Donn Byrne

“ Lady, and came from the yards at Belfast, taking the water as nobly as a swan. From truck to keelson there was no part of her imperfect; from stem to stern. Barring a little tendency to be cranky before the wind in a seaway, nothing better sailed. Jammed, or on the wind, she was like a hare before the hounds, so quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set sails—not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. ”

“ What did he know of Fenzile, barring that she was young and strong and beautiful? Nothing. Of what was she thinking in those dreamy eyes, green of the sea? And women always admired strength in a man. And he was away most of the time, half anyway. And the breath of the East was intrigue.
"Oh, don't be rotten," he told himself. But the occasional hot and searing pain remained, and the little black cloud was in his mind. When they were close in the soft gloom, shoulder to shoulder, her eyes closed, her slim cinnamon hands clenched, pain stabbed him like a knife. ”

“ But to grow old with the mountains and the eternal sea, and to watch the delicate bells of the heather, to know the quiet companionship of dogs—there is a revelation in it. No, nothing dies. And the moon rises and the mountains nod: Yes, I remember you when you were a schoolboy, running to be on time. And the green waves make a pleasant laughter: We are here. When you arise in the morning you may be certain we are here. The friends of one's young days die, scatter, are lost. But the mountains and the water are friends forever. ”

“ A quiet place, Shane thought, a hushed place, a place of rest.... Whither one might go to realize again all the beauty one had ever known.... All that one had held sweet and wonderful would be there—they had not died.... A white magic would bring back the laughter of babies, and kisses gently given ... and all estrangements of friends and lovers would be eased there, and they would be brought together in a magical trysting-place, and there would be no unharmony.... All the horses one had ever loved would take shape in the air, with necks stretched and whinnying recognition.... ”

“ In the morning, wee Shane thought, it woke to bright happiness, the green parrakeets chattered, the monkeys whistled, the lizards basked in the sun. And the generation of the town came out and gossiped and worked merrily, until the heat of the sun began to strike with the strokes of a mallet, and then they went into the cool, dark houses and slept as children sleep. And then came blue twilight, and lamps were lit in the green spaces, and into the odorous night would come the golden rounded women with smiles like honey, and the graceful feline men.... A woman's laughter, a man's song.... ”

“ One could not imagine them about the daily business of life, waking, eating, buying, and selling. Black men and ocher-colored folk. There seemed to be a mystery somewhere. One imagined them gathering at night in secret to begin their real un-understood life. At times it seemed impossible that it was the same world. Surely the sun that struck like a hammer in Jamaica could not be the gracious warm planet that gilded the gorse of the Antrim glens. And up the Baltic in mid-winter it was bleak as a candle, and even then in Antrim it had a great kindliness. ”

“ The carrying of necessities from Britain to Syria, the land he loved, next to Ulster, his mother. And the carrying from Syria into harsh plain Britain of cargoes of beauty like those of Sheba's queen, on camels that bare spices, and very much gold and precious stones. And the great ancient city where he lived; not even Damascus, the pride of the world, exceeded it for beauty. Forward of massed Lebanon, white with snow it lay, a welter of red roots and green foliage—the blue water, the garlanded acacias, the roses, the sally branches. Beauty! ”

“ Dignified strong wisdom and beautiful brave youth, one firm as a great firm rock, the other with the light wings of birds; spiritually never could they mate. Youth spiritual is like a gosling of yellow down, age spiritual is an eagle of great wings.... If the spirit has not died.... Alan would never be an irritated, jealous, paretic old man, nor would he see "this woman" grow stern with repression and ache, and loneliness of heart and spirit....
Ah, he had done it well! A line of Froissart's came to Shane: "They were very noble; they cared nothing for their lives!" ”

“ But in the kitchen they would be laughing, chatting, playing crude forfeits, telling grotesque stories, giving riddles, and now, to the muted sound of a melodeon, a man would dance a hornpipe.... And men would sneak out to the byre in twos and threes for a surreptitious glass of whisky.... And suddenly they would rush in and join in the rosary:
"Ar n-Athair, ta ar neamh.... Se do bheatha, 'Mhuire! ..."
It was all so grotesque, so empty, so play-actor-like—so inharmonious with Death! Death was very terrible or very peaceful, thought Shane Campbell of the sea and the Antrim Glens. ”

“ Though all was wonder to wee Shane, there was so much of it that it flicked through his head like a dream: the hazy September afternoon; the long, lean vessel like a greyhound; the sails white as a swan's wing; the cordage that rattled like wood; the bare-footed, bearded sailors; the town of Carrickfergus in the offing; the lap-lap-lap of water; the silent man at the wheel; the sudden transition of the friendly Raghery man into a firm, authoritative figure, quick as a cat, rapping out commands like a sergeant-major. ”

“ From that green resting-place came the gold of the gorse, and the sweet line of trees, and the purple the heather has—the loved heather. Thence came the word that set the friendly moon on high, and put out the white beauty of the young and alternated sunshine with the rains of spring. All was done there according to wisdom and beauty.
"Give us this day our daily bread ..."
That was no whine for the prisoner's dole. That was the simplicity of asking that the moon and the sun still rise. Give beauty to women, and grace to children, and songs for poets to sing. ”

“ It is a very pathetic thing to see a literature and a romance die.
But then, what ever dies? There is only change. For people in the coming times the economist and the expert in politics may have the beauty and wisdom old men have known in poems and strange tales. A mammoth building is as romantic to a new age as were the subtle carvings of Phidias to Greeks of old. For the master of commerce an oil-driven steel ship has the beauty old folk have seen in cloudy pyramids of sail. What we have considered beautiful will be quaint. ”

“ That was the most difficult thing in the world, the Celt in Shane knew. The horripilation of the skin, the twitching nostrils, the feeling for the knife in the armpit.... When one was young, the careless word, the savage blow, the brooding feud.... But men grew better with the increase of the years, and with maturity came the sense that not every one could insult or hurt a man. The jibes and trespasses of petty people meant so little, and one sensed the Destiny, the strange veiled One, balanced in His own wise time the evil done a man with unexpected good.... ”

“ Five times the distant trumpeting of the wild swans and winter came, in great galloping winds, and sweeping sheets of sea-rain. And Moyle tossed like a giant troubled in his sleep. And on the mountain-sides the rowan stood up like a proud enemy, and the ash bent humbly, and the dwarf oak crouched under fury. And the wind whistled in the frozen reeds. And with the snow came out the hunted ones unafraid, the red fox, and the badger of dark ways, and the cantering hare.
Without, the wind might roar like cannon, and the sea rise in great engulfing waves. ”

“ The winds he sniffed as a hunting dog does, and each tack to port or starboard either thrilled or cast him down.... When would he get there? Would it be cool of the evening, when the bats were out? Or would it be in the sunshine of the morning, when a great smell was from the heather? And who would hear the wicket-gate click as the latch was lifted, and put a welcome before him with a great shout, uncles Alan or Robin, or a servant girl or boy, or the bent old gardener who kept the lawn true as a bowling-green?... ”

“ He had thought somehow that in this affair of Hedda he would find—oh, something: that once more the moon would take on its rippling smile and the sun its sweet low laughter, and the winds be no longer a matter of physics, but strong entities. Quickly, unconsciously, the thought had come to him.... With the wife of his young days had come the magic of romance, and with Claire-Anne of Marseilles had come a sublime storm of passion, and with the Arab lady had come the scheme of an ordered life, good composition and rich color.... ”

“ A very silent place a mountain was, wee Shane Campbell thought, not a lonely but a silent place. A lonely place was a place you might be afraid, as in a wood, but a mountain was only a place apart. Down in the fields were the big brooks, with the willow branches and great trout in the streams; and fat cattle would low with a foolish cry like a man wouldn't be all there, and come home in the evenings to be milked, satisfied and comfortable as a minister ”

“ At fifty-eight to feel like a schoolboy going home, it seemed—well, not indecent, indecorous. This thing of returning to Antrim had been a matter of pure reason, and then suddenly his heart had spread forgotten wings.
Without, the sound of Broadway had changed subtly, with the coming of the September dusk. The quick-pacing people had given way to the clop-clop-clop of hansom-cabs, and the tram-cars with their tired horses came less frequently now. One felt that a giant had been at work all day, and was now stretching himself, not lazily, but a little relaxingly. ”

“ A month from now they would say a mass for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life—with the fussy excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; with each thing; with everything....
And here was the wonder of it, the strange dumb wonder, that the snapping of her life meant less in reality to him than the snapping of a stay aboard ship. ”

“ He thought, for a while, that what he missed was the ships, and that, subconsciously, there was some nostalgia for the sea on him. He had gone to Belfast thinking that with live timbers beneath his feet, the—the vacuum within him would be filled, but the thought of a ship somehow, when he was there, failed to exalt him. He loved them always, the long live ships, the canvas white as a gull, the delicacy of spars—all the beautiful economy.... But to command one again, to go about the world, aimlessly but for the bartering of cargo, and to return at the voyage's end, with a sum of money—no! no! ”

“ Then grayish white Marseilles, with its two immense ribbons, the Cannebière running northward, and the Rue de Rome and the Prado intersecting it. The great wooded amphitheater rising like a wave and little Notre Dame de la Garde peeking like a sentry out to sea. And eastward from the quays were the little jagged islands the Phenicians knew, If, and Rion, Jaros, strange un-French names ... the sunshine yellow as a lamp, and the sea blue as flax, and the green woods, and the ancient grayish white city—all a picture some unimaginative painter would have loved. ”

“ Better to have died a boy while the meadows they were green.... All before you is emptiness," they mocked. And they came nearer: "Behold, the night is black, the ocean is of great depth, immeasurable, the ship plows onward under a quartering breeze. A little step, a little step leeward, a vault over the taffrail as over a little ditch, and there will be peace and rest. Look at the water flow past. No problems there.... God! how close he had been to it, in the seven black years, the long voyage from Liverpool, and the sordid town at the end.... How close! And then Alan Donn, God rest him! ”

“ The feeling that was uppermost in him as he sat outside the thatched cottage in the moonlight while the wake was within was not grief at his wife's death; not a shattered mind that his life so carefully laid out not twelve months before was disoriented; not any self-pity; not any grievance against God such as little men might have. But a strange dumb wonder.... There she lay within, in her habit of a Dominican lay sister, her hands waxy, her face waxy, her eyelids closed. And six guttering candles were about her, and woman droned their prayers with a droning as of bees. ”

“ A star is a promise to me, Shane, and the wind a token, and the new moon just a pleasant occurrence, like the coming of spring....
"Shane, I know all this. I know it not for [Pg 384] myself but for you.... I know three things: I know God lives, I know I love you, I know we shall not die.... I love you, Shane, and there is no shame on me telling it to you, for you are as my heart and I am as yours.... When I see you at times there comes over me a sweetness from head to foot, and at times when I see you, a great dignity comes to me, because you love me, and your love is good.... ”

“ No longer in her sharpish voice would she recite her rosary and go to bed.
And to-morrow they would bury her—there would be rain to-morrow: the wind was sou'east,—they would lower her, gently as though she were alive, into a rectangular slot in the ground, mutter alien prayers in an alien tongue with business of white magic, pat the mound over as a child pats his castle of sand on the sea-shore, and leave her there in the rain. ”

“ But a body is always apart from one, and a mind is, too.... Shane, you have seen very beautiful old women.... Women with a beauty that is like a flame that does not burn, that have a light within them somewhere ... that is not of the mind or of the body ... that is of these things worn thin so that they themselves show.... See, heart?"
"But Granya, why must a man find out, and a woman know?"
"Shane of my heart, because it is necessary to women that they may live. A man can live without knowing God, as blind men live without ever seeing the moon. ”