The Wind Bloweth Part 29

There's a quarter-century ahead of you. Put the past by and begin again.

There'd be love at many a young woman for you. And a house, and new bairns."

"I'm a back-thinking man, Alan's kinsman, a long back-thinking man. And I'd always be putting the new beside the old and the new would not seem good to me. The new bairns would never be like the old bairns, and it would na be fair. And as for women, I've had my bellyful of women after her I was kind to, and was true to for one and twenty years, going off with some sweating landsman to a dingy town.... I was ay a good sailor, Shane Oge....

"It's by now, nearly by.... So I'll be going up and down the sea on the chance of meeting one of my new braw bairns. And maybe I'll come across one of them on the water-front, and him needing me most.... And maybe I'll sign articles wi' the one aboard the same s.h.i.+p, and it's the grand cracks we'll have in the horse lat.i.tudes.... Or maybe I'll find one of them a young buck officer aboard a s.h.i.+p I'm on; and he'll come for'a'd and say: 'Lay aloft, old-timer, with the rest and be pretty G.o.d-d.a.m.ned quick about it.' And I'll say: 'Aye, aye, sir.' And thinks: Wait till you get ash.o.r.e, and I'll tell you who I am, and give you a tip about your seamans.h.i.+p, too, my grand young fello'.... Life has queerer things nor that, Shane Oge, as maybe you know.... The only thing that bothers me is that I'll never see Ballycastle any more."

"Is there nothing I can do for you, Simon Fraser?"

"There's a wee thing, Shane Campbell; just a wee thing?"

"What is it, man Simon?"

"Maybe you'd think me crazy--"

"Of course not, Simon."

"Well then, when you're home, and looking around you at the whins and purple heather, and the wee gray towns, maybe you'll say: 'Glens of Antrim, I ken a man of Antrim, and he'll never see you again, but he'll never forget you.' Will you do that?"

"I'll do that."

"Maybe you'll be looking at Ballycastle, the town where I was born in."

"Yes, Simon."

"You don't have to say it out loud. You can stop and say it low in yourself, so as n.o.body'll hear you, barring the gray stones of the town.

Just remember: 'Ballycastle, Simon Fraser's thinking long ...'"

-- 9

A cold southerly drove northward from the pole, chopping the muddy waves of the river. Around the floating _camolotes_, islands of weeds, were little swirls. The poplars and willows of the banks grew more distant, as _Maid of the Isles_ cut eastward under all sail. As he tramped fore and aft, Buenos Aires dropped, dropped, dropped behind her counter, dropped ... became a blur....

_Maid of the Isles_ was only going home, as she had gone home a hundred times before, from different ports, as she had gone home a dozen times from this one. But never before had it seemed significant to Shane....

Back, back the city faded.... If the wind lasted, and Shane thought it would last, by to-morrow they would have left the Plate and be in the open sea. Back, back the city dropped.... It couldn't drop too fast....

It was like a prison from which he was escaping, fleeing.... A great yearning come on him to have it out of sight ... definitely, forever.

Once it was gone, he would know for a certain thing, he was free....

He was surprised to be free. As surprised as an all but beaten wrestler is when his opponent's lock weakens unexpectedly, and dazedly he knows he can get up again and spar. A fog had lifted suddenly, as at sea. And he had thought the mist of the Valley of the Black Pig could never lift, would remain, dank and cold and hollow, covering all things like a cerecloth, binding all as chains bind ... and that he must remain with the weeping population, until the Boar without Bristles came ... forever and forever and forever....

But the nearest and dearest had died gallantly, and somehow the fog had lifted. And then he was dazed and weak, but free. Where was he going?

What to do? He didn't know, but hope, life itself had come again, like a long awaited moon.

Buenos Aires faded.... Faded the Valley of the Black Pig.... Buenos Aires its symbol ... Buenos Aires with bleak squares, its hovels, its painted trees--_timbo_ and _tipa_ and _palo barracho_....

He stood aft of the steersman, and suddenly raised his head.

_Mo mhallacht go deo leat, a bhaile nan gcrann!

'S mo shlan do gach baile raibh me riamh ann._

"My curse forever on you, O town of the trees," an old song came to him, "and my farewell to every town I was ever in--"

A great nostalgia for Ulster, for the whins and heather, choked him:

"_S iomaidh bealach fliuch salach agas boithrin cam_--

"There's many a wet muddy highways and crooked half-road, _eader mise_, between _me_, _eader mise_, _eader mise_--" He had forgotten.

"Between me and the townland that my desire is in," the Oran steersman prompted. "_Eader mise agas an baile bhfuil mo dhuil ann!_"

"Mind your b.l.o.o.d.y wheel," Shane warned. "This is a s.h.i.+p, not a poetry society. Look at the way you're letting her come up, you Highland b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Keep her off--and lam her!"

"Lam her it is, sir," the steersman grinned....

PART SIX

THE BOLD FENIAN MEN

-- 1

The worst of it all, Campbell smiled, was this: that life was so immensely healthy now, immensely peaceful, immensely sane. Here he was in the house of his fathers, built from the angle of a turret of King John's time. Here he was by the purple hills, by the purple Moyle. Five springs had come since he had given up the sea. Five times he had seen the little mountain streams swell with the import of the season, hurrying from the summit of the eagles, carrying water on nature's business. Five times had the primrose come, and the cuckoo. The faint delicate blue of early gra.s.s turned to green. The heat haze of summer on the silent glens. The Moyle thick with fish. Then autumn, a deep-bosomed grave woman moving through the reddening woods, the turf-cutters with their spades, the pillars of blue smoke from the cottages in the stilly September sky. And the three great moons of autumn, silver as sixpence.

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. Within the old house with its corner dating from King John's time--so long ago!--was comfort. Here was the library where Robin More--G.o.d rest his soul!--had puzzled over the round towers of Ireland and written his monograph on the Phenician colony of the County Down, and bothered about strange quaint old things, comparing the Celtic cross to the sistrum of Egypt, and wondering whether the round towers of Ireland had aught to do with wors.h.i.+p of the sun, and writing of Gaelic occultism to Bulwer Lytton, and dreaming of the friend of his youth, Goethe, in the dusk. And down in the gun-room were the cups of Alan Donn, cups for sailing and cups for golf, and ribbons that horses won.

And in the drawing-room was the needlework of his mother, the precise beautiful broidery ... so like herself, minute, mathematical, not significant.... And in the kitchen was the red turf, and the flitches of bacon in the eaves, and the thick servant girls hustling impatiently, and the servant boys in their corduroy trousers bound with rushes at the knee ... their heavy brogues, their honest jests of Rabelais ... and in the fold the silent sheep, and great solemn cows warm in their manger....

Five years, going on six now, since he had left the sea, and invested his fortune in a Belfast s.h.i.+pyard, and taken over the homestead of Clan Campbell to run as it had always been run, wisely, sanely, healthily....

There were the servant boys and girls, with a comfortable roof above them. There were the cotter tenants, satisfied, certain of justice. At the shows his shorthorns took ribbons. For local charities, his duty was done.... But there was something, something lacking....

It wasn't peace. Peace he had in plenty. The spring of the heather, the tang of the sea brought peace. The bats of twilight, and the sallow branches, and the trout leaping in the river at the close of day. And the twilight itself, like some shy girl.... Out of all these came an emanation, a cradle-song, that lulled like the song of little waves....

And as for pleasure, there was pleasure in listening to the birds among the trees, to seeing the stooking of barley, to watching the blue banner of the flax, to walking on frosty roads on great nights of stars.... To riding with the hunt, clumsily, as a sailor does, but getting in at the death, as pleased as the huntsman, or the master himself.... To the whir of the reel as the great blue salmon rushed ... Pleasure, and peace, and yet not satisfaction.

He thought, for a while, that what he missed was the s.h.i.+ps, 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 s.h.i.+p somehow, when he was there, failed to exalt him. He loved them always, the long live s.h.i.+ps, 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! not enough!

And so he came back to the peace and pleasure of the glens, the purple heather, and the red berries, the c.h.i.n.k of pebbles on the strand. To the hunts on frosty mornings, to the salmon-fis.h.i.+ng, to the showing of cattle. To peace: to pleasure....

And he suddenly asked himself what had he done to deserve this peace, these pleasant days? What right had he to them? What had he given to life, what achieved for the world, that he should have sanctuary?

The answer put him in a s.h.i.+ver of panic. Nothing!

He had no right, no t.i.tle to it. Here he was drawing on to fifty, close on forty-eight; and he had done, achieved, nothing. He had no wife, no child; had achieved no valorous unselfish deed. Had not--not even--not even a little song.

-- 2

Strange thing--it hadn't occurred to him at first; but it did now when he thought over it in the winter evenings--was this: that Alan Donn Campbell, for all that he was dead these six years and more, existed still, was bigger now than he had ever been in life....