prospect.
‘Always?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Always? And what in hell do you mean by it? You lure me into it, and then throw me away like an old boot.’
‘Did I lure you into it?’
‘You did. Oh, you fooled me right enough at the time, but I’ve been thinking about it since. ’Twas no chance brought you on the road the first day I passed.’
‘Maybe I did,’ she admitted. She was stirred again by the quickness of his growth. ‘If I did you had nothing to complain of.’
‘Haven’t I now?’
‘Now is different.’
‘Why? Because I wint away?’
‘Because you didn’t think me good enough for you.’
‘That’s a lie. You said that before, and you know ’tis a lie.’
‘Then show it.’
He sat on the bed and put his face close to hers.
‘You mean, to marry you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know I can’t.’
‘What hinders you?’
‘For a start, I have no money. Neither have you.’
‘There’s money enough.’
‘Where would it come from?’
‘Never you mind where ’twould come from. ’Tis there.’
He looked at her hard.
‘You planned it well,’ he said at last. ‘They said he was a miser.… Oh, Christ, I can’t marry you!’
‘The divil send you better meat than mutton,’ she retorted coarsely.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his big hand caressing her cheek and bare shoulder.
‘Why don’t you tell the truth?’ she asked. ‘You have no respect for me.’
‘Why do you keep on saying that?’
‘Because ’tis true.’ In a different voice she added: ‘Nor I hadn’t for myself till you went away. Take me now or leave me.… Stop that, you fool!’
‘Listen to me —’
‘Stop that then! I’m tame now, but I’m not tame enough for that.’
Even in the darkness she could feel that she had awakened his old dread of her; she put her arms about his head, drew him down to her, and whispered in his ear.
‘Now do you understand?’ she said.
A few days later he got out the cart and harnessed the pony. They drove into the town three miles away. As they passed through the village people came to their doors to look after them. They left the cart a little outside the town, and, following country practice, separated to meet again on the priest’s doorstep. The priest was at home, and he listened incredulously to the man’s story.
‘You know I’ll have to write to your parish priest first,’ he said severely.
‘I know,’ said the man. ‘You’ll find and see he have nothing against me.’
The priest was shaken.
‘And this woman has told you everything?’
‘She told me nothing. But I know.’
‘About her uncle?’
‘About her uncle,’ repeated the man.
‘And you’re satisfied to marry her, knowing that?’
‘I’m satisfied.’
‘It’s all very strange,’ said the priest wearily. ‘You know,’ he added to the woman, ‘Almighty God has been very merciful to you. I hope you are conscious of all He in His infinite mercy has done for you, who deserve it so little.’
‘I am. From this out I’ll go to Mass regularly.’
‘I hope,’ he repeated emphatically, ‘you are fully conscious of it. If I thought there was any lightness in you, if I thought for an instant that you wouldn’t make a good wife to this man, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to marry you. Do you understand that?’
‘Never fear,’ she said, without lifting her eyes. ‘I’ll make him a good wife. And he knows it.’
The man nodded. ‘I know it,’ he said.
The priest was impressed by the solemn way in which she spoke. She was aware that the strength which had upheld her till now was passing from her to the young man at her side; the future would be his.
From the priest’s they went to the doctor’s. He saw her slip on a ring before they entered. He sat in the room while the doctor examined her. When she had dressed again her eyes were shining. The strength was passing from her, and she was not sorry to see it pass. She laid a sovereign on the table.
‘Oho,’ exclaimed the doctor, ‘how did you come by this?’ The man started and the woman smiled.
‘I earned it hard,’ she answered.
The doctor took the coin to the window and examined it.
‘By Jove,’ he said, ‘it’s not often I see one of these.’
‘Maybe you’ll see more of them,’ she said with a gay laugh. He looked at her from under his eyes and laughed too; her brightness had a strange other-world attraction.
‘Maybe I will,’ he replied. ‘In a few months’ time, eh? Sorry I can’t give you change in your own coin. Ah, well! Good luck, anyway. And call me in as often as you please.’