Chapter 6

Donagh: Do you know, Agnes, when I came up here this morning with your brother, Hugh, I felt the place strange and lonesome. I think an evicted house is never the same, even when people go back to it. There seemed to be some sorrow hanging over it.

Agnes (_putting up her shawl_): Now Donagh, that's no way for you to be speaking. If you were to see how glad all the people were! And you ought to have the greatest joy.

Donagh: Well, then I thought of you, Agnes, and that changed everything. I went whistling about the place. (_Going to her._) After coming down from your uncle's yesterday evening I heard the first cry of the cuckoo in the wood at Raheen.

Agnes: That was a good omen, Donagh.

Donagh: I took it that way, too, for it was the first greeting I got after parting from yourself. Did you hear it, Agnes?

Agnes: I did not. I heard only one sound the length of the evening.

Donagh: What sound was that, Agnes?

Agnes: I heard nothing only the singing of one song, a lovely song, all about Donagh Ford!

Donagh: About me?

Agnes: Yes, indeed. It was no bird and no voice, but the singing I heard of my own heart.

Donagh: That was a good song to hear, Agnes. It is like a thought that would often stir in a man's mind and find no word to suit it. It is often that I thought that way of you and could speak no word.

Agnes: All the same I think I would have an understanding for it, Donagh.

Donagh: Ah, Agnes, that is just it. That is what gives me the great comfort in your company. We have a great understanding of each other surely.

Hugh (_speaking outside_): This is the way, Mrs. Ford. They are waiting for you within. (_He comes in._) Donagh, here is your mother. (_Mrs. Ford, leaning on a stick, comes to the door, standing on the threshold for a little. Hugh and Donagh take off their hats reverently._)

Mrs. Ford: And is that you, Donagh. Well, if it is not the fine high house you got for Agnes. Eh, pet?

Agnes (_taking shawl from her_): It is your own house Donagh has taken you back to.

Hugh: Did you not hear the people giving you a welcome, Mrs. Ford?

Donagh: Don't you remember the house, mother?

Mrs. Ford: I have a memory of many a thing, God help me. And I heard the people cheering. I thought maybe it was some strife was going on in Carrabane. It was always a place of one struggle or another. (_She looks helplessly about house, muttering as she hobbles to the bin. She raises the lid._) Won't you take out a measure of oats to the mare, Donagh? And they have mislaid the scoop again. I'm tired telling them not to be leaving it in the barn. Where is that Martin Driscoll and what way is he doing his business at all? (_She turns to close the bin._)

Hugh (_to Donagh_): Who is Martin Driscoll?

Donagh: A boy who was here long ago. I heard a story of him and a flight with a girl. He lies in a grave in Australia long years.

Mrs. Ford (_moving from bin, her eyes catching the dresser_): Who put the dresser there? Was it by my orders? That is a place where it will come awkward to me.

Agnes (_going to her_): Sit down and rest yourself. You are fatigued after making the journey.

Mrs. Ford (_as they cross to fire_): Wait until I lay eyes on Martin Driscoll and on Delia Morrissey of the cross! I tell you I will regulate them.

Donagh (_to Hugh_): Delia Morrissey--that is the name of the girl I spoke of. She was lost on the voyage, a girl of great beauty.

Agnes (_to Mrs. Ford_): Did you take no stock of the people as you came on the car?

Mrs. Ford: In throth I did. It was prime to see them there reddening the sod and the little rain drops falling from the branches of the trees.

Hugh: They raised a great cheer for you.

Mrs. Ford: Did you say that it was to me they were giving a welcome?

Donagh: Indeed it was, mother.

Mrs. Ford (_laughing a little_): Mind that, Agnes. They are the lively lads to be taking stock of an old woman the like of me driving the roads.

Hugh: The people could not but feel some stir to see what they saw this day. I declare to you, Donagh, when I saw her old stooped dark figure thrown against the sky on the car it moved something in me.

Mrs. Ford: What are you saying about a stir in the country, Hugh Deely?

Hugh: Was it not something to see the planter going from this place? Was it not something to see you and Donagh coming from a miserable place in the bog?

Mrs. Ford (_sharply_): The planter, did you say? (_Clutching her stick to rise_). Blessed be God! Is Curley the planter gone from Carrabane? Don't make any lie to me, Hugh Deely.

Hugh: Curley is gone.

Mrs. Ford (_rising with difficulty, her agitation growing_): And his wife? What about his trollop of a wife?

Donagh: The whole brood and tribe of them went a month back.

Agnes: Did not Donagh tell you that you were back in your own place again? (_Mrs. Ford moves about, a consciousness of her surroundings breaking upon her. She goes to room door, pushing it open._)

Hugh: It is all coming back to her again.

Donagh: She was only a little upset in her mind.

Mrs. Ford (_coming from room door_): Agnes, and you, Hugh Deely, come here until I be telling you a thing of great wonder. It was in this house Donagh there was born. And it was in that room that we laid out his little sister, Mary. I remember the March day and the yellow flowers they put around her in the bed. She had no strength for the rough world. I crossed her little white hands on the breast where the life died in her like a flame. Donagh, my son, it was nearly all going from my mind.

Agnes: This is no day for sad thoughts. Think of the great thing it is for you to be back here again.

Mrs. Ford: Ah, that's the truth, girl. Did the world ever hear of such a story as an old woman like me to be standing in this place and the planter gone from Currabane! And if Donagh Ford is gone to his rest his son is here to answer for him.

Donagh: The world knows I can never be the man my father was.

Mrs. Ford (_raising her stick with a little cry_): Ah-ha, the people saw the great strength of Donagh Ford. 'They talk of a tenant at will,' he'd say, 'but who is it that can chain the purpose of a man's mind.' And they all saw it. There was no great spirit in the country when Donagh Ford took the courage of his own heart and called the people together.

Hugh: This place was a place of great strife then.

Mrs. Ford: God send, Agnes Deely, that you'll never have the memory of a bitter eviction burned into your mind.

Donagh: That's all over and done now, mother. There is a new life before you.

Mrs. Ford: Well, they had their way and put us across the threshold. But if they did it was on this hearth was kindled a blaze that swept the townland and wrapped the country. It went from one place to another and no wave that rose upon the Shannon could hold it back. It was a thing that no power could check, for it ran in the blood and only wasted in the vein of the father to leap fresh in the heart of the son. Ah, I will go on my knees and kiss the threshold of this house for the things it calls to mind. (_She goes to door, kneeling down and kissing the threshold._)

Hugh: It is a great hold she has on the old days and a great spirit. (_A low murmur of voices is heard in the distance outside._)

Donagh: They are turning the ploughs into the second field.

Mrs. Ford: What's that you say about the ploughs?

Donagh (_going to her_): The boys are breaking up the land for us. (_He and Hugh help her to rise. They are all grouped at the door._)

Agnes: It was they who cheered you on the road.

Mrs. Ford: The sight is failing me.

Donagh. I can only make out little dark spots against the green of the fields.

Donagh: Those are the people, mother.

Mrs. Ford (_crossing to fireplace_): The people are beginning to gather behind the ploughs again. Tell me, Donagh, what way is the wind coming?

Donagh: It is coming up from the South.

Mrs. Ford (_speaking more to herself_): Well, I can ask no more now. The wind is from the South and it will bear that cheer past where HE is lying in Gurteen-na-Marbh. It is a kind wind and it carries good music. Take my word for it every sound that goes on the wind is not lost to the dead.

Hugh: You ought to take her out of these thoughts.

Agnes: Leave her with me for a little while. (_Hugh and Donagh move to door._)

Mrs. Ford: Where are you going, Donagh?

Donagh: Down to the people breaking the ground. They will be waiting for word of your home-coming.

Mrs. Ford: Ah, sure you ought to have the people up here, _a mhic_. I'd like to see all the old neighbours about me and hear the music of their voices.

Hugh: Very well. I'll step down and bid them up. (_He goes._)

Mrs. Ford: You'll have the anxiety of the farm on your mind from this out, Donagh.

Donagh: Well, it is not the hut, with the hunger of the bog about it, that I will be bringing Agnes into now.

Mrs. Ford: Agnes, come here, love, until I look upon the sweetness of your face. (_Agnes goes to her, kneeling by her side._) You'll be in this place with Donagh. It is a great inheritance you will have in the name of Donagh Ford. It is no idle name that will be in this house but the name of one who knew a great strength. It will be a long line of generations that the name of the Fords will reach out to, generations reaching to the time that Ireland herself will rise by the power of her own will.

Agnes (_rising_): You will only sadden yourself by these thoughts. Think of what there is in store for you.

Mrs. Ford: I'm an old woman now, child. There can be no fresh life before me. But I can tell you that I was young and full of courage once. I was the woman who stood by the side of Donagh Ford, that gave him support in the day of trial, that was always the strong branch in the storm and in the calm. Am I saying any word only what is a true word, Donagh?

Donagh: The truth of that is well known to the people. (_He goes to door._)

Mrs. Ford: Very well. Gather up all the people now, son. Let them come in about this place for many of them have a memory of it. Let me hear the welcome of their voices. They will have good words to say, speaking on the greatness of Donagh Ford who is dead.

Donagh: They are coming out from the fields with Hugh, mother. I see the young fellows falling into line. They are wearing their caps and sashes and they have the band. I can see them carrying the banner to the front of the crowd. Here they are marching up the road. (_The strains of a fife and drum band playing a spirited march are heard in the distance. Mrs. Ford rises slowly, "humouring" the march with her stick, her face expressing her delight. The band stops._)

Mrs. Ford: That's the spirit of Carrabane. Let the people now look upon me in this place and let them take pride in my son.

Donagh: I see Stephen Mac Donagh.

Mrs. Ford: Let him be the first across the threshold, for he went to jail with Donagh Ford. Have beside him Murt Cooney that lost his sight at the struggle of Ballyadams. Let him lift up his poor blind face till I see the rapture of it.

Donagh: Murt Cooney is coming, and Francis Kilroy and Brian Mulkearn.

Mrs. Ford: It was they who put a seal of silence on their lips and bore their punishment to save a friend of the people. Have a place beside me for the widow of Con Rafferty who hid the smoking revolver the day the tyrant fell at the cross of Killbrack.

Donagh: All the old neighbours are coming surely.

Mrs. Ford (_crossing slowly to door, Agnes going before her_): Let me look into their eyes for the things I will see stirring there. I will reach them out the friendship of my hands and speak to them the words that lie upon my heart. The rafters of this house will ring again with the voices that Donagh Ford welcomed and that I loved. Aye, the very fire on the hearth will leap in memory of the hands that tended it.

Donagh: This will be such a day as will be made a boast of for ever in Carrabane. (_Agnes goes out door to meet the people._)

Mrs. Ford: Let there be music and the sound of rejoicing and shouts from the hills. Let those who put their feet in anger upon us and who are themselves reduced to-day look back upon the strength they held and the power they lost.

Donagh: I will bid the music play up. (_He goes out._)

Mrs. Ford (_standing alone at the door_): People of Carrabane, gather about the old house of Donagh Ford. Let the fight for the land in this place end where it began. Let the courage and the strength that Donagh Ford knew be in your blood from this day out. Let the spirit be good and the hand be strong for the work that the heart directs. Raise up your voices with my voice this day and let us make a great praise on the name of Ireland. (_She raises her stick, straightening her old figure. The band strikes up and the people cheer outside as the curtain falls._)

A WAYSIDE BURIAL

The parish priest was in a very great hurry and yet anxious for a talk on his pet subject. He wanted to speak about the new temperance hall. Would I mind walking a little way with him while he did so? He had a great many things to attend to that day.... We made our way along the street together, left the town behind us, and presently reached that sinister appendage of all Irish country towns, the workhouse. The priest turned in the wide gate, and the porter, old, official, spectacled, came to meet him.

"Has the funeral gone?" asked the priest, a little breathless.

"I'll see, Father." The porter shuffled over the flags, a great door swung open; there was a vista of whitewashed walls, a chilly, vacant corridor, and beyond it a hall where old men were seated on forms at a long, white deal table. They were eating--a silent, grey, bent, beaten group. Through a glass partition we could see the porter in his office turning over the leaves of a great register.

"I find," he said, coming out again, speaking as if he were giving evidence at a sworn inquiry, "that the remains of Martin Quirke, deceased, were removed at 4.15."

"I am more than half an hour late," said the priest, regarding his watch with some irritation.

We hurried out and along the road to the country, the priest trailing his umbrella behind him, speaking of the temperance hall but preoccupied about the funeral he had missed, my eyes marking the flight of flocks of starlings making westward.

Less than a mile of ground brought us to the spot where the paupers were buried. It lay behind a high wall, a narrow strip of ground, cut off from a great lord's demesne by a wood. The scent of decay was heavy in the place; it felt as if the spring and the summer had dragged their steps here, to lie down and die with the paupers. The uncut grass lay rank and grey and long--Nature's unkempt beard--on the earth. The great bare chestnuts and oaks threw narrow shadows over the irregular mounds of earth. Small, rude wooden crosses stood at the heads of some of the mounds, lopsided, drunken, weather-beaten. No names were inscribed upon them. All the bones laid down here were anonymous. A robin was singing at the edge of the wood; overhead the rapid wings of wild pigeons beat the air.

A stable bell rang impetuously in the distance, dismissing the workmen on the lord's demesne. By a freshly-made grave two gravediggers were leaning on their spades. They were paupers, too; men who got some privilege for their efforts in this dark strip of earth between the wood and the wall. One of them yawned. A third man stood aloof, a minor official from the workhouse; he took a pipe from his mouth as the priest approached.

The three men gave one the feeling that they were rather tired of waiting, impatient to have their little business through. It was a weird spot in the gathering gloom of a November evening. The only bright thing in the place, the only gay spot, the only cheerful patch of colour, almost exulting in its grim surroundings, was the heap of freshly thrown up soil from the grave. It was rich in colour as newly-coined gold. Resting upon it was a clean, white, unpainted coffin. The only ornament was a tin breastplate on the lid and the inscription in black letters:

Martin Quirke, Died November 3, 1900. R.I.P.

The white coffin on the pile of golden earth was like the altar of some pagan god. I stood apart as the priest, vesting himself in a black stole, approached the graveside and began the recital of the burial service in Latin. The gravediggers, whose own bones would one day be interred anonymously in the same ground, stood on either side of him with their spades, two grim acolytes. The minor official from the workhouse, the symbol of the State, bared a long, narrow head, as white and as smooth as the coffin on the heap of earth. I stood by a groggy wooden cross, the eternal observer.

The priest spoke in a low monotone, holding the book close to his eyes in the uncertain light. And as he read I fell to wondering who our brother in the white coffin might be. Some merry tramp who knew the pain and the joy of the road? Some detached soul who had shaken off the burden of life's conventions, one who loved lightly and took punishment casually? One who saw crime as a science, or merely a broken reed? Or a soldier who had carried a knapsack in foreign campaigns? A creature of empire who had found himself in Africa, or Egypt, or India, or the Crimea, and come back again to claim his pile of golden earth in the corner of the lord's demesne? If the men had time, perhaps they would stick a little wooden cross over the spot where his bones were laid down....

The priest's voice continued the recitation of the burial service and the robin sang at the edge of the dim wood. Down the narrow strip of rank burial ground a low wind cried, and the light, losing its glow in the western sky, threw a grey pall on the grass. And under the influence of the moment a little memory of people I had known and forgotten went across my mind, a memory that seemed to stir in the low wind, a memory of people who had at the last got their white, clean coffin and their rest on a pile of golden earth, people who had gone like our brother in the deal boards.... There was the man, the scholar, who had taught his school, who had an intelligence, who could talk, who, perhaps, could have written only--. The wind sobbed down the narrow strip of ground.... He had made his battle, indeed, a long-drawn-out battle, for he had only given way step by step, gradually but inexorably yielding ground to the thing that was hunting him out of civilised life. He had gone from his school, his home, his friends, fleeing from one miserable refuge to another in the miserable country town. Eventually he had passed in through the gates of the workhouse. It was all very vivid now--his attempts to get back to the life he had known, like a man struggling in the quicksands. There were the little spurts back to the town, the well-shaped head, the face which still held some remembrance of its distinction and its manhood erect over the quaking, broken frame; that splendid head like a noble piece of sculpture on the summit of a crumbling ruin. Forth he would come, the flicker of resistance, a pallid battle-light in the eyes, a vessel that had been all but wrecked once more standing up the harbour to meet the winds that had driven it from the seas--and after a little battle once more taking in the sheets and crawling back to the anchorage of the dark workhouse, there to suffer in the old way, in secret to curse, to pray, to despair, to hope, to contrive some little repairs to the broken physique in order that there might be yet another journey into waters that were getting more and more shadowy. And the day came when the only journey that could be made was a shuffle to the gate, the haunted eyes staring into a world which was a nightmare of regrets. How terrible was the pathos of that life, that struggle, that tragedy, how poignant its memory while the robin sang at the edge of the dim wood!... And there was that red-haired, defiant young man with the build of an athlete, the eyes of an animal. How bravely he could sing up the same road to the dark house! It was to him as the burrow is to the rabbit. He would come out to nibble at the regular and lawful intervals, and having nibbled return to sleep and shout and fight for his "rights" in the dark house. And once, on a spring day, he had come out with a companion, a pale woman in a thin shawl and a drab skirt, and they had taken to the roads together, himself swinging his ashplant, his stride and manner carrying the illusion of purpose, his eyes on everything and his mind nowhere; herself trotting over the broken stones in her canvas shoes beside him, a pale shadow under the fire of his red head. They had gone away into a road whose milestones were dark houses, himself singing the song of his own life, a song of mumbled words, without air or music; herself silent, clutching her thin shawl over her breast, her feet pattering over the little stones of the road.... The wind whistled down over the graves, by the wooden crosses.... There was that little woman who at the close of the day, when the light was charitable in its obscurity, opened her door and came down from the threshold of her house, painfully as if she were descending from a great height. Nobody was about. All was quietness in the quiet street. And she drew the door to, put the key in the lock, her hand trembled, the lock clicked! The deed was done! Who but herself could know that the click of the key in the lock was the end, the close, the dreadful culmination of the best part of a whole century of struggle, of life? Behind that door she had swept up a bundle of memories that were now all an agony because the key had clicked in the lock. Behind the door was the story of her life and the lives of her children and her children's children. Where was the use, she might have asked, of blaming any of them now? What was it that they had all gone, all scattered, leaving her broken there at the last? Had not the key clicked in the lock? In that click was the end of it all; in the empty house were the ghosts of her girlhood, her womanhood, her motherhood, her old age, her struggles, her successes, her skill in running her little shop, her courage in riding one family squall after another! The key had clicked in the lock. She moved down the quiet street, sensitive lest the eye of the neighbours should see her, a tottering, broken thing going by the vague walls, keeping to the back streets, setting out for the dark house beyond the town. She had said to them, "I will be no trouble to you." And, indeed, she was not. They had little more to do for her than join her hands over her breast.... The wind was plaintive in the gaunt trees of the dark wood.... Which of us could say he would never turn a key in the lock of an empty house? How many casual little twists of the wrist of Fate stand between the best of us and the step down from the threshold of a broken home? What rags of memories have any of us to bundle behind the door of the empty house when the hour comes for us to click the key in the lock?... The wind cried down the narrow strip of ground where the smell of decay was in the grass.

There was a movement beside the white coffin, the men were lifting it off the golden pile of earth and lowering it into the dark pit. The men's feet slipped and shuffled for a foothold in the yielding clay. At last a low, dull thud sounded up from the mouth of the pit. Our brother in the white coffin had at last found a lasting tenure in the soil.

The official from the dark house moved over to me. He spoke in whispers, holding the hat an official inch of respect for the dead above the narrow white shred of his skull.

"Martin Quirke they are burying," he said.

"Who was he?"

"Didn't you ever hear tell of Martin Quirke?"

"No, never."