DONN B 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH
 
 THE 
 WIND BLOWETH 
 
 BY 
 
 DONN BYRNE 
 
 U L 
 Author of Messer Marco Polo. 
 
 " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearesl the 
 sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
 goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
 
 The Gospel according to St. John 
 
 London : 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO., LTD.
 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Fox, Jones & Co., 
 Kemp Hall Press, High Street, Oxford, England.
 
 TO 
 
 MADAME DOROTHEA DONN-BYRNE
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Book I. Dancing Town ----- i 
 
 Book II. The Wake at Ardee - - - - 45 
 
 Book III. The Mouth of Honey - - - 87 
 
 Book IV. The Wrestler from Aleppo - - 133 
 
 Book V. The Valley of the Black Pig - - 181 
 
 Book VI. The Bold Fenian Men - 227 
 
 Book VII. The Kingdom, The Power, and 
 
 The Glory - - 279
 
 BOOK ONE 
 DANCING TOWN 
 
 B
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 DANCING TOWN 
 § I 
 
 BECAUSE it was his fourteenth birthday they 
 had allowed him a day off from school, his 
 mother doubtfully, his uncles Alan and Robin 
 with their understanding grin. And because there 
 was none else for him to play with at hurling or 
 football, the other children now droning in class 
 over Caesar's Gallic War, he had gone up the big 
 glen. It was a very adventurous thing to go up 
 the glen while other boys were droning their Latin 
 like a bagpipe being inflated, while the red-bearded 
 schoolmaster drowsed like a dog. First you went 
 down the gravelled path, past the greened sun-dial, 
 then through the gate, then a half-mile or so 
 along the road, green along the edges with the 
 green of spring, and lined with the May hawthorn, 
 white, clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained 
 music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There 
 was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First 
 it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, 
 and then came a myriad of white stars. And then 
 the white drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and 
 the scarlet haws came out, a tasteless bread-like 
 fruit you shared with the birds, and the stone of 
 it you could whip through your lips like a 
 bullet . . .
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 He left the main road and turned into a loaning 
 that came down the mountain-side, a thing that 
 once might have been a road, if there had been any 
 need for it, or energy to make it. But now it was only 
 a wedge of common land bounded on both sides by 
 a low stone wall. Inside one wall was a path, and 
 inside the other a little rill, and betwixt the two 
 of them were firm moss and stones. And here 
 the moss was yellowish green and there red as blood. 
 And the rill was edged with ferns and queer blue 
 flowers whose names he did not know in English, 
 and now the water just gurgled over the rounded 
 stones, and now it dropped into a well where it was 
 colourless and cold and fresh as the air itself, and 
 oftentimes at the bottom of a pool like that would be 
 a great green frog with eyes that popped like the 
 schoolmaster's. . . . 
 
 And to the left of the loaning as he walked toward 
 the mountain was a plantation of fir-trees, twenty 
 acres or more, the property of the third cousin of his 
 mother's brother-in-law, a melancholy, thin-handed 
 man who lived on the Mediterranean — a Campbell, 
 too, though one would never take him for an Ulster 
 Scot, with his la-di-da ways and his Spanish lady. But 
 the queer thing about the plantation was this, that 
 within half a mile through the trees were the ruins of 
 a house, bare walls and bracken and a wee place where 
 there were five graves, two of them children's. A 
 strange thing the lonely graves. In summer the sun 
 would shine through the clearing of the trees, and 
 there was always a bird singing somewhere near. But 
 it was a gey lonely place for five folk to lie there, at 
 all times and seasons, and in the moonlight and in the
 
 DANCING TOWN 
 
 sunlight, and when the rain dripped from the fir-trees. 
 And all the company they had was the red fox 
 slipping through the trees or the rabbit hopping like 
 a child at play or the hare wide-eyed in the bracken. 
 They must have been an unsociable folk in life to 
 build a house in the woods, and they were an un- 
 sociable folk in death not to go to the common 
 graveyard, where the dead folk were together, warm 
 and kindly, lying gently as in their beds . . . 
 
 He turned now from the loaning to the moun- 
 tain-side, passing through the heather on a little 
 path the sheep made with their sharp cloven hoofs. 
 In single file the sheep would go up the mountain- 
 side, obedient as nuns, following the tinkle of the 
 wether's bell, and then hunting a new pasture they 
 would crop like rabbits. Now was a stunted ash, 
 now a rowan-tree with its red berries — crann 
 caorthainn they call it in Gaidhlig, — and now 
 a holly bush would have red berries when all the 
 bitter fruit of the rowan-tree was gone and the 
 rolling sleets of winter came over Antrim like a 
 shroud. Everywhere about him now was the 
 heather, the brown, the purple heather with the 
 perfect little flower that people called bells, all 
 shades of red, and not often you would come across 
 a sprig of white heather, and white heather brought 
 you luck, just as much luck as a four-leaved sham- 
 rock brought, and fairer, more gallant luck. 
 
 A very silent place a mountain was, wee Shane 
 Campbell thought, not a lonely but a silent place. 
 A lonely place was a place where 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
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 ; wee calves shy as babies ; donkeys 
 with the cross of Christ on their back ; goats would 
 butt you and you not looking ; hens a-cackle, and 
 cocks strutting like a militiaman and him back 
 from the camp ; quiet horses had the strength of 
 twenty men, and scampering colts had legs on them 
 like withes. Up here was nothing, but you never 
 missed them. 
 
 The only thing to break the silence up here was 
 the cry of an occasional bird, the plaintive call of 
 the plover, the barking of an eagle, the note of 
 the curlew — a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the 
 strange noise a pheasant makes on its rising from 
 the heather : whir-r-r, like a piece of elastic snapping. 
 Barring these you'd hear nothing at all. And barring 
 a mountainy man or woman, and they cutting 
 turf, you'd meet nothing unless it were the sheep. 
 
 You'd never hear the sheep, and you coming ; 
 you'd turn a wee bluff in the hill, and there they 
 were looking, a long, solemn, grayish-white line, 
 with aloof, cold eyes. You could never faze them. 
 They'd look at you cool as anything, and " What 
 license have you to be here ?" you'd think they 
 were saying. Very stupid, but unco dignified 
 were the sheep. 
 
 But up to the top of the mountain, where wee 
 Shane was going, you'd find no sheep ; too bare 
 and rocky there. There'd be nothing there but 
 a passing bird. On the top of the mountain was
 
 DANCING TOWN 
 
 a little dark lake into which you couldn't see more 
 than a foot, though they said the depth of it went 
 down to the sea. There were no fish in it, people 
 said, and that was a queer thing, water without 
 fish in it, wee Shane thought, like a country without 
 inhabitants. In the sea were a power of fish, and 
 in the rivers were salmon, long and thick as a man, 
 and pike with snouts and ominous teeth, and furry 
 otters, about which there was great discussion as 
 to whether they were fish or animal ... In the lake 
 in the lowlands — Lochkewn, the Quiet Lake — were 
 trout with red and gold and black speckles ; and 
 perch with spiked fins ; and dark roach were easy 
 to catch with a worm ; and big gray bream were 
 tasty as to bait, needing paste held by sheep's wool ; 
 and big eels would put a catch in your breath. 
 
 But in the lake on the mountain-top were no 
 fish at all, and that was a strange thing . . . 
 
 There was another erie thing about the mountain, 
 and a thing wee Shane was slightly afraid of. Often- 
 times you'd be sitting by that lake, and sunlight 
 all around you, and you'd turn to come down, and 
 there'd be a cloud beneath you, a cloud that rolled 
 in armfuls of wool that bound the mountain as 
 by a ring ; and the lonely call of a bird . . . and you'd 
 feel shut off from the kindly earth, as if you were 
 on another planet maybe, or caught up into the 
 air by some flying demon, and you knew the world 
 was spinning like a ball through the treeless fields 
 of space. 
 
 And what could a wee fellow do up there then 
 but sit quiet and cry and be terribly afraid ? And 
 your cry would be heard no more than the whinny-
 
 8 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 ing of the curlew ... Or you might venture down 
 through it, and that was more terrible still, for 
 the strange host of the air had their domicile in the 
 clouds, and there they held cruel congress, speaking 
 in their speechless tongue, and out of the clouds 
 they took shape and substance . . . their cold, male- 
 volent eyes, their smoky antennae of hands . . . 
 and nothing to turn to for company, not even the 
 moody badger or the unfriendly sheep. There was 
 no going down. You must stay there by the lake, 
 and even then the cloud might creep upward until 
 it capped mountain and lake, and enveloped a wee 
 fellow scared out of his wits . . . 
 
 Nevertheless, he was going to the top of that 
 mountain, clouds or no clouds. For he had heard 
 it said that the mirage of Portcausey was being 
 seen again — the Devil's Troopers, and the Oilean- 
 gan-talamh-ar-bith, the Tsle of No Land At All, and 
 the Swinging City, and they were to be seen in the 
 blue heat haze over the sea from the Mountain 
 of Fionn . . . 
 
 And wee Shane was going to see it, clouds or 
 no clouds, host or no host of the air. 
 
 § 2 
 
 He had won half-ways up the mountain now, 
 and from the brae of heather he could see the glen 
 stretch like a furrow to the sea. The Irish Channel 
 they called it on the maps in school, but Struth 
 na Maoile it was to everyone in the country-side, 
 the waters of Moyle. Very green, very near, very 
 gentle they seemed to-day, but often they roared
 
 DANCING TOWN 
 
 like giants in frenzy, fanned to fury by the winds 
 of the nine glens, as a bellows livens a fire. But 
 to-day it was like a lake, so gentle . . . And there 
 was purple Scotland, hardly, you'd think, a stone's 
 throw from the shore — the Mull of Cantyre, a re- 
 sounding name, like a line in a poem. It was from 
 Mull that Moyle came, maol in Gaidhlig, bald or 
 bluff ... a moyley was a cow without horns. The 
 Lowlanders were coming into the Mull now, and the 
 Highlanders being pushed north to Argyll, and 
 westward to the islands, like Oran and Islay. He 
 knew the Islay men, great rugged fishers with 
 immense hands and their feet small as a girl's. 
 They sang the saddest sea-chanty in the world : 
 
 'S trie sealltuinn o'n chnoc a's airde, 
 Dti fheuch am faic mi fear a bhata ; 
 An tig thu'n aniugh, no'n tig thu amaireach, 
 'S mur tig thu idir, gur truagh a ta mi. 
 
 " From the highest hilltop I watched to see my 
 boatman," went the sense of it. " Will you come 
 to-day or will you come to-morrow ? And if you 
 never come — O God ! help me !" 
 
 And there was a chorus to it that was like a 
 keening for the dead : 
 
 Fhir a' bhata na horo eile ! Fhir a bhata na horo eile t 
 Fhir a' bhata na horo eile ! Mo shoraidh slan leat, 
 fhir a' bhata I 
 
 My heart's good-by to you, O man of the boat ! 
 
 But nearer than Islay was their own Raghery — 
 Rathlin Island the maps had it— he could see it 
 now to the north. A strange little world of its
 
 io THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 own, with great caves where the wind howled like 
 a starving wolf, and the black divers went into the 
 water like a bullet. It was in the caves of Raghery 
 that the Bruce took refuge, and it was there he saw 
 the spider of Scots legend . . . Rathlin was queer 
 and queer . . . There were many women with the 
 second sight, it was told, and the men were very big, 
 very shy, very gentle, except when the drink was in 
 them, and then they would rage like the sea. 
 
 A strange, mystical water, the Moyle, to have 
 two isles in it like Islay of the pipers and Raghery 
 of the black caves. It was over Moyle that Colum- 
 kill went in his little coracle to be a hermit in Iona, 
 the gentlest saint that Ireland ever knew. And it 
 was over the Moyle that Patrick came, landing 
 whilst the Druids turned their cursing stones and 
 could not prevail against him. And it was on the 
 Moyle that the Children of Lir swam and they turned 
 into three white swans, with their great white wings 
 like sails and their black feet like sweeps . . . And in 
 the night-time they sang a strange, sad music, and 
 the echoes of it were still in the nine glens . . . 
 
 And northerly again were the pillars of the Giant's 
 Causeway, blue-black against the sun. They were 
 made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion of 
 the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland 
 and he going deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. 
 So the country folk said, but wee Shane thought 
 different, knew different. The Druids had made 
 it for their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible 
 powerful clan with their magic batons, and their 
 sinister cursing-stones, and their long, white, benevo- 
 lent beards . . .
 
 DANCING TOWN n 
 
 And there, green and well kept as a duke's garden, 
 was the Royal Links of Portrush. And the Irish 
 golfers said that it was harder than St. Andrew's 
 in Scotland and better kept. There King James 
 had played a game before he went down to the 
 defeat of the Boyne Water. 
 
 " And if he golfed as well as he fought," Shane's 
 Uncle Robin used to laugh, " they s'ould never have 
 let him tee up a ball on the course ! " 
 
 Eigh ! how wonderful it all was ! wee Shane 
 felt : Raghery and the waters of Moyle ; Portrush 
 and the Giant's Causeway ; the nine glens with 
 the purple heather, and the streams that sang as 
 they cantered to the sea ; the crowing grouse and 
 the whinnying curlew, and the eagles barking on 
 the cliffs ; the trout that rose in the summer's eve- 
 ning, and the red berries of the rowan ; the cold, 
 clear lakes, and the braes where the blueberries 
 grow. He could well understand the stories they 
 told of Napper Tandy, and the great rebel in the 
 gardens of Versailles. Napoleon had found him 
 weeping amid all that beauty. 
 
 " Don't be afraid, Napper Tandy. I shall keep 
 my word and send General Hoche to Ireland." 
 
 " It's not that, sir ; it's not that." And Tandy 
 could not keep the tears back. " Och, County 
 Antrim, it's far I'm from you now ! " 
 
 § 3 
 He had reached the cairn of round stones that 
 marks the town land of Drimsleive, and was turning 
 the brae when a voice called to him :
 
 12 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 are 
 
 ' Eh, wee fellow, is it mitching from school yon 
 
 An old woman in a plaid shawl was coming slowly- 
 down the hillside. He recognized her for Bridget 
 Roe MacFarlane of Cushendhu, a cotter tenant of 
 his Uncle Alan's. 
 
 ' No, cummer," he told her ; " I'm not mitching. 
 I got the day oft." 
 
 ' For God's sake ! if it isn't Shane Campbell ! 
 And what are you doing up the mountain, wee 
 
 Shane ? " 
 
 " Ah, just dandering." 
 
 ' I was up mysel'," she went on, " to the top of 
 it, because I heard tell there was a cure for sore 
 eyes in the bit lake on the top. Not that I put 
 much store in such cures, but there's no use letting 
 anything by. I got a pair of specs from a peddling 
 man of Ballymena," said she, " but they don't seem 
 to do me much good. I'm queer and afeared about 
 my eyes, hinny. It would be a hard thing for me 
 to go blind and none about the wee bit house but 
 mysel'." 
 
 ' Ay ! I should think it would be a terrible 
 thing to be a dark person," wee Shane nodded. 
 
 ' Och, it wouldn't be so bad if you were born 
 that way, for you'd know no different. And if you 
 went blind and you young, there's things you could 
 take up to take the strain from your head, like a man 
 takes up piping. When you're old it's gey hard. 
 If you 're an old man itself, it's not so bad, for there'll 
 always be a soft woman to take care of you. But if
 
 DANCING TOWN 13 
 
 you're an old cummer, without chick or child, it's 
 hard, agra vig. My little love, it's hard." 
 
 " Maybe it's in your head, Bridget Roe. My 
 Uncle Robin says there's a lot of sickness that's 
 just in your head." 
 
 " I trust to God so, and maybe your Uncle Robin's 
 right, for there does be a lot in my head, and it 
 going around like a spinning-wheel. I'm an ex- 
 perienced woman, wee Shane, too experienced, and 
 that's the trouble. You've no' heard because you're 
 too young and you would no' understand. I was 
 away from here for twenty years," she said " for 
 more nor twenty. And I knew a power of men 
 in my time, big men, were needful of me. And a 
 power of trouble I raised, too, and it does be coming 
 back to me and me in my old days . . . But you'll 
 be wanting to be getting on ? " 
 
 " Och, no, Bridgeen Roe ; there's no hurry." 
 
 " It does me good to have a wee crack, the folk 
 I see are so few . . . Aye ! There was a power of 
 trouble. There were two men killed themselves and 
 families broken up all by reason of me. I meant 
 no harm, wee Shane, but it happened, and it does 
 be troubling me in my old days. And I sit there 
 af eared by the peat fire, and when I've thought 
 too much on it, I get up and go to the half-door. 
 And I look out on the Moyle, wee Shane, and I think : 
 that's been roaring since the first tick of time, and I 
 see the stars so many of them, and the moon that 
 never changed its shape or size, and it comes to me 
 that nothing matters in the long run, that the killed 
 men were no more nor caught trout, and the rent 
 families no more nor birds' nests fallen from a tree.
 
 i 4 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 . . . None of us are big enough that anything we do 
 matters . . . And than another feeling comes on 
 me, that God is around, and that He'll be dread- 
 ful hard . . . And a wee bit of luck comes my way. 
 The hens, maybe, are laying well, and there's a high 
 price on the eggs, and I think, sure He's the Kindly 
 Man, after all . . But if my eyes leave me, Shane 
 Beg, what will I do ? Sure, I won't have the moon 
 or the stars or the waters of Moyle to put things in 
 their place. And there'll be no luck about me, so as 
 I'll know Himself is the Unforgiving Man." 
 
 " But someone will take care of you, Bridget Roe." 
 " And who, agra ? 'T is not me to go to the 
 poorhouse, and take charity like a cold potato. 
 And my name is MacFarlane, wee Shane, and they're 
 a clan that fights till it dies, that never gives in. 
 And it is'nt to the big ones I knew I'd be writing 
 for help . . . Sure I see them now, what's left alive 
 of them, sitting by their firesides, figuring out their 
 life, and tired with the puzzle of it ; and then they'll 
 remember me for an instant, and a wee joy will come 
 to them in the dim twilight. They'll remember as 
 you'd remember an old song you had'nt rightly got 
 the air of. But you knew it was sweet and there 
 was a grand swing to it . . . Aye, they'll remember 
 me, and they looking into the heart of the fire . . . 
 And you wouldn't have me write them now and tell 
 them I'm only an old cailleach in a cabin on the 
 mountain-side, and my eyes, that they'll remember, 
 are dull like marbles . . . You wouldn't understand, 
 wee Shane . . . But I'm blethering too much about 
 myself. And where is it you were going, my little 
 jo? Where is it? "
 
 DANCING TOWN 15 
 
 " I heard tell the Dancers were to be seen from 
 the mountain-top over the sea, and I thought maybe 
 I'd go up and gi'e them a look, cummer . . . just 
 a look." 
 
 " So you would, wee Shane, so you would. You 
 wouldn't be your father's son or your uncles' nephew 
 if you were to let a marvel like that pass by. It's 
 after adventure you are, and you only four and ten 
 years old. 'T is early you begin, the Campbells of 
 Cosnamara." 
 
 " But sure that isn't adventure, cummer, to be 
 seeing the Dancers in the heat haze of the day. 
 Adventures are robbers and fighting Indians and 
 things like in Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 " Oh, sure everything's adventure, hinny, every 
 time you go looking for something queer and strange, 
 and something with a fine shape and color to it. 
 Adventure isn't in the quick fist and the nimble 
 foot ; it's in the hungry heart and the itching mind. 
 Isn't it myself that knows, that was a wild and wilful 
 girl, and went out into the world for more nor twenty 
 years, and came back the like of an old bitch fox, 
 harried by hunting, and looking for and mindful 
 of the burrow where she was thrown ? ... As 
 we're made, we're made, wee fellow ; you're either 
 a salmon that hungers for the sea, or a cunning old 
 trout that kens its own pool and is content . . . 
 Adventures ! Hech aye ! " 
 
 " Well, I hope your eyes get better, cummer. 
 I do so." 
 
 " I know you mean it, Shaneen Beg, and maybe 
 your wish will help them, maybe it will." 
 
 " Well, I'll be going on my way, Bridget Roe."
 
 16 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " And I'll be finishing mines, wee Shane Camp- 
 bell. And I hope to my God you're better off at 
 the end nor me — me that once talked to earls and 
 barons, and now clucks to a wheen o'hens ; me that 
 once had my coach and pair, and now have only 
 an ass with a creel o' turf ; and no care of money 
 once on me, and now all I have is my spinning-wheel, 
 and the flax not what it used to be, but getting 
 coarser. And my eyes going out, that were the delight 
 of many ... I hope you're better off nor me at 
 the end of the hard and dusty road, wee Shane. I 
 hope to my God so . . ." 
 
 §4 
 
 He thought hard of what the cummer of Cus- 
 hendhu had said about his family, and he on the 
 last leg of the mountain. That he was his father's 
 son puzzled him more than that he was his uncles' 
 nephew, for there was little mention of his father in 
 the house. At the dead man's name his prim Huguenot 
 mother from Nantes pursed her mouth, and in her 
 presence even his uncles were uncomfortable, those 
 great, gallant men. All he knew was that his father, 
 Colquitto Campbell, had been a great Gaelic poet, 
 and that his father and mother had not quite been 
 good friends. Once his Uncle Robin had stopped 
 before a ballad-singer in Ballycastle when the man 
 was striking up a tune : 
 
 " On the deck of this lonely ship to America bound, 
 A husk in my throat and a mist of tears in my eyes — "
 
 DANCING TOWN 17 
 
 His Uncle Robin had given the man a guinea. 
 
 " Why for did yon give the singing man a golden 
 piece, Uncle Robin ? " 
 
 " For the sake of an old song, laddie, an old and 
 sad song ... A song your father made ... It 
 was like seeing his ghost ..." 
 
 " But my father, Uncle Robin—" 
 
 " Your father was the heart of corn, wee Shane, 
 for all they say against him ... I never knew 
 a higher, cleaner heart, but he was easy discourag't 
 . . . Aye, easy thrown down and easy led away 
 ... I was fond of him . . . Am . . . always, and 
 no matter . . . However . . . shall we go and see 
 the racing boats, wee fellow ? " 
 
 And that was all he ever got from Uncle Robin. 
 But he knew some of his father's songs that were 
 sung in the country-side . . . 
 
 Is truagh, a ghradh, gan me agas thu im Bla chliath ! 
 No air an traigh bhain an ait nach robh dnine riamh, 
 Seachd oidhche, seachd la, gan tamh, gan chodal, gan 
 
 bhiadh, 
 Ach thusa bhi 'm ghraidh 's do lamh geal tharam gu 
 
 fial! 
 
 " O God ! my loved one, that you and I were in 
 Dublin town ! Or on a white strand, where no 
 foot ever touched before. Day in, night in, with- 
 out food or sleep, what mattered it ? But you 
 to be loving me and your white arm around me so 
 generously ! " 
 
 He couldn't understand the song, though the 
 lilt of the words captured him. What should people 
 accept being without food or sleep ? And what good 
 was a white arm generously around one ? However,
 
 18 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 that was love, and it was a mystery . . . But that 
 song could nor have been to his mother. He could 
 not imagine her being generous with even a white 
 arm. And none would want to be with her on a 
 strand without food or sleep ; that he instinctively 
 felt. She was a high, proud cliff, stern and proud and 
 beautiful, and that song was a song of May-time and 
 the green rushes . . . 
 
 And other songs of his father's were sung : 
 " Maidne Fhoghmhair — Autumn Mornings," and " In 
 Uir-chill an Chreagain — In the Green Graveyard of 
 Creggan. . ." 
 
 A queer thing that all that should be left of his 
 father was a chill silence and a song a man might 
 raise at the rising of the moon . . . 
 
 Silent he was in his grave, dumb as a stone, and 
 all his uncles were silent, too, barring the little smile 
 at the corners of their mouths, that was but the 
 murmuring of the soul . . . There were paintings 
 of them all and they young in the house, their high 
 heads, their hawks' eyes, Alan and Robin and Mungo 
 . . . And Mungo, too, was dead with Wellington 
 in the Peninsula. He and three of his men were all 
 left of the Antrim company. " Christ ! have I 
 lost this fight, too ? " He laughed and a French 
 ball took him in the gullet. " Damned to that ! " 
 He coughed. " He might have got me in a cleaner 
 place ! " And that was the end of Mungo . . . 
 
 And Alan had gone with Sir John Franklin to 
 the polar seas, and come back with the twisted grin. 
 " 'T was a grand thing you did, Alan, to live through 
 and come back from the wasted lands." " 'T was 
 a grand thing they did, to find the channel o' trade.
 
 DANCING TOWN 19 
 
 But me, I went to find the north pole, with the white 
 bear by the side of it, like you see in the story-books. 
 And I never got within the length of Ireland o' 't ! 
 Trade, aye ; but what's trade to me ? It's a unco 
 place, the world ! " 
 
 His father he could imagine : " Poor Colquitto 
 Campbell ! He wanted to bark like an eagle, and 
 he made a wee sweet sound, like a canary-bird ! 
 Ah, well, give the bottle the sunwise turn, man o' 
 the house, and come closer to me, a bheilin tana 
 nan bpog, O slender mouth of the kisses ! " His 
 father, wee Shane thought, must have worn the 
 twisted grin, too. 
 
 He knew what the twisted grin meant. It meant 
 defeat. He had seen it on his Uncle Alan's face 
 when he lost the championship of Ireland on the golf 
 links of Portrush. And that morning he had been so 
 confident ! " Tis the grand golf I'll play the day, 
 and the life tingling in my finger-tips ! " And great 
 golf he did play, with his ripping passionate shots, but 
 a thirty-foot putt on the home green beat him. 
 All through the match his face had been dour, but 
 now came the outstretched hand and the smile 
 at the corner of the mouth : 
 
 " Congratulations, sir ! 'T is yourself has the 
 grand eye for the hard putt on the tricky green ! " 
 
 The wee grin meant that Alan had been beaten. 
 
 And Uncle Robin, too, the wisest and oldest of 
 them all, who had been to Arabia and had been 
 all through Europe and was Goethe's friend, he 
 had the twisted grin of the beaten man. Only 
 occasionally you could get past the grin of Uncle 
 Robin, as he had gotten past it the day Uncle Robin
 
 20 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 had spoken of his brother, Shane's father. And 
 sometimes when a great hush was on the mountains 
 and the Moyle was silent, Uncle Robin would murmer 
 a verse of his great poet friend's : 
 
 " Ueber alien Gipfcln 
 
 1st Ruh, 
 In alien Wipfeln, 
 
 Spiirest du 
 Kaum einen Hauch. 
 Die Vogel schweigen im Walde 
 Warte nur, balde 
 
 Riihest du auch ! " 
 
 The sharp u's and heavy gutturals were so like 
 Gaidhlig, it seemed queer wee Shane could not 
 understand the poem ; but Uncle Robin translated 
 it into Gaidhlig : 
 
 Os cionn na morbheanna 
 Ta sith — 
 
 And the melody of it was like the plucking of 
 a harper's strings. So much in so little, and every 
 note counted, and the last line like a dim quaint 
 bar : 
 
 Beidh sith agad fein ! " You will rest, too ! " 
 
 A queer thing, the men who were beaten and 
 smiled. A queer thing the men who, beaten, were 
 more gallant than the winners. A queer thing for 
 the cummer of Cushendhu to say, she who was so 
 wise after the hot foolishness of youth, that he 
 was his uncles' nephew and his father's son. A 
 queer thing that. A queer, dark, and secret thing
 
 DANCING TOWN 21 
 
 §5 
 
 The memory of his Uncle Robin stuck in his mind 
 and he going up the mountain. His Uncle Robin 
 knew all there was to be known in the world, the 
 immense learned man. When he was spoken to of 
 anything strange, he had always an explanation of it. 
 When the mirage off Portrush was mentioned, he 
 could talk at length of strange African mirages that 
 the travellers see in the desert at the close of day, 
 oases and palm-trees and minarets, so you would 
 think you were near to a town or a green pasture and 
 you miles and miles away. And there was a sight to 
 be seen off Sicily that the ignorant Italian people 
 thought was the work of Morgan le Fay. And 
 in the Alps was a horror men spoke of and called the 
 Spectre of the Brocken. 
 
 All these strange occurrences were as simple as 
 the alphabet to Uncle Robin. He would explain 
 it as a sight reflected on the cloud and thrown on a 
 sea of mist or a desert as on a screen, using difficult 
 words, like " refraction," and words from Euclid, 
 like " angles." But Uncle Alan would object, 
 Uncle Alan mistrusting difficult words and words from 
 Euclid. Alan would raise his head from splicing a 
 fishing-rod or cleaning the lock of a gun or polishing 
 a snaffle : 
 
 " You were ay the one for explanations, Robin. 
 Maybe you've got an explanation for the gift ? ' By 
 the gift Uncle Alan meant the second sight. 
 
 " Ah, sure : 't is only mind reading and sympathy. " 
 
 " O my God ! Now listen, Robin. You ken when 
 you dragged me from the horse-show the last time 
 we were in Dublin, to the library of the What-you-may-
 
 22 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 call-him — Archaeological Society or so'thin'. You 
 ken the book you showed me about Antrim, and 
 what was seen off the cliffs one time. There was 
 a great black arm in the air, and a hand to the wrist 
 of it, and to the shoulder a crosspiece with a ring like 
 one end of an anchor. And that disappeared. And 
 then immediately there showed a ship, with the masts 
 and sails and tackles and men, and it sailed stern 
 foremost and it sank stern foremost, all in the red 
 sky. And then there was a fort with a castle on the 
 top of it and there were fire and smoke coming out of 
 it, as if a grand fight was on. And the fort divided 
 into two ships, that chased each other, and then sank. 
 Then there was a chariot with two horses, and chasing 
 that was a strange thing like a serpent, a snake's 
 head at one end, and a bulk at the other like a snail's 
 house. And it gained on the chariot and gave it a 
 blow. And out of the chariot came a bull, and after 
 it came a dog, and the bull and the dog fought as in a 
 gaming-pit. And then suddenly all was clear, no 
 cloud or mist or anything in the northern air. Am I 
 right or am n't I ? Wasn't that in the book, Robin 
 More ? " 
 
 " It was." 
 
 " And now, Robin, my man, wasn't that signed by 
 respectable people : Mr. Allye, a minister, and a 
 Lieutenant Dunsterville and a Lieutenant Dwine and 
 Mr. Bates and twelve others, all of whom saw it near 
 or around the time of the Boyne Water ? Wasn't it 
 signed by the decent people ? " 
 
 " It was." 
 
 " And what explanation have you got for that, 
 you and your master of arts of Trinity College ! '
 
 DANCING TOWN 23 
 
 " They were daft — gone in the head. Daft or 
 drunk." 
 
 " My song ! And maybe John was daft when he 
 saw the vision of Patmos ! " 
 
 " I would no' be surprised." 
 
 " Na, Robin More ; you would not be surprised if 
 you saw a trout that cantered or a horse that flew. 
 You'd have an explanation. You're the queer hard 
 man to live with, Robin, with your explanations." 
 
 Willie John Boyd, the servant boy, removed his 
 cutty pipe and hazarded a suggestion. 
 
 " Queer things happened in the auld days." 
 
 " If there were queerer things nor you in the auld 
 days," Alan laughed, " it must have been like a 
 circus." 
 
 But mightn't they both be right ? wee Shane 
 thought, and he trudging up the mountain-side. His 
 Uncle Alan knew an awful lot. There was none could 
 coax a trout from a glass-clear pool with a dry fly 
 like Alan Campbell. He knew the weather, when it 
 would storm and when it would clear, and from what 
 point the wind would blow to-morrow. He could 
 nurse along the difficult flax and knew the lair of the 
 otter and had a great eye for hunting a fox, and a better 
 eye for a horse than a Gipsy. Might there not be 
 things in nature, as he said, that none knew of ? And 
 mightn't there be explanations for them, as Uncle 
 Robin, who had read every book, claimed there were ? 
 Mightn't they both be right, who thought each other 
 wrong, and they arguing by the red fire, fighting and 
 snarling like dogs and loving each other with the 
 strange soft love of lovers when the trees are a-rustle 
 and the moon high ?
 
 24 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 §6 
 
 He had thought to come up to the top of the 
 mountain where the cairn was, and the dark and 
 deepset lake, and to sit down in the heather and wait 
 half-an-hour maybe while the curlew called, and then 
 have Dancing Town take form and color before his 
 eyes, hold it until every detail was visible, and then 
 fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had 
 thought to be prepared and receptive. 
 
 But suddenly it was upon him, in the air, over the 
 waters of Moyle. . . 
 
 A sweep of fear ran over him, and he grew cold, 
 so strange it was, so against nature. Clear and high, 
 as in some old print, and white and green, the town 
 and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, 
 hot and golden, but the town itself was in morning 
 sunlight. A cluster of great houses and little houses, 
 all white, a great church, and a squat dun fort, and 
 about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees 
 that swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran 
 down to a white beach, and on the beach foamy waves 
 curled like a man's beard. And in the air the town 
 quivered and danced, as imaged trees seem to dance 
 on running water . . . 
 
 On one side was Ireland, and on one side was 
 Scotland, and high in the air between them was 
 Dancing Town . . . 
 
 No one was in the streets that wee Shane could see, 
 and yet the town was lifeful, some tropical city where 
 the green jalousies were closed in the heat of the 
 midday sun, and where no one was on the streets, 
 barring some unseen old beggar or peddling woman 
 drowsing in the shade. The town was sleeping not
 
 DANCING TOWN 25 
 
 with the sleep of Scotland, that is the sleep of dead 
 majestic, melancholy kings, nor with the sleep of 
 Ireland, that is tired and harassed and old. It was 
 not as lonely as sleeping lakes are where the bittern 
 booms like a drum ... It slept as a child sleeps, lips 
 apart and chubby fingers uncurled, and happy . . . 
 And all the time it quivered in the clear air . . . 
 
 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. . . . And the moon 
 rising on tropic seas, while a guitar hummed with 
 a deep vibrant note. . . . And the perfume of strange 
 tropic trees. . . . 
 
 But meantime the town danced in the clear air 
 . . . And — 
 
 " It's gone ! " said wee Shane. 
 
 One moment it was there, and the next there were 
 only Ireland and Scotland and the waters of Moylc, 
 and a ship going drowsily for the Clyde. 
 
 And for a long time he waited, thinking Dancing 
 Town might come again. But it did not come. The 
 schooner off the Mull lay over, and the Moyle awoke. 
 A breeze rambled up the mountain, and the heather
 
 26 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 tinkled its strange dry tinkle. And afar off a curlew 
 called, and a grouse crowed in defiance. 
 
 The moment of magic was by, and wee Shane went 
 down the mountain. 
 
 § 7 
 
 As he went down the mountain he tried to puzzle 
 out the why and wherefore of Dancing Town. 
 
 Of course there were things you could not explain, 
 like the banshee ; or the Naked Hangman, who strides 
 through the valleys on midsummer's eve with his 
 gallows under his arm ; or the Death Coach, with its 
 headless horses and its headless driver. There 
 was no use bringing these matters up to Uncle Robin. 
 Uncle Robin would only laugh and shout : " Havers, 
 bairn ! Wha's been filling your wee head with 
 nonsense ? " But you could no more deny their 
 existence than you could that of Apollyon, whom you 
 read about in Pilgrim's Progress, and who wandered 
 up and down the world and to and fro in it ; or of the 
 fairies, whose sweet little piping many heard at night 
 as they passed the forts of the little people ; or of the 
 tiny cobbling leprechawns, who knew where the 
 Danes had hid their store of gold in crocks such as hold 
 butter. . . Of these there was no explanation 
 but the act of God. And Uncle Robin was queer. 
 He put no store in the act of God. 
 
 Now, if it had been an angel he had seen in the 
 high air, it would have been the Act — or the banshee, 
 and her crooning and keening by the riverside, with 
 her white cloak, her red, burnished hair. . . . But it 
 was an island he had seen, a dancing town, with his
 
 DANCING TOWN 27 
 
 own hard wee Scots-Irish eyes. And that was not an 
 act of God ; it was a fact, and so outside his Uncle 
 Alan's bailiwick and within his Uncle Robin's. His 
 Uncle Robin would say it was the reflected image of 
 some place in the world. Aye, he'd take his Uncle 
 Robin's word for that. But where was it ? Surely, 
 as yet, it was undiscovered. It had the quiet of a 
 June evening, that land had, and a grand shimmering 
 beauty. . . . And if it was known where it was, 
 wouldn't the mountainy folk be leaving their cabins, 
 and the strong farmers their plowed lands, and the 
 whining tinkers be hoofing the road for it ? If it was 
 known where that land was . . . 
 
 It occurred to him it must have been that land his 
 father meant and he writing his poem of the Green 
 Graveyard of Creggan. While he was sleeping under 
 the weeping yew-trees the young queen had touched 
 the sleeping poet on the shoulder. 
 
 " A shiolaigh charthannaigh," she said, " O kindly 
 kinsman, na caithtear thusa ins na nealtaibh broin, 
 let you not be thrown under the clouds of sorrow ! 
 Acht eirigh in do sheasamh, but rise in your standing, 
 agas gluais liomsa siar' sa' rod, and travel with me 
 westward in the road. Go Tir Dheas na Meala, to 
 the shimmering land of honey where the foreigner 
 has not the sway. And you will find pleasantry in 
 white halls persuading me to the strains of music.'" 
 
 Surely his father, too, had seen Dancing Town ! 
 
 And it was an old story that Oisin had found it, 
 when he rode with the princess over the waves on a 
 white horse whose hoofs never touched water, and he 
 abode with her in Tir nan Og, in the Land of Them 
 Who are Young, for a thousand years or more, until
 
 28 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 the great homesickness for Ireland took him, that takes 
 the strongest, and he came for a visit on the white 
 horse ; but the girths of the saddle broke, and he fell 
 to the ground, and the horse flew away. And he who 
 had been strong and young and beautiful became old 
 and bald and blind, and Patrick of the Bells and 
 Crosses took him, and put him with the groaning 
 penitents, who beat their breast under the fear of 
 hell. And he, who had known Tir nan Og and the 
 Silver Woman, was a drooling ancient with a wee lad 
 to lead him. . . . But that was just a winter's tale 
 with no sense to it. 
 
 But there were other things in books that had the 
 ring of truth to them. There was the voyage of 
 Maeldun, who had set out in his coracle, and visited 
 islands. The Island of Huge Ants was one, and wee 
 Shane had seen in his geography book pictures of 
 armadillos, and he shrewdly surmised that Maeldun 
 had been to South America. And there was the 
 Island of Red-Hot Animals, but that was a poser. 
 Still and all, the rhinoceros had armor like an old 
 knight's, and that would surely get red-hot under the 
 suns of the equator. It would explain, too, why the 
 rhinoceros favored the water, like a cow in July. . . . 
 Sure that was it : Maeldun had been to Africa. And 
 Maeldun, too, had found the Fortunate Isle. Brendan 
 too, had known it. Wasn't it in old charts — St. 
 Brendan's Isle ? He said he found it, and surely a 
 saint of God wouldn't lie. . . . 
 
 Och, it was there somewhere, but people were 
 different from what they were in the ancient days. 
 They didn't bother. If they had told his father about
 
 DANCING TOWN 29 
 
 it, sure all Colquitto would have done was to call for 
 pen and paper. 
 
 " Mo bhron air anfhairrge," he would have written ; 
 " My grief on the sea — how it comes between me and 
 the land where my mind might be easy — " And 
 then he'd have lain back and chanted it. " A 
 vourneen, did you ever in all your life hear a poem as 
 good as my poem ? Sure old Homer's jealous in the 
 black clouds. Was there ever a Greek poet the equal 
 of a Gaelic one ? Anois, teacht an Erraigh — now the 
 moment spring comes in, 'tis I will hoist sail, inneosad 
 mo sheol. ..." 
 
 And Alan Donn might have started to find it, but 
 at the first golf links he'd stop, " to take the conceit 
 out of the local people, and to give them something 
 to talk of, and they old men," or to match his coursing 
 greyhound against any dog in the world for a ten- 
 pound note, or to deluther some red-cheeked likely 
 woman. . . . 
 
 And Uncle Robin might hear of it, and he'd sit 
 down and write a book, saying where it probably was, 
 and how you might get there, and what the people 
 were like, and whom they were probably descended 
 from. . . . And the book would be in all the libraries 
 of the world, and people would be writing him telling 
 him what a great head was on him, and he'd mutter : 
 " Nonsense ! nonsense ! All nonsense ! " and stroke 
 his great red beard. . . . 
 
 But wouldn't it be the funny thing, the queer 
 and funny thing, if he himself, wee Shane Campbell, 
 were to go out and discover that island, and to own it, 
 and to have it marked in the maps and charts, " Wee 
 Shane Campbell's Island," for all to read and see ? . . .
 
 3 o THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Decent wee fellow, is it about here somewhere 
 the house of the McFees ? " 
 
 Shane had turned into the main road that ran 
 along the sea-shore on the way homeward when the 
 voice hailed him. It was a great black-bearded man, 
 sitting on the ditch, holding his shoes in his hand. 
 His face was tanned to mahogany, and in his ears were 
 little gold rings. He wop j clothes that were obviously 
 new, obviously uncomfortable. 
 
 " If you keep on the road about half-a-mile and 
 then turn to the left, and keep on there until you 
 come to a loaning near a well with a hawthorn bush 
 couching over it, and turn to the left down that 
 loaning, you'll come to it. It's a wee thatched house, 
 needing a coat of whitewash . It's got a byre with a 
 slate roof, and a rowantree near it. You canna' miss 
 it." 
 
 " Now isn't that the queer thing," the big man said, 
 " me that thought I knew every art and part of this 
 country, and that could find my way in the dark from 
 Java Head to Poplar Parish, can't remember the 
 place where I was born and reared ? Forty years of 
 travelling on the main ocean and thinking long for 
 this place, and now when I come back I know no more 
 about it than a fish does of dry land." He stood up 
 painfully. " And me that thought I would come back 
 leaping like a hare am now killed entirely with the 
 soreness of my feet." 
 
 " You're not accustomed to walking, then, honest 
 man ? " 
 
 " 'Deed, and you may say I'm not, decent wee 
 fellow. I'm a sailorman, and aboard ship there's 
 very little use for the feet. You've got to be quick
 
 DANCING TOWN 31 
 
 as a fish with the hands, and have great strength in 
 the arms of you. And you must have toes to grip, 
 and thighs to brace you against the heeling timbers. 
 But to be walking somewhere for long, hitting the 
 road with your feet like you'd be hitting a wall with 
 your head, it's unnatural to a sailing man. A half-a- 
 mile, did you say ? " 
 
 " Honest man," said wee Shane, troubled, " are 
 you looking for any one in the house of the McFees ? " 
 
 " For a woman that bore me and put me to her 
 breast. An old woman now, decent wee fellow." 
 
 11 You'll no' find her, honest man." 
 
 " She's dead ? " 
 
 " I saw her with the pennies on her eyes not two 
 months ago." 
 
 " So my mother's dead," said the big man. " So 
 my mother's dead. Ah, well, all her troubles are 
 over. It's forty years since I saw her, and she the 
 strapping woman. And in forty years she must have 
 had a power of trouble." 
 
 " She looked unco peaceful, honest man." 
 
 " The dead are always peaceful, decent wee fellow. 
 So my mother's dead. Well, that alters things." 
 
 " You'll be staying at home then, honest man ? " 
 
 " I'll be going back to sea, decent wee fellow. I 
 had intended to stay at home and be with the old 
 woman in her last days, the like of a pilot that brings 
 a ship in, as you might say. But it would have been 
 queer and hard. Herself, now, had no word of En- 
 glish ? " 
 
 " Old Annapla McFee spoke only the Gaidhlig." 
 
 " And the Gaidhlig is gone from me, as the flower 
 goes from the fruit-tree. And there could have been
 
 32 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 little conversation betwixt us, she remembering fairs 
 and dances and patterns in the Gaidhlig, and me 
 thinking of strange foreign ports in the English tongue. 
 Poor company I'd have been for an old woman and 
 she making her last mooring. I'd have been little 
 assistance. Forty years between us — strange ports 
 and deep soundings. Oh, we'd have been making 
 strange." 
 
 " Ah, maybe not, honest man." 
 
 " How could it have been any other way, decent 
 wee lad ? She'd have been the strange, pitiful old 
 cummer to me, who minded her the strapping woman, 
 and I'd have been a queer bearded man to her, who 
 minded me only as a wee fellow, the terror of the glen. 
 People change every day, and there's a lot of change 
 in forty years. 
 
 " And, besides, it would have been gey hard on 
 me, wee lad. The grape and spade would be clumsy 
 to my hands, there being no life to them after the 
 swinging spars. And my fingers, used to splicing 
 rope, would not have the touch for milking a cow. 
 And Id' feel lost, wee fellow, some day and me plowing 
 a field, to see a fine ship on the waters, out of Glasgow 
 port for the Plate maybe, and to think of it off the 
 Brazils, and the pampero coming quick as a thrown 
 knife, and me not aboard to help shorten sail or take 
 a trick at the wheel. And it might have made me 
 ugly toward the old woman. And I wouldn't have 
 had that at all, at all. . . . But she's finished the voyage, 
 poor cummer. . . . And it's a high ship and a capstan 
 shanty for me again ... ah, well. ..." 
 
 " It's a wonder, honest man, you wouldn't stay 
 on land at peace and you forty years at sea."
 
 DANCING TOWN 33 
 
 " Well, it's a queer thing, decent wee fellow, but 
 once you get the salt water in your blood you're 
 gone. A queer itching is in your veins. It's like 
 a disease. It is so. It spoils you for the fire on 
 winter nights and for the hay-fields in the month o' 
 June. And it puts a great bar between you and the 
 folk o' dry land, such as there is between a fighting 
 man and a cowardly fellow. It's the salt in the 
 blood, I think ; but you'd have to ask a doctor about 
 that. 
 
 " I'm not saying it's a good life. It's a dog's life. 
 It is so. And when you're at sea you say : ' Wasn't 
 I the fool to ever leave dry land ; and if I get back 
 and get a job,' says you, ' you'll never see me leave 
 it again. It's a wee farm for me,' you'll say. And 
 then somehow you'll find yourself back aboard ship. 
 And you'll be off the Horn, up aloft, fighting a sail 
 like you'd fight a man for your life, or you'll be in 
 the horse latitudes, as they call them, and no breeze 
 stirring, and not a damned thing to do but holystone 
 decks, the like of an old pauper that does be scrubbing 
 a poorhouse floor. And you say : ' Sure I'd rather 
 be a tinker travelling the roads, with his ass and cart 
 and dog and woman, nor a galley-slave to this bastard 
 of a mate that has no more feeling for a poor sailorman 
 nor a hound has for a rabbit. It's a dog's life,' you 
 say, ' and when we make port I'm finished.' 
 
 ' But you make port and you stay awhile, and 
 you find that the woman you've been thinking of as 
 Queen of Sheba is no more nor a common drab. 
 And the publican you thought of as the grand gener- 
 ous fellow has no more use for you and your bit 
 silver gone. It's a queer thing, but they on land think
 
 34 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 of nothing but money. And one day you think, 
 and the woman beside you is pastier nor dough, and 
 the man of the public house is no more nor a cheap 
 trickster, and you're listening to the conversation 
 of the timid urban people, and the house you're in 
 is filthier nor a pig's sty. And you say : ' Is this me 
 that minds the golden women of the islands, and they 
 with red flowers in their hair ? Is this me that fought 
 side by side with good shipmates in Callao ? Am I 
 listening to the chatter of these mild people, me 
 that's heard grand stories in the forecastle of how 
 this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that 
 man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the 
 hero that dowsed skysails, and they crackling like 
 guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used 
 to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern ? ' And 
 you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the 
 public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say : 
 ' Listen, bastard ! Do you ken e'er a master wants a 
 sailing man ? A sailor as knows his trade, crafty in 
 trouble, and a wildcat in danger, and as peaceful as a 
 hare in the long grass ? ' And you're off again on the 
 old trade and the old road, where the next port is 
 the best port, and the morrow is a braver day. . . . 
 So it's so long, decent wee fellow ! I'm off on it 
 again. It's a dog's life, that's what it is, the life of a 
 sailing man. But you couldn't change. I suppose 
 it's the salt in the blood." 
 
 " You're off, honest man ? " 
 
 " Aye, I'm off, wee fellow. And thank you kindly 
 for what you told me, and for telling me especially 
 the old woman looked so peaceful and her with the 
 pennies on her eyes."
 
 DANCING TOWN 35 
 
 " But aren't you going up to see the house ? " 
 
 " I don't think I will, wee lad. I've had a picture 
 in my mind for forty years of the big house was in it, 
 and the coolth of the well. And maybe it isn't so at 
 all. I'd rather not know the difference. I'll keep 
 my picture." 
 
 ' But the house is yours," wee Shane urged him. 
 ' You're not going to leave it as it is. Aren't you 
 going to sell it and take the money ? " 
 
 ' Och, to hell with that I I've no time," said the 
 sailing man, and he limped painfully back down the 
 road. 
 
 §8 
 
 His Uncle Robin had gone off to discuss with some 
 Belfast crony the strange things he used to discuss, 
 like the origin of the Round Tower of Ireland or the 
 cryptic dialect of the Gaelic masons or whether the 
 Scots came to Scotland from Ireland or to Ireland from 
 Scotland, all very important for a member of the 
 Royal Irish Academy. And his mother had gone off 
 shopping to buy linen for the house at Cushendhu, 
 poplin for dresses, delft from Holland for the kitchen 
 and glass from Waterford for the sideboard in the 
 dining-room. And because he was to go to the 
 boarding-school that night and thereafter would be 
 harsh discipline, and because his Uncle Robin had 
 known he was on the point of crying, he had been 
 allowed to wander around Belfast by himself for a few 
 hours with a silver shilling in his pocket. And wee 
 Shane had made for the quays. . . . 
 
 The four of them had sat in a cold, precise room 
 that morning, his Uncle Robin, his mother, wee Shane,
 
 36 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 and the principal, a fat, grey-eyed, insincere South- 
 erner, with a belly like a Chinese god's, dewlaps like 
 a hunting hound's, cold, stubby, and very clean hands, 
 and a gown that gave him a grotesque dignity. And 
 he had eyed wee Shane unctuously. And wee Shane 
 did not like fat, unctuous men. He liked them lean 
 and active, as glensmen are. 
 
 And the principal had spoken in stilted French to 
 his mother, who had responded in French that 
 crackled like a whip. And the principal had licked 
 the ground before Uncle Robin. It was " Yes, Dr. 
 Campbell ! " And, " No, Dr. Campbell ! " where 
 the meanest glensman would have said " Aye, 
 maybe you're right, Robin More," or, " Na, na, you're 
 out there, Robin Campbell." 
 
 " The old hypocrite ! " It was the only word wee 
 Shane could describe the master by, a favorite word 
 of his Uncle Alan's. 
 
 And in the corridors he had met some of the scholars, 
 white-faced fellows ; and the masters — they had mean 
 eyes, like the eyes of badgers. 
 
 " I dinna want to go ! " He blurted out on the 
 quays of Belfast. 
 
 " Where dinna you want to go, wee laddie ? " 
 A black, curly-headed man with grey eyes and a 
 laugh like a girl's stopped short. He had blue 
 clothes and brass buttons and stepped lightly as a cat. 
 
 " I dinna want to go to school." 
 
 " Sure, all wee caddies go to school." 
 
 ' I ken that. But I don't want to go to school 
 with a bunch of whey-faced gets, and masters lean 
 and mean as rats, and a principal puffed out like a 
 setting hen."
 
 DANCING TOWN 37 
 
 " Oh, for God's sake ! is that the way you feel 
 about it ? Laddie, you don't talk like a townsman. 
 Where are you from ? " 
 
 " I'm from the Glens of Antrim. From Cush- 
 endhu." 
 
 " I'm a Rahgery man myself. Tha an Gaidhlig 
 agad ? 
 
 " Tha, go direach ! " 
 
 " So you've got the Gaidhlig too ? Who are your 
 people, wee laddie ? 
 
 " I'm a Campbell of Cushendhu." 
 
 " For God's sake ! you're no a relation of Alan 
 Campbell's, wha sailed with Sir John Franklin for 
 the pole ? " 
 
 " I'm his nephew." 
 
 " I've sailed under your Uncle Alan. He's the 
 heart 0' corn. And so they're going to make a 
 scholar out of you, like your Uncle Robin. Oh, well, 
 oh, well. Would you like to come around with me 
 and see the ships ? 
 
 " I'd like fine to see the ships." 
 
 " You'll see all manner of ships here. Square- 
 riggers, fore-and-afters, hermaphrodites. You'll see 
 Indiamen and packets from Boston. You'll see ships 
 that do be going to Germany, and some for the 
 Mediterranean ports. You'll see a whaler that's put 
 in for repairs. You'll see fighting ships. You'll 
 see fishers of the Dogger Banks, and boats that go to 
 Newfoundland, where the cod do feed. All manner of 
 sloops and schooners, barkantines and brigs, but the 
 bonniest of them all lies off Carrickfergus." 
 
 " And who's she, Raghery man ? 
 ' The Antrim Maid is her nomination."
 
 38 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " And do you sail her ? " 
 
 " I sail in her, laddie Sail and sail in her. Mine 
 from truck to keelson she is, and I'm master of her. 
 Father and mother and brother to her, and husband, 
 too. I'm proud of her." The Rathliner laughed. 
 " You may notice." 
 
 " And why for shouldn't you be ? She must be 
 the grand boat surely, man who sailed with my 
 Uncle Alan." 
 
 §9 
 
 " Raghery man, you who've sailed the high seas 
 and the low seas, did you ever put into an island 
 that has great coolth to it and great sunshine, a town 
 quiet as a mouse, a strip of sand like silver, the waves 
 turning with a curl and chime ? " 
 
 " Where did you hear tell of that island, wee laddie? 
 Was it in the books you do be reading at school ? " 
 
 " I saw it, and it dancing in the sun. From 
 Slievenambanderg, I saw it, and it over the waters 
 of Moyle." 
 
 The Rathliner sat on a mooring bitt on the quay 
 and filled his pipe. 
 
 " I ken that island," he said. " I ken it well." 
 " And what name is on it, Raghery man ? " 
 " The name that's on it is Fiddlers' Green." 
 " Were you ever there, Raghery man ? " There 
 was a sinking in wee Shane's heart. 
 
 " I was never there, laddie, never there. Often- 
 times I thought I'd raised it, but it was never there, 
 wee laddie, never there. There's men as says they've 
 been there, but I could hardly believe them, though 
 there's queer things past belief on the sea. There's
 
 DANCING TOWN 39 
 
 a sea called Sargasso, and if I told you half the things 
 about it, you'd think me daft. And there's the ghost 
 of ships at sea, and that's past thinking. And there's 
 the great serpent, that I've seen with my own eyes. . . . 
 
 " Aye, Fiddlers' Green ! Where is it, and how 
 do you get there ? The sailormen would give all 
 their years to know." 
 
 " Why for do they call it Fiddlers' Green ?." 
 
 " It's Fiddlers' Green, laddie, because it's the place 
 you come to at the cool of the day, when the bats 
 are out, and the cummers put by their spinning. 
 And there's nou't there but sport and music. A 
 lawn like a golf green, drink that is not ugly, women 
 would wander with you on to the heather when the 
 moon's rising, and never a thought in their mind of 
 the money in your pocket, but their eyes melting at 
 you, and they thinking you're the champion hero of 
 the world. . . . And all the fiddlers fiddling the 
 finest of dance music : hornpipes like ' The Birds 
 among the Trees ' and ' The Green Fields of America ' ; 
 reels like ' The Swallow-tail Coat ' and ' The Wind 
 that Shakes the Barley ' ; slip-jigs would make a 
 cripple agile as a hare. . . . And you go asleep with no 
 mate to wake you in a blow, but the sound of an old 
 piper crooning to you as a cummer croons. And the 
 birds will wake you with their douce singing. . . . 
 Aye, Fiddlers' Green. ..." 
 
 And they were silent for a minute in the soft Ulster 
 sunshine. 
 
 " Would you have any use for a lad like myself 
 aboard your ship, Raghery man ? " 
 
 " Och, sure, what would you do with the sea, 
 wee fellow ? "
 
 4 o THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " I ken it well already, Raghery man. And 
 I'm no clumsy in a boat. I can sail a sloop with any 
 man. On a reach or full and by, I'll keep her there. 
 With the breeze biting her weather bow, I'll hold 
 her snout into it. Or with the wind behind me, I'll 
 ride her like you'd canter a horse." 
 
 " I might take you to learn you seamanship and 
 navigation, but you'd be no use as a sailor, wee laddie, 
 and it's not for a Campbell to be a cabin-boy." 
 " Take me to learn the trade, then. Take me now." 
 " I'd like fine, wee fellow, but I couldn't do it. 
 You might be cut out for a scholar for all you think 
 you're not. Or it might be a soldier you're meant 
 for. I couldn't interfere with your life. It's an 
 unco responsibility, interfering with a destiny, a 
 terrible thing." 
 
 " Will you talk to my Uncle Robin ? Will you ? " 
 " Och, now, how could I talk to your Uncle Robin, 
 him that's written books, and is counted one of the 
 seven learned men of Ireland ? Sure, I wouldn't 
 understand what he'd be saying, and he'd have no 
 ear for a common sailing man. If it was your Uncle 
 Alan, now — " 
 
 " There's not a person in the world but has the 
 ear of my Uncle Robin. And there's none easier to 
 talk to, not even the apple woman at the corner of the 
 quay. Will you come with me and talk to him ? " 
 " I couldn't, laddie. Your Uncle Alan, now — " 
 " I'll do the talking, then ; but will you come ? " 
 " Och, wee fellow, it would be foolish." 
 " You wouldn't have me think hard of a man of 
 Raghery ? " 
 
 " No, I wouldn't have any one think hard of the
 
 DANCING TOWN 41 
 
 folk of Raghery, so I suppose I'll have to come. I 
 don't know what your Uncle Robin will say to me for 
 putting notions in your head. It's awful foolish. 
 But I'll come." 
 
 § 10 
 
 " So there'd never be the making of a scholar in 
 me, Uncle Robin. A ship on the sea or a new strange 
 person would be always more to me nor a book. I 
 can read and write and figure ! what more do I 
 want ? And, och, sir, the school would be a prison 
 to me, the scholars droning and ink on their fingers, 
 and the hard-faced masters at the desk. I'd be woe 
 for the outside, for the sunshine and the water and 
 the bellying winds — " 
 
 His Uncle Robin tapped the window-pane of 
 the club and thought hard. The Rathlin sailor 
 stood by, puzzled. 
 
 " But, childeen asthore, sure you don't know 
 now what you want. Your career, laddie ! Think 
 a bit ! The church, for instance — " 
 
 " Och, Uncle Robin, is it me in the church that 
 must say my prayers by me lee lone, so loath am I 
 to let the people see what's in me ? I'd be the queer 
 minister, dumb as a fish — " 
 
 " You once had a notion for the army, laddie." 
 
 " So I had, sir ; and fine I'd like the uniforms 
 and the swords and the horses, but I wouldn't have 
 the heart to kill a man, and me never seeing him 
 before. If a man did me a wrong, I'd kill him quick 
 as I'd wash my hands, but never seeing him before, 
 I could na, I just could na — "
 
 42 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " It's a clean thing, the sea," the Raghery man 
 ventured. 
 
 " He's so very young," objected Uncle Robin. 
 
 " There's nothing but that or the books for me, 
 Uncle Robin. A sailor or a scholar — and I don't 
 think I'd make out well with the books." 
 
 " The books aren't all they're cracked up to be, 
 wee Shane. I've written books myself, and who reads 
 them but a wheen of graybeards, and they drowsing 
 by the fire. Knowledge, laddie, I have that. . . . 
 And it isn't even wisdom. Knowledge is like dry 
 twigs you collect with care to make a big fire you 
 can warm your shins at, and wisdom is the gift of 
 God that's like the blossom on the gorse. I've 
 searched books and taken out the marrow of dead 
 men's brains, and after all, even all my knowledge 
 may be wrong. . . . Your father's name will be 
 remembered as long as the Gaidhlig lasts, for songs 
 that came to him as easily as a woman's kiss. And 
 your Uncle Alan's footprints are near the pole. And 
 Mungo is remembered forever because he died with 
 a laugh. Not that I'm saying anything against 
 them, wee Shane ; better men will never be seen. 
 But Daniel Donelly's name is remembered because he 
 beat Cooper in a fight, and songs were made about it. 
 And I'll be remembered only when some old librarian 
 dusts a forgotten book. And I was supposed to be 
 the wise pup o' the litter, with my books and my study. 
 And all I have now is a troubled mind in my latter 
 days. Aye, the books ! . . . " 
 
 " Shall I go to sea, sir ? " 
 
 " Is it up to me ? And how about your mother, 
 laddie ? "
 
 DANCING TOWN 43 
 
 " Oh, there's little warmth within her for me, sir. 
 She's a bitter woman. She does na like my father's 
 breed." 
 
 " Are you your father's breed through, wee caddie ? 
 Are you Campbell all ? Here, gi' us a look at your face. 
 Aye, the eyes, the nose, the proud throw to the head 
 of you. I'm afeared there's little of your mother in 
 you, laddie ; afeared there's none at all." 
 
 " I'm no' ashamed o' my kind, sir." 
 
 " And you're set on going to sea ? " 
 
 "I'd like it fine, sir." 
 
 " And if it does na turn out the way you thought 
 it would, you're not going to cry or turn sour ? ' 
 
 " I thought you knew me better nor that, Uncle 
 Robin." 
 
 " I do." The big man laid his hand on the boy's 
 shoulder and smiled at the shipmaster. " Take him, 
 Raghery man ! " 
 
 § ii 
 
 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 Carrick- 
 fergus 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. 
 
 The town of Carrickfergus began to slip by as if
 
 44 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 drawn by horses. The mate ran up the ladder of 
 the poop. 
 
 " Topsails, McCafferty ! ' the Raghery man 
 ordered. 
 
 " Topsails, sir." 
 
 A minute later there came the mate's voice from 
 amidships : 
 
 " Sheet home the topsails — and put your backs 
 into it ! " 
 
 Patter of feet. An accordion began to whine 
 like a tinker. Creak and strain. Faster lapping 
 of water. A song raised in chorus : — 
 
 As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street — 
 
 Yo-ho ! Blow the man down ! 
 As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street — 
 
 Give us some time till we blow the man down ! 
 
 A trim little bumboat I chanced for to meet ! 
 
 Blow, bullies, blow the man down ! 
 A trim little bumboat I chanced for to meet ! 
 
 Give us some time till we blow the man down ! 
 
 She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows ! 
 
 Yo-ho ! Blow the man down ! 
 She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows ! 
 
 Give us some time till we blow the man down. 
 Blow the man down ! 
 
 Blow, bullies ! Blow the man down !
 
 BOOK TWO 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE
 
 § I 
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 
 
 THE feeling that was uppermost in him as he 
 sat outside the thatched cottage in the moon- 
 light, 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 grie- 
 vance 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 women droned 
 their prayers with a droning as of bees. There she 
 lay with her hands clasped on a wooden crucifix. 
 And no more would the robins wake her, and they 
 fussing in the great hawthorn-tree over the coming 
 of dawn. No longer would she rake the ash from 
 the peat and blow the red of it to a little blaze. 
 No longer would she beat his dog out of the house 
 with the handle of the broom. No longer would she 
 foregather with the neighbours over a pot of tea for a 
 pleasant vindictive chat. No longer would she look 
 out to sea for him with her half-loving, half-inimical 
 eyes. 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 
 
 47
 
 48 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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. 
 
 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. The day after to-morrow he would mount 
 the deck of Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few 
 crisp orders would set out on the eternal sea, as though 
 she were still alive in her cottage, as though indeed 
 she had never even lived, and northward he would 
 go past the purple Mull of Cantyre ; past the Clyde, 
 where the Ayrshire sloops danced like bobbins on 
 the water ; past the isles, where overhead drove the 
 wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle- 
 field ; past the Hebrides, where strange arctic birds 
 whined like hurt dogs ; northward still to where 
 the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black 
 winter nights ; eastward and southward to where 
 the swell of the Dogger Bank rose, where the fish 
 grazed like kine. Over the great sea he would go 
 as though nothing had happened, not even the snap- 
 ping of a stay, down to the sea, where the crisp winds
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 49 
 
 of dawn were, and the playful, stupid, short-sighted 
 porpoises ; the treacherous sliding icebergs ; and 
 the gulls that cried with the sea's immense melan- 
 choly ; and the great plum-coloured whales . . . 
 
 § 2 
 To his nostrils, sterilized as they were by the 
 salt air of the sea, the rich scents of Louth came 
 in a rushing profusion. The wild roses of June 
 were like the high notes of a violin, and there was 
 clover, and mown hay. In the southeast the clouds 
 were banking, but still the moon rose high, and the 
 cottage was clear as in daylight, clearer even in the 
 mind's eye — the whitewashed walls, the thatch like 
 silver, the swallows' nests beneath the eaves. The 
 hard sea-cobbles beneath his feet were clear and 
 individual, and to where he sat in the haggard came 
 a girl's song from down the road : 
 
 "Oh, Holland is a wondrous place and in it grows much 
 
 green. 
 It's a wild inhabitation for my young love to be in. 
 There the sugar-cane grows plentiful, and leaves on every 
 
 tree, 
 But the low, lowlands of Holland are between my love 
 
 and me." 
 
 He listened with a cocked ear, and smiled as he 
 thought how easy it would be to stroll down the 
 road to where the singing girl was, and accost her 
 pleasantly : " So he's in Holland, is he ? That's 
 the queer and foolish place for him to be, and I here ! " 
 There would be banter, quick and smart as a whip, 
 a scuffle, a clumsily placed kiss, laughter, another 
 
 E
 
 50 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 scuffle, and a kiss that found its mark somehow, 
 then a saunter together down the scented loaning 
 while the June moon rode high and the crickets 
 sang. 
 
 O my God ! here he was thinking about love, 
 and his wife lay inside and she dead ! 
 
 And a new light wonder sprang up and whirled 
 within the big dumb wonder that was on him : that 
 here was he, a lad not yet twenty-two, with a dead 
 wife on his hands, while his shipmates were off 
 with the laughter of young women in their ears 
 after the silent and tense watches of the sea. His 
 captain had gone home to Newry to where his wife 
 awaited him, the tall, graceful woman with the 
 hair like black silk and the black eyes and the black 
 ear-rings and the slim, white, enigmatic hands. 
 And the first mate had gone to Rostrevor with a 
 blond, giggling girl, and the crew were at Sally 
 Bishop's in Dundalk, draining the pints of frothy 
 porter and making crude material love to Sally 
 Bishop's blowsy brown girls, some chucking their 
 silver out with a laugh — the laugh of men who had 
 fought hurricanes, and some bargaining shrewdly 
 
 . . But here he was, home, with his wife, and her 
 dead. And if she hadn't been dead, she would have 
 been half loving, half inimical toward him, her arms 
 and bosom open, but a great stranger . . . He 
 couldn't understand. Well, she was dead, and . . . 
 he didn't know . . . 
 
 A bent, fattish figure in a shawl came toward 
 him through the haggard, his wife's mother. There 
 was the sweetish, acrid odor of whisky. 

 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 51 
 
 " Shane avick, are you there all alone, mourning 
 for the pleasant, beautiful one who's gone ? " 
 
 " I was just sitting down." 
 
 " You wouldn't like a wee drop of consolation ? " 
 
 " Whisky ? No, thanks." 
 
 " Just the least taste ? " 
 
 " No, thanks." 
 
 " And I after bringing it out to you in a naggin 
 bottle. Just the wetting of your lips, agra, would 
 cheer you up, and you down to the ground." 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 The old woman sat on the stone ditch beside 
 him and began swaying backward and forward, 
 and the keening note came into her voice : 
 
 " Is it gone ? Is it gone you are, Moyra a sthore ? 
 Sure, 't was the kindly daughter you were to me, 
 and me old and not worth my salt, a broken cailleach 
 hobbling on a stick. Never did you refuse me the 
 cup 0' tea so strong a mouse could walk on it. And 
 the butcher's meat o' Christmas, sure your old ma 
 must have a taste, too. And many's the brown egg 
 you let me have, and they bringing a high price on 
 the Wednedsay market. And the ha'porth o' snuff 
 — sure you never came home without it, and you at 
 Dundalk fair. Kindly you were as the little rains of 
 April, and my heart is ashes now you're gone ..." 
 
 Shane paced off through the haggard. There 
 was the glug-glug of a bottle, and again the sweet- 
 ish, acrid odor of whisky. He turned back. 
 
 " Only to one were you kinder nor to myself 
 and that was to the lad here, whose heart is broken 
 for you. Dumb with grief he is, now you're gone. 
 And all you did for him ! You might have married
 
 52 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 a strong farmer, would have a dozen cows, horses 
 would pull a cart or plow, hens by the dozen, and 
 flitches of bacon hanging in the kitchen. Or you 
 might have married a man who had a shop and sat 
 at your ease in the back room, like a lady born. Or 
 you might have married a gager and gone to Dublin 
 and mixed with the grand quality. And your mother 
 would have a black silk dress, and shoes with buttons 
 on them. But you married this young fellow who 
 goes to sea, so much was the great love on you for 
 him. Love came to you like a thunder-storm, 
 and left you trembling like a leaf, and now you're 
 dead — ochanee ! ochanee ! ochanee ! o ! " 
 
 Her voice changed from the shrill keen to a shrewd 
 whine : 
 
 " You'll be leaving me something to remember 
 her by, Shane Oge, and her a fathom deep beneath 
 me in the cold ground. And a trinket or two, or a 
 dress, maybe, or a bangle would keep my heart 
 warm ? " 
 
 " You can have them all." 
 
 " All is it ? Ah, sure, it's the grand big heart 
 is in you, lad o' the North. And are they all to 
 be mine, the silver brooch you bought her from 
 the Dutch city, and the ring with the pearl in it, 
 and the dresses of silk from France, and the shoes 
 that have buckles ? Are they for me, hinny ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes. Take them." 
 
 " And the wee furnishings of the house, the feather- 
 bed is soft to lie on, and the dresser with the delft, 
 and the creepy stool beside the fire, the noble chairs ? 
 You wouldn't be selling them to the stranger, Shane 
 Oge ? "
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 53 
 
 " No, you can have those, too." 
 
 " And the house, too ? Young noble fellow, 
 where is your wife's mother to lay her gray hairs ? 
 Couldn't you fix the house, too ? " 
 
 " The house is not mine, and I can't afford to 
 buy it." 
 
 " But 't is you you are rich the Protestant family. 
 Your uncles and your mother, hinny. Rotten 
 with gold they are, and me just a poor old cailleach 
 that gave you the white lamb o' the flock." 
 
 ' We'll look after you. My uncle Alan Camp- 
 bell will be here in a day or so and fix everything. 
 But I'm afraid the house is out of the question." 
 
 ' Oh, sure it would be a noble thing to have the 
 house, and they around me dying with envy of my 
 state and grandeur. At fair or at wake great respect 
 they would pay me, and the priests of God would be 
 always calling. The house, fine lad, give me the 
 house ! " 
 
 " You'll have to speak to my Uncle Alan." 
 ' Alan Campbell is a hard Northern man." 
 
 " Nevertheless, you'll have to speak to him." 
 ' A mhic mheirdrighe ! ' Her mouth hissed. " 
 son of a harlot ! " 
 
 Shane wheeled like a sloop coming about. 
 1 You forget I've got the Gaelic myself, old 
 woman." 
 
 ' Oh, sure, what did I say, fine lad, but avick 
 machree, son of my heart ? Avick machree, I said. 
 O son of my heart, that's what you are. You wouldn't 
 take wrong meaning from what an old woman said, 
 and her with her teeth gone, and under the black 
 clouds of sorrow ! "
 
 54 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 A glint in the moonlight caught Shane's eyes. 
 He gripped her right hand. 
 
 " Is that Moyra's wedding-ring you have on ? 
 Did you — did you — take it — from her hand ? " 
 
 " Oh, sure, what use would she have for it, and 
 she in the sods of Ballymaroo ? And the grand 
 Australian gold is in it, worth a mint of money. 
 And what use would you have for it, and you in 
 strange parts, where a passionate foreign woman 
 would be giving you love, maybe ? The fine lad 
 you are, will draw the heart of many. But it's 
 drawing back coldly they'd be, and they seeing 
 that on your finger, or on a ribbon around your 
 neck. Drawing back they'd be, and giving the 
 love that was yours to another fellow. A sin to waste 
 the fine Australian gold it is. And you wouldn't 
 begrudge me the price of a couple o' heifers that 
 would grow into grand cows ? You wouldn't, fine 
 lad—." 
 
 He flung her hand from him so savagely that 
 she fell, and he went swiftly toward the house where 
 the dead woman was. Back of him in the haggard 
 came the glug-glug of the naggin bottle, and from 
 down the loaning came the rich, untrained contralto 
 of the singing girl : 
 
 " Nor shoe nor stocking will I put on nor comb go in my 
 
 hair. 
 And neither coal nor candlelight shine in my chamber 
 
 fair. 
 Nor will I wed with any young man until the day I die, 
 Since the low lowlands of Holland are between my love 
 
 and me."
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 55 
 
 § 3 
 
 As he paused at the half-door, the laughter and 
 the chatter in the kitchen ceased, and he was aware 
 of the blur of faces around the room, white faces of 
 men and women and alien eyes. Over the peat fire — 
 there was a fire even in June — the great black kettle 
 sang on the crane, to make tea for the mourners. 
 Here and there were bunches of new clay pipes 
 scattered, and long rolls of twisted tobacco, for the 
 men to smoke, and saucers full of snuff for both men 
 and women. A great paraffin lamp threw broad, 
 opaque shadows, making the whole a strange blur 
 in the kitchen, while in the bedroom opening off 
 it, where the tense, dead woman lay, was a glare 
 of candles as from footlights, and there gathered 
 the old women of the neighbourhood, discussing 
 everything in hushed, vindictive whispers — the price 
 of cows, morbid diseases, the new wife some man had, 
 and whether such a girl was with child . . . And the 
 dead woman, who had loved talk such as this, as a 
 drunkard loves the glass, gave no heed . . . Strange ! 
 . . . And every hour or so they would flash to their 
 knees, like some quick instinctive movement of birds, 
 and now carelessly, now over-solemnly they would 
 say a rosary for the dead woman's soul : 
 
 " Ar n-Athair, ta ar neamh . . " Our Father, 
 Who art in Heaven — " and then a long suspiration ; 
 "'Se do bheatha, 'Mhuire!" "Hail, Mary! Full 
 of grace ! " 
 
 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
 
 56 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 neatnh — " they would gabble, 
 " ' 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. " Down from 
 your horse when Death or the King goes by," went 
 the Antrim old word. But here the house of death 
 was a booth of Punchinello. 
 
 More aware even than of the indignity of it all 
 was he of the hatred about him. They hated him 
 for his alien race, his alien faith. Not one of the men 
 but would have killed him had they had courage, 
 because his head was high, his step firm. The 
 women hated him because he had chosen one from 
 among them and given her honor and gifts. And his 
 wife's mother hated him with the venomous, nauseous 
 hatred that old women bear. And yet they'd have 
 loved him if he'd given way to hysterical, unprofound 
 grief, or become . . . drunk ! They'd have under- 
 stood him. But all they had for him was hatred now. 
 Even the dead woman on the bed hated him . . . 
 Ah, well, only a day or so more, and he'd shake them 
 off as a great ship leaves behind it the troublesome 
 traders' bumboats. 
 
 There came to him the shrill keening of the old 
 woman as some one brought her toward the house : 
 
 " Ochanee ! Ochanee ! Ochanee o ! the Shep- 
 herd's lamb ! She's gone from us ! The high
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 57 
 
 branch on the pleasant little tree ! And what's 
 to become of me in my latter days ! Me that thought 
 I'd have the beautiful house to live in, and a horse 
 and cart, and a wake would be the envy of many, 
 and not the curate, but the parish priest himself, 
 to be at the head of the funeral. And now I'm to be 
 thrown against the great cruelty of the harsh Northern 
 men ! Nine black curses against them and theirs, 
 and on my bare knees I say it. Och, white gull o' 
 the harbor, why did you die ? Ochanee ! Ochanee!" 
 The gabbled rosary, the low laughter in the kitchen, 
 the clink of glasses, the howling of the cailleach — 
 all these noises repulsed him like a forefront of battle. 
 So he did not go into the house, but took his hand 
 from the half-door and returned to the haggard, 
 to the grave, understanding silence of the moon. 
 
 § 4 
 Because he was so young, and thought he knew so 
 much when in reality he knew so little, young Shane 
 had thought, when he met Moyra Dolan, that he had 
 discovered the morning star. Five and a half years 
 at sea, as apprentice and navigator, had shown his 
 eyes much and his heart little. He knew Bermuda 
 and the harbor of Kingston. He had beaten up the 
 China Seas. He had seen the clouds over Table 
 Mountain. He knew Baltimore. He had seen the 
 bowsprits of the great Indiamen thrust over the quays 
 of Poplar parish like muskets levelled overa barricade. 
 And to him it was just a wonder, a strange spectacle. 
 The streets were strange as in a dream, and the folk 
 were strange as in a play. One wandered down an
 
 58 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 avenue, seeing the queer commodities in the shops 
 and booths. One wandered to the right. One wan- 
 to the left. And there was great delight to finding 
 a street one had seen before, maybe only five minutes 
 ago, and one felt one was getting somewhere, was 
 understanding the new country. 
 
 But one never did understand the new country. 
 All the people were strange. One could not imagine 
 them about the daily business of life, waking, eating, 
 buying, and selling. Black men and ochre-coloured 
 folk. There seemed to be a mystery somewhere. 
 One imagined them gathering at night in secret to 
 begin their real 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. Nor were the winds the 
 same. The hot puffs of the Indian Ocean, the drunken 
 lurching flaws of Biscay Bay, the trades that worked 
 steadily as ants, had not the human quality of the 
 winds of the Nine Glens, that were now angry as an 
 angry man, now gentle as a gentle woman. 
 
 Only one thing was constant, and that was the 
 women whom sailors know in ports. And they 
 wore masks. The same easily forced laughter, the 
 same crude flattery, the complacent arms, the eternal 
 eager hand. . . . 
 
 And then one day the new port palled, like a book 
 one has read too often, or a picture one has looked 
 at over long. And it was sheet home the royals 
 and off to a new port, where there were new strange
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 59 
 
 people, and streets laid another way, and other things 
 in the merchant's booths, and a new language to 
 pick up a phrase or two of. 
 
 But in the end all palled for a time, the aphro- 
 disiac tropic smell ; the coral waters, clear as well 
 water at home ; the white houses with the green 
 jalousies ; the lush, coarse green. And the melan- 
 cholic drums of the East palled and palled the grim- 
 ness of the North. And the unceasing processional 
 of strange secret faces wearied the eye and the mind. 
 And the angular spiritual edges of shipmates wore 
 toward one through the uniform of flesh, became 
 annoying, sometimes unbearable. 
 
 And then an immense yearning would come over 
 young Shane for the beloved faces in the lamplight, 
 for the white road over the purple heather, for the 
 garden where the greened sundial was, with its long 
 motto in the Irish letter : 
 
 Is mairg a baidhtear in am an anaithe 
 
 Na tig an ghrian in dhiaidh na fearthainne — 
 
 as if anybody didn't know that, that it was a pity 
 to be drowned in time of storm, for the sun shines 
 brightly when the rain goes ! 
 
 But the sun-dial was mirrored in his heart, and 
 the purple mountain and the great dun house. The 
 winds he sniffed as a hunting dog does, and each tack 
 to port or starboard either thrilled or cast him down. 
 . . . When would be 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
 
 60 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 ? ... Or would 
 it be his mother ? 
 
 § 5 
 
 Aboard ship the young apprentices had their 
 problems, problems of conduct, or of girls at home, or 
 of money in port, but for young Shane there was 
 always the problem of his mother. 
 
 At home he had regarded as a matter of fact 
 that she should come and go in her hard, efficient 
 French way. It had not seemed strange to him that 
 her mouth was tight, her eyes hard as diamonds. 
 It was to him one with his Uncle Robin's solemnity 
 and Alan Donn's gruff sportsmanship. But away 
 from home he thought of it, brooded over it. Her 
 letters to him were so curt, so cut and dried ! She 
 wrote of the birth of another child to young Queen 
 Victoria — as if that mattered a tinker's curse ! — 
 or how her Holland bulbs, which she had bought at 
 Belfast, had withered and died. She directed him 
 " to pray God to keep him pure in mind and body, 
 your affectionate mother, Louise de Damery 
 Campbell." Alan Donn's letters had the grand smell 
 of harness about them. " You'll mind the brown 
 gelding we bought at Ballymena. He disgraced 
 us at Dublin in the jumping competitions. You 
 know he can jump his own height, but he got the gate 
 after three tries. I could have graet like a bairn. 
 Well, this will be all from your loving Uncle Alan, 
 p.s. I caught the white trout in Johnson's Brae
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 61 
 
 burn. I was after him, and he was dodging me for 
 six years. Your loving Uncle Alan, p.p.s. The 
 championship is at Prestwick this year, and I think 
 I've a grand chance. If you're home, you can caddy 
 for me. Your loving Uncle Alan." 
 
 Uncle Robin's letters had vast wisdom. " Ay 
 be reading the books, laddie. An ill-educated man 
 feels always at a disadvantage among folk of talent. 
 Aboard ship you can read and think more than at a 
 university. I've got a parcel for you to take when 
 you go again. Hakluyt's Voyages and a good Marco 
 Polo. And the new book of Mr. Dickens, The 
 Haunted Man. And there's a great new writer you'll 
 not want to miss, by name of Thackeray." And there'd 
 be the Bank of England note, " for fear you might be 
 needing it on a special occasion, and not having it, 
 and feeling bad." Dear Uncle Robin ! And then 
 the flash of tenderness, like a rainbow : " God bless 
 you and keep you, my brother's son ! " 
 
 His Uncle Robin's letters he would greet with a 
 smile, and perhaps a bit moistness in the eye ; Alan 
 Donn's with a grin, as an elder brother's. But his 
 mother's letters he would approach with a coldness 
 akin to fear. He hated to open them. It was like 
 an unpleasant duty. 
 
 The realization of her was always a chilling dis- 
 appointment, but the dream of her was a great hope. 
 And in the black waters of the China Seas, or in the 
 night watches off the Azores, where the porpoises 
 played in the phosphorescence, there would come a 
 sea-change over the knowledge he had of her. All the 
 spiritual, all the mental angles of her faded into 
 gracious line, and on the tight lips of her a smile would
 
 62 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 play as a flower opens, and her eyes, hard as diamonds, 
 would open and become kindly as a lighted house. 
 And the strange things of the heart would come out, 
 like little shy rabbits, or like the young tortoises, and 
 bask in that kindly picture. And the things that 
 were between them, that could not be said, but just 
 sensed, as the primroses of spring are sensed, not seen, 
 not felt, hardly smelt even, but sensed. . . . The 
 hesitant deep things he would say and the digni- 
 fied, smiling answer, or the pressure of the hand even, 
 and the inclination of the shoulder. . . . 
 
 And the people he would meet who would ask 
 him about his mother, and he could answer nothing, 
 so that they thought him stupid and unthoughtful. 
 But really what was there to say ? . . . And once when 
 he sprang into Biscay Bay after a cabin-boy who had 
 fallen over the taffrail, and the lad's mother had 
 thanked him in Plymouth for saving the child's life : 
 " Your mother will be very proud of you," the old 
 woman said. But the reality of the harsh French- 
 woman came to him like a slap in the face. " Christ, 
 if she only were ! " his heart cried. But the clipped 
 little Scots-Irish voice replied, " Aye, I suppose she 
 will." 
 
 And again the soft mood would come, and then he 
 would have a letter from her, ending with that harsh 
 command, that was a gust of some bleak tempest of 
 her own life, where his father had perished : " Pray 
 God to keep you pure in mind and body ! " 
 
 And homeward bound again, in the soft murmur 
 of the wind among the shrouds, and the little laughter 
 of the water at the bows, there would abide with him 
 again the dream-mother of the night watches, until
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 63 
 
 he said to himself that surely the reality was false, 
 and at the garden-gate she would be waiting for him 
 with a great depth of kindness in her eyes, and arms 
 warm as sunshine, and a bosom where a boy might 
 rest his head for a moment after the great harshness 
 of the strange places. 
 
 But the kindliness came not from her. It came 
 from Robin More, who ran down the garden faster 
 than his dignity should have allowed him. " Are 
 you all right, wee Shane ? Is everything all right with 
 you ? You're looking fine, but you haven't been sick, 
 wee fellow ? Tell me, you haven't been sick ? " Or 
 from Alan Donn, with his great snort of laughter : 
 " Christ ! are you home again ? And all the good 
 men that's been lost at sea ! Well, the devil's childer 
 have the devil's luck. Eigh, laddie, gie's a feel o' ye. 
 A Righ — King of Graces, but you're the lean pup ! 
 Morag, Nellie, Cassie, some tea ! and be damned 
 quick about it ! " 
 
 And then his mother would come into the room, 
 like a cold wind or a thin ghost, and there would be a 
 kiss on the cheek, a cold, precise peck, like a bird's. 
 And, " Did you have a good voyage ? " just as if she 
 said, " Do you think we'll have rain ? " 
 
 Oh, well, to hell with it ! as Alan Donn said when 
 he flubbed his approach to the last green for some 
 championship or other, " What you never had, you 
 never lost ! " 
 
 Aye, true indeed. What you never had you 
 couldn't very well lose. Aye, there was a lot in 
 that. Just so ; but — 
 
 Boys do be thinking long. . . .
 
 64 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 § 6 
 
 Because his Uncle Alan was in Scotland somewhere 
 shooting deer and would not be home for several 
 days, and because Uncle Robin was in Paris, and 
 because the Goban Saor put into Dundalk to take a 
 cargo of unbleached linen, young Shane decided to 
 stay there for a few days before proceeding northward 
 to the Antrim Glens. He felt he couldn't face the 
 house at Cushendu with his cold, precise mother 
 alone there, so he accepted the hospitality of an 
 apprentice friend. 
 
 It was at a country barn dance during these few 
 days that he met Moyra Dolan. 
 
 A tallish, tawny-haired woman with the dead- 
 white skin that goes with reddish hair, with steel 
 for eyes, there was a grace and carriage to her that 
 put her aside from the other peasant girls as a queen 
 may masquerade as a slave and yet betray herself as a 
 queen. Other girls there were as pretty, with their 
 hair like flax and their eyes like blue water ; with 
 hair like a dim blue cloud and eyes like a smudge of 
 charcoal. But none had her teeth, her small ankles, 
 her long, sensitive hands. Some strain of the Stuart 
 cavaliers had crept into that hardy peasant stock on 
 the way to defeat of the Boyne Water. . . . She might 
 have seemed nothing but a pretty lady's maid in 
 London or Dublin, but in North Louth she was like 
 a queen. . . . 
 
 Her looks were her tragedy, for she held herself 
 too good for a labouring man to marry, and, having 
 no dower, no farmer would have her. Among the 
 peasantry romance does not count, but land. And if
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 65 
 
 the Queen of Sheba, and she having nothing but her 
 shift, were to offer herself in marriage to a strong 
 farmer, he would refuse her for the cross-eyed woman 
 in the next townland who had twenty acres and five 
 good milch cows. . . . Only for the very rich or the 
 very poor is romance ! 
 
 Her only chance for marriage was a matter of 
 luck. She would have to meet some government 
 official, or some medical student home on his holidays, 
 or some small merchant whom her beauty would 
 unbalance, as drink would unbalance him. And she 
 must dazzle, and her old mother play and catch him, 
 as a jack pike is dazzled by a spoon bait, hooked, and 
 brought ashore. She might marry or might miss, or 
 grow into an acidulous red-headed woman. It was a 
 matter of luck. And her luck was in. She met young 
 Shane Campbell. 
 
 They danced together. They wandered in the 
 moonlight. They met in the country lanes. And they 
 were very silent, she because she played a game, 
 and a counter is better than a lead, and he because 
 he was in love with her. Had it been only a matter 
 of sweethearting, he would have been merry as a 
 singing bird, full of chatter, roughing it with her for 
 a kiss. But it was love with him, and a thing for 
 life, and life was long and more serious than death. 
 ... So he was silent. 
 
 He was silent when he went home for a week, 
 silent with uncles Robin and Alan, who sensed he 
 was going through one of the crises of adolescence, 
 and knew the best thing to do was to leave him alone. 
 He was silent with his mother, who saw nothing, 
 cared nothing, so intent was she on revolving within 
 
 F
 
 66 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 herself as inexorably as the planets revolve in space. 
 He decided to spend the last days of his leave in 
 Dundalk. And at the railroad station in Ballymena 
 he hazarded a look at Alan Donn. 
 
 " Uncle Alan — " and he stopped. 
 
 " What is it, laddie ? Is it a girl troubling you ? 
 Take my advice and look her in the eyes and, ' You 
 can love me or leave me, and to hell with you ! ' 
 tell her. ' Do you see this right foot of mine ? ' says 
 you. ' Well, it's pointed to the next town-land, where 
 there's just as pretty a one as you.' And you'll 
 find her come around ; maybe there'll be a bit of an 
 argument, but she'll come around. And if she doesn't 
 there'd have been no hope for you, anyway. A touch 
 o' the spur for the lazy mare and a bit of sugar for the 
 jumper ! And when you've done loving her, gie her a 
 chuck under the chin : ' Good-bye ! Good luck ! What 
 you keep to yoursel' '11 worry nobody,' says you. 
 And to hell with her ! " 
 
 *' Alan Donn ! " 
 
 " Oh, it's that way, is it, Shaneen ? If you're in 
 deep water, there's none but yourself can help you, 
 laddie. I thought it was just maybe a case o' laugh 
 and kiss me. But it's different, is it ? There's no 
 use giving advice. What's in you will out. But 
 remember this : when it's over, for good or bad, 
 your Uncle Alan's here, to laugh with you or greet 
 with you or help you out of a hole. So — 
 
 " Good-bye, laddie. Beannacht leat I My blessing 
 with you ! "
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 67 
 
 § 7 
 
 " Young lad, what is this you have done to my 
 fine young daughter ? " 
 
 " I have done nothing, Bhean 'i Dolain," young 
 Shane flared up, " save in honour, and the man or 
 woman who says other lies." 
 
 " Agra, I know that. I know there's no harm in 
 you from head to foot. And the trouble you've 
 put on her is in her heart. All day long she sighs, 
 and is listless as a shaded plant that does be needing 
 the sun. All night she keeps awake, and the wee 
 silent tears come down her face. And before my eyes 
 she's failing, and her step that was once light now 
 drags the like of a cripple's. Young lad of the North, 
 you've put love in the heart of her and sorrow in the 
 mind." 
 
 " I'm not so sprightly in the mind myself, woman 
 Dolan." 
 
 " I know, avick. I know. Isn't it myself that's 
 suffered the seven pangs of love and I a young girl ? 
 But it's easy on a man, avick. He can go into the 
 foreign countries, and put it out of his mind, or take 
 to the drink and numb the great pain. But for a 
 woman it's different. It's the like of a disfiguration 
 that all can see. And when you're gone away, sure 
 all will remember, for men do be minding long. The 
 marrying time will come, and they'll look at my 
 grand young daughter : strong farmer, and merchant 
 of the shop, and drover does be going to England for 
 the cattle-fairs, and they'll say : ' Isn't that the red 
 girl gave love to the sailing fellow, and burnt her heart 
 out so that there's no sap in it for me ? ' And they'll
 
 68 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 pass her by, my grand young daughter, that's the 
 equal of any." 
 
 " And what would you have me do, woman of the 
 house ? " 
 
 " What would any decent man do but marry her ? " 
 
 " Aye ! . . . Aye ! I thought of marrying her, 
 if she'd have me. . . . But we hardly know each 
 other yet. . . . and maybe I'm too young ..." 
 
 " If you're able to handle a ship, you're able to 
 handle a woman, young lad. And what time is 
 better for marriage nor the first flush of youth ? 
 Sure you grow together like the leaves upon the 
 tree. Let you not be putting it off now, but spring 
 like a hero." 
 
 " But isn't the matter of her faith between us, 
 woman of the house ? " 
 
 " And sure that can be fixed later. Will the 
 priest mind, do you think, so long as she does her 
 duty ? And a sixpence in the plate on Sunday is 
 better nor a brown ha'penny, and a half-sovereign 
 at Easter will soothe black anger like healing grass. 
 Very open in thought I am, and I knowing the seven 
 pangs of love. Let you go to your own clergyman, 
 and she'll go with you, I'll warrant, so eaten is she by 
 love." 
 
 " My people, woman o' the house — " 
 
 " Your people is it ? Sure it isn't your people is 
 marrying my grand young daughter, but you yourself. 
 The old are crabbit, and they do be thinking more of 
 draining a field, or of the price of flax, nor of the pain 
 and delights of love. And it's always objections. 
 But there can be no objecting when the job 's finished." 
 
 She looked at him shrewdly.
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 69 
 
 " A grand influence, a grand steadying influence 
 is marriage on a sailing man. It keeps you from 
 spending your money in foreign ports, where you 
 only buy trickery for your silver. And when you 
 have a wife at home, you'll have little truck with 
 fancy women, who have husbands behind the screen, 
 sometimes, and them with knives. ... So I've heard 
 tell. ... Or maybe get an evil sickness. Listen to 
 an old woman has wisdom, bold lad." 
 
 " When I come from my voyage. ..." 
 
 " Dark lad, if anything happens to you, and you 
 drowning in the black water, the great regret that 
 will be on you and the water gurgling into your lungs, 
 and, ' Wasn't I the fool of the world,' you'll say, 
 ' that might have heard the crickets singing in the 
 night-time and my white love by my side ? And 
 might have had power of kissing and lovemaking, 
 but was young and foolish, and lay be my lee 
 lone. 
 
 But this was the wrong track, the old woman 
 noticed, and came about. 
 
 " And all the time you're away, my daughter 
 will be pining for you, drooping and pining, my grand 
 young daughter, and the spring will go out of her 
 step and the light from her eyes and the lustre from 
 the hair that's a wonder to all. . . . Oh, isn't it the 
 cruel thing ? " 
 
 " My ship sails the day after to-morrow." 
 
 She saw surrender in his face, rose quickly, and went 
 to the door. 
 
 " Come inside, Moyra, Moyreen ! And be putting 
 your cloak on, with the ribbons that tie beneath 
 your chin. And your dress of muslin that the lady
 
 70 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 in Newry gave you. And stockings. And your 
 shoes of leather. And I'll be putting on my Paisley 
 shawl. And this young boy will be getting Michael 
 Doyle's horse and trap. Come in, Moyreen, come in 
 and put haste on you, for it's going to Dundalk we are, 
 this day, this hour, this minute even ! " 
 
 § 8 
 
 It occurred to him as he sat in the haggard under 
 the riding moon, not a pitch shot from the house 
 where his wife was being waked, that nothing was 
 disturbed because she was dead. It was not strange 
 that the stars kept on their courses, for the death of 
 neither king nor cardinal nor the wreck of the greatest 
 ship that ever sailed the seas would not move them 
 from their accustomed orbit. But not a robin in the 
 hedge was disturbed, not a rabbit in the field, not a 
 weasel in the lane. Nature never put off her im- 
 penetrable mask. Or did she really not care ? And 
 was a human soul less to her than a worm in the soil ? 
 
 There was a stir in the house. They would be 
 making tea now for the men and women who said 
 they were mourners. . . . The querulous voice of 
 his wife's mother came to him as someone led her 
 from the heated house into the cool of the June 
 night. 
 
 " Great sacrifices we made for him, myself and 
 the white love that's stretched beyond in the room. 
 All we had we gave him, and all she found was barren 
 death, and I the barren charity of Northern men . . ." 
 
 " Oh, sure, 'tis the pity of the world you are, 
 Pegeen," a neighbour comforted her.
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 71 
 
 " On his bended knees he came to her, asking for 
 love," the cailleach went on. "On his bare and 
 bended knees. And her heart melted toward him as 
 the snow melts on the hills. ' And hadn't you better 
 wait,' said I, ' Moyreen Roe ? With the great looks 
 and the grand carriage of you, 'tis a great match you 
 can make surely. A gentleman from England, maybe, 
 would have a castle and fine lands, or the pick of the 
 dealing men, and they going from Belfast to Drogheda 
 and stopping overnight at Ardee. Or wouldn't it 
 be better for you to marry one of your own kind, would 
 go to church with you in a kindly way ? " 
 
 " 'But if I don't marry this lad, he'll kill himself,' 
 she says to me. 
 
 " ' But your faith,' says I, ' 'avourneen, your holy 
 faith, surely, you will not be forsaking that for this 
 boy ! ' " 
 
 " And what did she say to that, Pegeen ? " the 
 neighbour asked. 
 
 " ' Sure it's promised to turn he has,' she answered. 
 ' And do everything is right by me, so much I love 
 him ! ' " 
 
 " The treacherous Ulster hound ! " The neighbour 
 inveighed. 
 
 " Treacherous by race and treacherous by nature. 
 Sure, can't you see it, the way he treats me ? Sorrow 
 word he has for me, that bore the wife of his bosom, 
 barring, ' Alan Donn Campbell will see you and fix 
 up everything.' And haven't I met Alan Campbell 
 once before, and it's the cold eye he has and the hard 
 heart. And this is all the return I get for bearing 
 the white darling would be fit mate for a king. There 
 was a publican of Dundalk had an eye on her, a big
 
 72 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 red-faced, hearty man. And she might have married 
 him but this lad came and spoiled everything. And 
 if she'd married him, I'd have been sitting in the parlour 
 of the public house, in a seemly black dress and a 
 brooch in the bosom of it, taking my pinch of snuff 
 and my strong cup of tea with a drop of Hollands in 
 it would warm the cockles of your heart, and listening 
 to the conversation of the fine customers and them 
 loosening up with the drink. And the ould grannies 
 would have courtesied to me and hate in their hearts. 
 But now a leaf on the wind am I, a broken twig on 
 the stream. And the black men of Ulster have me 
 for a plaything, the men that have a hatred for me 
 and my kind, so that it's a knife they'd put in you, 
 or poison in your tea — " 
 
 " Let you be coming in now, Pegeen. Let you be 
 coming in now. And take a cup of tea would 
 put heart in you, or something strong, maybe. 
 And then we'll be saying a prayer for her who's 
 gone — " 
 
 " Dead she is, the poor heart, dead she is, and better 
 off nor I am — " 
 
 Her high querulousness died away as she went 
 into the house, and again was the silence of the 
 riding moon. All her grief, all her lies, all her bitter- 
 ness had not stirred a leaf upon the bough. Not a 
 robin in the hedge was disturbed by her calamity, 
 not a rabbit in the field, not a weasel in the lane. . . . 
 
 § 9 
 He thought to himself : had they rushed him 
 into this marriage ? And he answered himself truth-
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 73 
 
 fully, they had not. He could have said no, and 
 stood by his no, young as he was, against every 
 old woman and every young woman in the world. 
 No, fast as they had worked, they hadn't worked 
 faster than his thought had. 
 
 And did he marry because he was in love with 
 Moyra Dolan He was in love with her, he con- 
 ceded that. For what the term was accepted at, 
 he was in love with her. Women he had met in 
 his twenty years, great ladies of the Ulster clans ; 
 shy, starched misses from the Friends' School ; 
 moody peasant girls ; merry women of the foreign 
 ports, and to none of them had he felt that strange 
 yearning he had felt toward Moyra Dolan, the strange 
 pull that sends the twig in the diviner's hands down 
 toward the hidden water. Yes, he was in love with 
 her, but was it because of that he had married her ? 
 And he truthfully answered, no. 
 
 He remembered, the mood coming back to him 
 as concretely as an action, what he had thought 
 while the old woman had wheedled him with her 
 voice like butter. All he had thought in his prentice 
 days at sea, all he had thought of in the night watches, 
 all he had thought of in the loneliness of his mother's 
 house, had gathered like great cloud-banks at night, 
 and had suddenly taken form and colour and purpose 
 in that one moment, as a cloud-bank at the coming 
 of the sun. . . . Life had appeared to him in one 
 brief moment, and he had tried to grasp it. 
 
 It had seemed to him right that he would go 
 down to the sea in ships all his days, and trade in 
 foreign ports, and work, transmuting effort into gain, 
 and should come home to rest.
 
 74 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 And for whom was the gain ? And where was 
 home ? Surely not for himself was the gain, and 
 home was not his cold mother's house ? And now 
 that he had come to manhood as boys come at 
 sea, braving danger and thinking mightily, it was 
 for him to decide. 
 
 A mirage, a seeming, a thing to look at, to go 
 get bravely had come into his mind in little pictures , 
 like prints in a book. A thing of simplicity, simple 
 as the sea, and as colourful and as wholesome and as 
 beautiful. He thought of a little thatched and 
 whitewashed house with a cobbled yard clean as a 
 ship's decks, and a garden where the bluish green 
 stalks and absurdly pretty flowers of potatoes would 
 come in spring, and one side would be the red and white 
 of the clover, and on the other would be the minute 
 blue flower of the flax ; and an old dog drowsing 
 on the threshold . . . And this would be in his mind 
 as he wandered the far foreign streets . . . And 
 there would be the droning of the bees in the clover, 
 and the swish of the swallows darting to and from 
 the eaves, and in the evening would be the singing 
 of the crickets . . . And these he would hear over 
 the capstan's clank . . . When he tumbled into his 
 cabin after his watch, into the heeling room where 
 the lamp swung overhead like a crazy thing, and all 
 was a litter of oilskins and sea-boots, and a great 
 dampness everywhere, he would know there was a 
 swept cottage in Louth where the delft shone on the 
 dresser in the kindly light of the turf, and there 
 would be a spinning-wheel in the corner, and a big 
 rush-bottomed chair, and the kettle singing on the 
 hob . . . And when his comrades would leave the
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 75 
 
 ship in port of nights to go to the houses where music 
 and dancing were, and crazy drinking, and where 
 the adroit foreign women held out their arms of 
 mystery and mercenary romance, he would lean 
 over the taffrail and laugh and shake his head : 
 
 " No, I think I'll stay on board." " Come on, 
 young Shane. There's a woman down at Mother 
 Parkinson's and they say she's an Austrian arch- 
 duchess who has run away with a man, and got 
 left. Come on." Or, " There's a big dance over 
 on the beach to-night, and a keg of rum, and the 
 native women. Jump in." " No, I think I'll stay 
 on board and read." " Come on. Don't be a fool." 
 " No, go ahead and enjoy yourselves. I'll stay on 
 board." And there would be the plash of oars 
 as they rowed shoreward, and maybe a song raised. 
 . . . And he would make himself comfortable under 
 the awning of the after deck, and read the bundles of 
 newspapers from home, of how Thomas Chalmers, 
 the great Scottish preacher, was dead, or how a new 
 great singer had been heard in London, a Swedish 
 girl, her name was Jenny Lind, or how Shakspere's 
 house had been bought and a great price paid for it, 
 three thousand pounds ... Or he would read 
 one of the new books that were coming out in a 
 flood, a new one by Mr. Dickens, the bite of the 
 new writer, Mr. Thackeray with his " Vanity Fair," 
 or that strange book written by a woman, " Wuther- 
 ing Heights." . . . But in a little minute the volume 
 would fall to his knees, and the people of the book 
 would leave the platform of his mind, and a real, 
 warmer presence come to it ... He could see the 
 gracious, kindly womanhood now move through
 
 76 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 the house, now come to the door to watch the far 
 horizon ... Of evenings she would stand dreaming 
 at the lintel while he was leaning dreaming over 
 the taffrail, and though there were ten thousand 
 miles between them their hearts would be intimate 
 as pigeons . . . And he would think of coming home 
 to the peaceful cottage and the wife with the grave 
 eyes and kindly smile, and if he were a day ahead of 
 time, she would forget her reserve in great joy, and 
 low, pleased laughter would jet from her throat . . . 
 And if he were on time, there would be the quiet, 
 grave confidence : "I knew your step ! " . . . And 
 if he were late, there would be the passing of the 
 cloud from the brows : " Thank God ! I — I was — 
 just a trifle worried ! " . . . And the greetings over, 
 she would look at him with a smile and a little lift 
 of the eyebrows, and he would give her what he had 
 brought from the voyage : a ring from Amsterdam, 
 maybe, where the great jewellers are, or heavy silken 
 stockings of France ; or he had gone to the West 
 Indies, a great necklet of red coral ; or some fancy in 
 humming-birds' feathers from the Brazils ; lace from 
 Porto Rico, that the coloured women make with 
 their slim brown fingers ; things of hammered 
 brass from India ; and were he to China in the 
 tea-trade, a coat such as a mandarin's lady would 
 wear. . . . And with each gift there would be gasp 
 of incredulous surprise, and "O Shaneen, you shouldn't 
 have ! " . . . And then the evening would come, 
 and they would stand on the threshold, and he would 
 listen to the sounds the sea-men never hear : the 
 swish and ripple of the wind among the trees, the birds 
 settling themselves to sleep amid the boughs, the
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE yy 
 
 bittern that boomed like a horn, and the barking 
 of a distant dog, and the crickets that do be singing 
 when the evening falls. . . . And he would turn 
 from that to find her arms out and her lips apart, 
 who could wait no longer, and together they would 
 go into their house, where the red turf had turned 
 yellow — together, over their own threshold, into their 
 own house . . . And when the time came for him 
 to go to sea again, she would be grave with unshed 
 tears and a brave smile . . . And one day after 
 a long voyage, when she had greeted him, she would 
 say, " Someone has come to our house ! " and he 
 wouldn't understand, and be annoyed, until she 
 showed him the little warm head in the cradle, and 
 he would drop on his knees reverentially, and there 
 would be great silent tears from him, and all her heart 
 would show in her quiet smile . . . 
 
 And never an old woman on Naples quay would 
 ask him for an alms but would get it, he thinking 
 all the time of the old woman with the tow-like 
 hair who abode in his house, his wife's mother. 
 And she would be comfortable there in her old days, 
 with always a fire to warm her, and always a cup 
 of tea to cheer her up, and a kindly ear for her stories 
 of ancient days, and a thanks for the alien rosaries 
 she would say, praying for his safe return from the 
 almighty waters. . . . And never a dog on his travels 
 but would get a pat and a whistle, and he thinking 
 of the grizzled terrier in Louth that guarded the 
 threshold of quiet beauty . . . 
 
 And so he would have been content to live all 
 his days, so he thought he would live, going down 
 to the dangers of the sea, trading in strange ports,
 
 78 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 and transmuting hard, untiring effort into gain 
 for her at home and her children, and he would 
 grow old and grizzled, until he could no longer brace 
 to a heeling plank or stand the responsibility of a 
 ship's mastery, and then they would buy a little 
 house on some harbour, while their sons went rolling 
 down to Rio or fought the typhoon in the China Seas, 
 and he could sit there with his telescope, watching the 
 ships go by, or come in and out hauling up mainsail 
 or making their mooring, and grumbling pleasantly 
 at how good seamanship fades and dies. . . 
 
 All this he had thought out in the loneliness of 
 foreign ports, in the night watches aboard ship, 
 in the inhospitality of his mother's house, and on 
 the jaunting-car to Dundalk. All this he had thought 
 out, and on its basis gone into marriage. And it 
 would just have been as well for him, better perhaps, 
 had he thrown a coin into the air to find out whether 
 he should marry or no. 
 
 And that was what human thought was worth 
 — a brown penny thrown into the empty air ! 
 
 " Gloir do'n Athair, agas do'n Mhac, agas do'n 
 Spiorad Naomh," went the drone of the rosary 
 within. " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, 
 and to the Holy Ghost, Amen ! " 
 
 § io 
 And the house that he had known in a dream 
 was no more in reality than a cold strange dwelling ; 
 all was there, the whitewash, the thatch, the delft 
 on the dresser, but as a home it was still-born. The 
 turf did not burn well and the swallows shunned the
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 79 
 
 eaves, feeling in nature's occult way, that the essential 
 rhythm was wanting. Nor would bees be happy in 
 the skips, but must swarm otherward. One would 
 have said the house was built on some tragic rock . . . 
 
 Only the old dog was faithful, and stayed where 
 his master put him. 
 
 And the face he had dreamed would not look 
 toward him over the illimitable ocean. Seek as 
 he would, it was never there, with warm gravity. 
 His eyes might strive, but all they would see was 
 the oily swell of the Dogger Bank, and the great 
 plowed field of Biscay Bay, and the smash of foam 
 against the Hebrides. Never would a space in the 
 watery horizon open and show him a threshold of 
 beauty with quiet, brooding face . . . And when he 
 came home, either late or early, or on time to the 
 moment, it was, " Och, is it yourself ? " And the 
 only interruption to the house was the little more 
 trouble he caused. And his gifts were treated tepidly, 
 though with cupidinous eyes. In the evening, if he 
 stood on the threshold, it was : " Wisha, is it going 
 out you are ? And isn't it enough of the fresh air 
 you have, and you on the salt water ? " And her 
 embraces were half chastity, half sin, tepidly pas- 
 sionate, unintimate ... so that shame was on 
 him, and no pride or joyousness . . . Cold ! cold ! 
 cold ! . . . A cold house, a cold woman ... No 
 light or warmth or graciousness . . . 
 
 And the old woman whom he had thought of 
 as warm and peaceful by the fire was a hag with a 
 peasant's cupidity : " And isn't it a little more 
 you can be leaving us, darling lad, what with the 
 high price that does be on things in this place and
 
 80 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 you are not spending a brown ha'penny aboard ship ? 
 . . . And herself might be taken sick now, and 
 wouldn't it be a grand thing, a wee store of money 
 in the house ? Or the wars might come, find you 
 far on the sea ! An extra sovereign now, brave 
 fellow, a half-sovereign itself ! " 
 
 And when he left it was of less import than the 
 cow going dry. Only one mourned him, the old dog. 
 Only one remembered him, the half-blind badger 
 hound, that dreamed of ancient hunting days . . . 
 
 And he would go down to his ship, heart-broken, 
 when none was looking a mist of tears in his eyes, 
 — he was not yet twenty-one, — but in a day or so 
 that would pass, and the sea that was so strong 
 would give him of its strength and heal him, so that 
 after a few days he could stand up and say : " Well 
 . . . Huuh . . . Well . . ." 
 
 A trick had been played him, like some tricks 
 the sea and sun play. Afar off he had seen an island 
 like an appointed dancing place, like the Green of 
 Fiddlers, and he had asked to be put ashore there, 
 to live and be a permanent citizen. And when he 
 was landed, he found that his dancing place was only 
 a barren rock where the seagulls mourned. Past, the 
 glamour of the sun and sea mists, there were only 
 cold, searching winds and dank stone . . . 
 
 But he came of a race that are born men, breed 
 men, and kill men. Crying never patched a hole 
 in a brogue, and a man who's been fooled is no 
 admirable figure, at least to Antrim men. So shut 
 your mouth ! When a master loses a ship he gets 
 no other. That is the inexorable rule of the sea. 
 So when a man wrecks his life . . .
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 81 
 
 What he had decided was this : go ahead. He 
 had been fooled ; pay the forfeit. Retreat into 
 his own heart, and go ahead. Thirty, forty years. 
 ... He had himself to blame. And it wasn't 
 as if he had to live in the house all the time ; he 
 had only to come back there. All that was killed 
 was his heart. His frame was still stolid, his eye 
 clear . . . There would be little oases here and 
 there, some great record of a voyage broken, friends 
 bravely made, a kiss now and then, freely, gallantly 
 given . . . But ... go ahead ! 
 
 And then suddenly death had come, and the 
 scheme of life was broken, like a piece from the 
 end of a stick. Death he had seen before, but 
 never so close to him. A good man had died and 
 he had said : " God ! there's a pity ! " though 
 why, he didn't know. And a young girl might 
 die, and it would seem like a tragedy in a play. 
 And a child would die, and he would feel hurt and 
 say, " Yon's cruelty, yon ! " And death had seemed 
 to be an ultimate word. 
 
 But never before now had he seen the ramifica- 
 tions of death. Life had seemed to him to be a 
 straight line, and suddenly he was inspired to the 
 knowledge that it was a design, a pattern, a scheme 
 . . . And now he felt it was only a tool, like a knife, 
 or scissors, in the hands of what ? . . . What ? 
 Destiny ? ... or what ? . . . 
 
 § ii 
 " A chraoibhin oaibhinn ! O pleasant little branch, 
 is there regard in you for the last words of the dead 
 
 G
 
 82 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 woman ? " The old cailleach had come again to 
 ruffle the grave silence about young Shane in the 
 haggard. 
 
 " Was it — was it anything for me?" 
 
 " And whom would it be for, acushla veg ? Sure 
 the love of her heart you were, the white love of 
 her heart. You and me she was thinking of, her old 
 mother that saw a power of trouble. Ill-treated 
 I was by Sergeant Dolan, who fought old Bonaparte 
 in the foreign wars, and took to drinking in the 
 dreadful days of peace. Harsh my life was, and 
 peaceful should my end be, the like of a day that 
 does be rainy, and turns at evening-time. And that 
 was what she wanted, a charaid bhtg, little friend 
 o* me." 
 
 " What now ? " 
 
 " She said to me, and she dying in my arms, 
 and the blue spirit coming out of the red lips of 
 her, — och ! ochanee I — ' Sure it's not in that 
 grand Northern lad to see you despised in your 
 old age, and the grannies of the neighbourhood 
 laughing at you who boasted often. The wee house 
 he'll give you — the wee house is comfortable for an 
 old woman — ' " 
 
 " But the house isn't mine. It's Alan Donn 
 Campbell's. It isn't mine to give, and I haven't 
 the money to buy it. All the money I have is my 
 pay and what my uncles give me — and they won't 
 see you want." 
 
 " But isn't it the grand rich Northern family 
 you are ? And won't there be money coming to 
 you when your uncles and mother die ? " 
 
 " I suppose so."
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 83 
 
 ' Well now, agra, a few of us have been think- 
 ing. And Manus McGinty, the priest's brother, 
 is willing to advance you the money at interest, to 
 be paid him when your people die. And you can 
 buy the house, and a slip of a pig I can be fattening 
 against the Christmas market." 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 1 Och, agra," she whined, " you wouldn't go 
 back on the words of the poor girl, and her dying 
 in my arms ? And she was thinking of you when 
 she should have been thinking of her God ! And 
 the grand subtle things she said of you, that only 
 a woman can understand ! Sure it was of love 
 for you she died, you being away so long from her 
 on the salt and bitter sea — " 
 
 ' Listen, woman Dolan. I heard how Moyra 
 died as I came through the village. She died as 
 she was beating my poor old hound. She dropped 
 dead from the passion in her, like a shot man. So 
 where's all your love and your long dying wishes 
 as she lay in your arms ? " 
 
 He arose and walked away from her, through 
 the haggard, under the sky, where the southeast 
 cloud-banks rolled steadily toward the placid moon. 
 And there was silence for an instant, so speechless 
 he left her. And then suddenly her ancient shrill 
 voice cut the air like a drover's whip : 
 
 " You Orange bastard ! " 
 
 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 ;
 
 84 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 women droned their prayers 
 with a droning as of bees. There she lay with her 
 hands clasped on a wooden crucifix. And no more 
 would the robins wake her, and they fussing in the 
 great hawthorn-tree over the coming of dawn. No 
 longer would she rake the ash from the peat and blow 
 the red of it to a little blaze. No longer would she 
 beat his dog out of the house with the handle of the 
 broom. No longer would she foregather with the 
 neighbours over a pot of tea for a pleasant vindictive 
 chat. No longer would she look out to sea for him 
 with her half-loving, half-inimical eyes. 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. 
 
 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
 
 THE WAKE AT ARDEE 85 
 
 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 every- 
 thing. . . . 
 
 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. 
 The day after to-morrow he would mount the deck 
 of Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few crisp orders 
 would set out on the eternal sea, as though she were 
 still alive in her cottage, as though, indeed, she had 
 never even lived, and northward he would go past 
 the purple Mull of Cantyre ; past the Clyde, where 
 the Ayrshire sloops danced like bobbins on the 
 water ; past the isles, where overhead drove the 
 wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle- 
 field ; past the Hebrides, where strange arctic birds 
 whined like hurt dogs ; northward still to where 
 the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black 
 winter nights ; eastward and southward to where 
 the swell of the Dogger Bank rose, where the fish 
 grazed like kine. . . . Over the great sea he would go, 
 as though nothing had happened, not even the snapp- 
 ing of a stay — down to the sea, where the crisp winds 
 of dawn were, and the playful, stupid, short-sighted 
 porpoises ; the treacherous, sliding icebergs ; and 
 the gulls that cried with the sea's immense melan- 
 choly ; and the great plum-coloured whales. .
 
 BOOK THREE 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 
 § I 
 
 IT was all like a picture some painter of an old 
 and obvious school might have done. First, 
 there was the port, with the white ships riding at 
 their moorings in the blue sea. Then greyish white 
 Marseilles, with its two immense ribbons, the Canne- 
 biere running northward, and the Rue de Rome and 
 the Prado intersecting it. The great wooded amphi- 
 theatre 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 
 Phoenicians 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 greyish white city— all a picture some unim- 
 aginative painter would have loved. Next to Belfast, 
 Marseilles was to Shane Campbell a second home. 
 There it was, like your own house ! 
 
 Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he 
 went ashore, the swarming, teeming life of it struck 
 Shane like a current of air. Along the quays, along 
 the Cannebiere, was a riot of colour and nationality 
 unbelievable from on board ship. Here were Turks, 
 dignified and shy. Here were Greeks, wary, furtive. 
 Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, Livornians, 
 droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here 
 were Algerians, black African folk, sneering, inimical. 
 Here were Spaniards, with their walk like a horse's 
 lope. Here were French business men, very import- 
 ant. Here were Provencals, cheery, short, tubby, 
 
 89
 
 9 o THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 excitable, olive-coloured, black-bearded, calling to 
 one another in the langue d'oc of the troubadours, 
 " Te, mon bon ! Commoun as ? Qufaaco ? " 
 
 And the bustle of the shops and the bustle of cafes, 
 until Shane was forced to go out to the olive -lined 
 roads to the rocky summit of La Garde, and once 
 there, as if drawn by a magnet, Shane would enter 
 the chapel in the fort, where the most renowned 
 Notre Dame of the Mediterranean smiles mawkishly 
 in white olive-wood. After the blinding sun of the 
 Midi, the cool dark chapel was like a dungeon to him, 
 so little could he see anything ; but in a while the 
 strange furniture of the place would take form before 
 his eyes : the white statue of the Virgin, the silver 
 tunny-fish, the daubs of sea hazards whence the 
 Virgin had rescued grateful mariners, the rope-ends, 
 the crutches . . . And though none might be in the 
 chapel, yet it was full of life, so much did the pathetic 
 ex-votos tell . . . And he would come out of the 
 chapel, and again the Midi sun would flash in a shower 
 of gold, and he could see the blue Mediterranean, 
 pricked with minute lateen-sails, and the greyish 
 town beneath him, so old and yet so vital, and the 
 calm harbour, with the forest of spars, and Monte 
 Cristo, white as an egg . . . 
 
 A queer town that, as familiar as a channel marking, 
 teeming as an ant-hill, and when darkness came 
 over it, and he viewed it from the after deck, mystery 
 came, too . . . For a while there was a hush, and 
 around the hills gigantic ghosts walked . . . One 
 thought of the Phocaeans who had founded it, and 
 to whom the Cannebiere was a rope-walk, where 
 they made the sheets for their ships . . . And one
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 91 
 
 thought of Lazarus, who had been raised from among 
 the silent dead and who had come there, so legend 
 read, a grey figure in ceramic garments, standing 
 in the prow of a boat . . . 
 
 One thing Robin More had told him remained 
 in his mind and captured his fancy, and that was 
 that Pontius Pilate had been governor of Marseilles 
 after his office in Judea. And of him Shane would 
 think when the mysterious dusk came on the Midi 
 hills . . . Pilate, who had smiled, " What is truth ? " 
 and who had turned Christ over to the mob . . . 
 A big man, he imagined the Roman to have been, 
 with clever eyes, and a great black beard covering 
 a weak chin ... A man who knew all the subtleties 
 of mind, and had no backbone . . . And he could 
 see the Roman, sitting on his villa porch in the dusk 
 with tortured eyes, and fingering his beard with 
 fingers that shook . . . Paul was going through 
 Greece and Rome like a flame, and the Pilate wondered 
 . . . Could it have been possible ? . . . Ridiculous ! 
 a Jewish carpenter ! A crazy man ! . . . And yet 
 . . . Could it have been possible ... No ! no ! no ! 
 And yet . . . People had seen Him walk on the 
 waves . . . But people never knew what they saw, 
 exactly ... No ! How foolish ! ... He raised a 
 man from the dead, they said . . . And that cen- 
 turion — what was his name ? — his daughter ! . . . 
 No, a stupid Jewish legend . . . And yet . . . Could 
 it be possible ? Could it ? Could it ? 
 
 " Lights 1 Lights ! Do you hear me ! Bring 
 lights ! Lights ! " Pilate would all put scream, 
 panic-striken in the Midi dusk. . . . 
 
 To Shane Campbell Marseilles had been all this for
 
 92 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 two years while he journeyed from Liverpool for silk 
 and scented soaps — a landmark familiar as the Giants' 
 Causeway, a strange, motley human circus, a veil 
 behind which hid gigantic ghosts . . . Until he met 
 La Mielleusc on the road to Aix. 
 
 § 2 
 For six years, now, since the day they had buried 
 his wife in the green divots of Louth, women had been 
 alien to him. It was not that he hated them, not 
 that he was uncomfortable among them ; but the 
 thought of close mental or spiritual or physical 
 contact with them put him in a panic, as one might 
 be in a panic at the thought of contact with some 
 Chinaman, or Eskimo. The women of the better 
 class in ports importuned him, but he passed with a 
 grave humorous smile and an unexpected courtesy. 
 His friends' wives or acquaintances could get nothing 
 out of him but a grave answer to any question they 
 might put, so that they characterized him as a stick. 
 And at home in Ulster, whither he went after 
 occasional voyages, where Robin More still drowsed 
 over his books ; where Alan Donn still hunted and 
 fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy 
 in his early twenties ; and where his mother sat 
 and did beautiful broidery, dumbly, inimically, 
 cold as a fish, secretive as a badger, there he would 
 meet the women of the Antrim families, women who 
 knew of the disaster of his marriage, and they would 
 look approvingly at his firm face and smiling, steady 
 eyes, and they would say : "A man, thon ! He 
 could be a good friend. You could trust him, a
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 93 
 
 woman could." They were unco good folk, Antrim 
 folk. 
 
 For the peasant girls around he had always a 
 laugh and a joke. And for the young girls from 
 school he had always a soft spot in his heart somehow, 
 appreciating them as one appreciates the first prim- 
 rose or a puppy dog playing on the lawn or the lark 
 in the clear air. There came such a current of beauty 
 and freshness from them . . . New from the hand 
 of the Maker . . . They were pausing now, as the 
 wind pauses on the tide. . . . And in a little while 
 the world, the damned world ! . . . And so he treated 
 them with a great gravity, answering their questions 
 on geography, telling them what an estuary was, 
 and what the trade-winds, and how a typhoon 
 came and paused and passed : and how jute and 
 grain and indigo were taken from Calcutta, and 
 of the Hooghly, the most difficult river in the world 
 to navigate, and of the shoal called " James and 
 Mary "... And they listened to him with wide- 
 open, violet eyes . . . 
 
 And there were two women, Leah Fraser, a slight 
 woman with hair smooth and reddish like a gold 
 coin, and eyes that thought and saw back of things, 
 and slender, beautiful hands, and she moved with the 
 dignity of a swan . . . And there was Anne MacNeill, 
 who handled a horse as a man would, and was a great 
 archer — she could shoot as far as Alan could drive 
 a golf-ball with a spoon . . . Shane could always 
 see her, a Diana on the greensward, leaning forward, 
 listening to hear the smack of the arrow on the 
 target . . . And both these women were his good 
 friends, the thought of them filling his mind like
 
 94 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 sweet lavender . . . But when they were each alone 
 with him, and a little silence would come, then panic 
 would fall on him, and he would make an undignified 
 escape from their company proffering any old excuse 
 . . . And they would watch him go, with little 
 twisted smiles . . . Poor Leah ! Poor Anne ! 
 
 All the love in him, that some sweet, gracious 
 woman should have had, was anesthetized, or it 
 was deflected, perhaps, to the great three-masted 
 schooner he was now owner and master of, a beau- 
 tiful boat that had been christened the Ulster 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. It was like having one's own 
 country, and his cabin aboard was like his own castle 
 — the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, and 
 the compass above the fastened bed, the row of books, 
 the Aberdeen terrier, Duine Uasal, who slept peace- 
 fully on the rug, and who would go on deck and sniff 
 the wind like a connoisseur . . . And there was a 
 manuscript poem of his father's in the Irish letter, 
 Leaba Luachra, " The Bed of Rushes," which he 
 had discovered and had framed. And there was 
 a prized thing of his boyhood there, a dagger the
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 95 
 
 Young Pretender wore in his stocking, and he in 
 Highland dress, as he swung toward London with 
 pipe and drum. Alan Donn had given it to him, 
 and he after getting it on a visit to Argyll. " Not 
 only is it Charlie's, but it's a nice handy thing, thon ! " 
 ... A beautiful piece of work it was, perfectly 
 balanced, keen as a razor, with a handle of the stag's 
 horn ... It was the only weapon Shane had, and 
 about it curled romance and the smoke of dead, 
 royal hopes ... A bonny, homy place that cabin, 
 peaceful as a garden of bees, when the water slipped 
 past the beam. It was like a warm hearth-fire to 
 come down there after a strenuous time on deck 
 while the sou'wester crashed on the Welsh coast. 
 Or in the roll of the Bay of Biscay, after a space 
 watching the swinging fields of stars, to come down 
 there was to drop into a welcoming circle of friends, 
 to throw one's self down and pick up a book, the 
 Laureate's " In Memoriam " or Mr. Thackeray's 
 latest — and to glance from the pages of " Henry 
 Esmond " to Prince Charlie's dagger lying peacefully 
 on the desk . . . How near ! how near ! . . . And 
 up forward the look-out paced, or leaned over the 
 bows, humming in Gaidhlig • 
 
 \S trie me sealtuinn do'n chnoc is airde 
 D'fheac a fair mi fear a bhaia 
 An dtig tu andiu no'n dtig tu 'maireach ? 
 Is mur dtig tu eader \nir truagh mar tu mi ! 
 
 Will you come to-day or will you come to-morr<>\v ? 
 If you never come how piteous for me ! 
 Fhit a' bhaia, na hnro file ! 
 Hi horo, fhir a bhata —
 
 96 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 All the nostalgia of the Scottish isles was in the 
 minors of that song . . . And it was like a lullaby 
 . . . And the wind hummed through the rigging 
 . . . And underneath was the flow and throb of the 
 immense circulation of the sea . . . And overhead 
 the helmsman rang the ship's bell. Tung-tung, 
 tung-tung, tung-tung, tung. And all was well on 
 board the Ulster Lady. And she was his only sweet- 
 heart and delight . . . until he met La Mielleuse 
 on the road to Aix . . . 
 
 § 3 
 The babble of the Greek merchants in the Cafe* 
 Turc at last began to bore him, and hiring a horse and 
 sort of gig he decided to drive toward Aix. He had 
 always wished to see the Provencal countryside, but 
 somehow the opportunity had always passed by, 
 or something . . . But on this bright September 
 afternoon it seemed such a pity to go back on board 
 ship ... He examined the old white horse with 
 interest. 
 
 "Are you sure he'll take me there ? You see 
 
 his — " Shane wanted to say suspensory ligaments, 
 
 but his French didn't quite go that far — " his legs — " 
 
 " But, Monsieur, he has won several races — " 
 
 " Well, in that event"— Shane grinned, "K-k-k-k!" 
 
 The white horse trotted steadily out the Prado, 
 
 the Rue de Rome, trotted out in the country, passed 
 
 Bains de la Mediterran^e. A northerly breeze was 
 
 out rippling the gulf and giving promise of autumn, 
 
 and the heavy heat of the Midi had disappeared for 
 
 the instant Soon they would be plucking the grapes
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 07 
 
 of Provence. The olive-trees were black on the 
 white road. The white horse trotted on . . . 
 
 There were peasants on the road going into town, 
 and townspeople going out to the country . . . 
 And children who insulted one another shrilly . . . 
 But the white horse plodded on. On a stretch of 
 level road he passed a pair talking, noting casually 
 that the woman was a lady from her carriage, and 
 from his threatening cringe that the man was a cad. 
 Italian riffraff of some kind . . . 
 
 " But you are mistaken," the woman was saying. 
 " You are making an error." 
 
 The man's reply was low, inaudible. 
 
 " But I assure you, you are mistaken." 
 
 The white horse plodded on. 
 
 " Please, please " — the woman's voice followed 
 Shane, and there was embarrassed fear in it, — 
 " please let me pass ! You are mistaken." 
 
 And then again : "I swear to you . . . please 
 . . . please ! " 
 
 The white horse was surprised at a firm pull on 
 his mouth, a crack of the whip, and a turn . . . He 
 broke in a lolloping canter . . . Shane jumped 
 down . . . 
 
 " Madame, is this man annoying you ? " 
 
 " Sirvasc, signor — " 
 
 But one look at the woman's face was sufficient. 
 Shane turned on the fawning Sicilian with a snarl. 
 
 " Get to hell out of here, quick ! " The man 
 shuffled off, walked quickly, ran, disappeared . . . 
 
 The great dark eyes had agony in them. Her 
 mouth quivered. Shane knew her knees were shaking 
 as she stood. 
 
 H
 
 98 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Better get in here. I'll drive you home.' 
 He helped her into the trap. " I ought to have 
 held that fellow," he grumbled. " Marseilles ? No ! 
 Oh, Les Bains ! We'll be there in a minute. You're 
 all right now. Madame." 
 
 " He mistook me — for — somebody else — " She 
 had a voice deep and sweet as a bell, but there was 
 a tremor in it now — a marked accent of fear, past, 
 but not recovered from. 
 
 He was aware of a great vibrant womanhood 
 beside him, as some people are aware of spirits 
 in a room, or a mother is aware of a child. He 
 was aware, though he hardly saw them, though 
 he didn't know he saw them, of the proud Greek 
 beauty of her face, so decisively, so finely chiselled, 
 so that it seemed to soar forward, as a bird soars 
 into the wind ; of the firm, dark ellipsis of the 
 eyebrows ; of the mouth that quivered, and yet 
 in repose would be something for a master of line 
 and colour to draw ; the little hands that plucked 
 nervously at the dark silk gown, unquiet as butter- 
 flies. Her eyes, he knew, were wide with fear, 
 great black pupils, deep, immensely deep. And he 
 was aware, too, of something within her that vibrated, 
 as a stay aboard ship vibrates in a gusty, angry wind, 
 or as an ill-plucked harpstring will vibrate to and fro, 
 unable to stop. 
 
 " I live here, Monsieur." 
 
 It was a little white villa, with green jalousies 
 such as the Midi has in thousands. He pulled up, 
 and she was down before he could help her. Her face 
 was quiet now but for the tremor of her eyes. 
 
 " Thank you ever so much," she said.
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 99 
 
 " But this man, Madame. Are you safe ? Ought 
 not one to — the police ? " 
 
 " It was nothing, Monsieur." She laughed, but 
 her voice still quivered. " Some good-for-nothing 
 who took me for someone else, whom he had seen 
 somewhere else, and knew — something — about. 
 Nothing at all, a bagatelle, that might happen to any- 
 one. But I thank you so much ! You were going 
 somewhere ? " 
 
 " Toward Aix, Madame." 
 
 " But your horse is lame ! " 
 
 ' So he is, poor old boy ! I hadn't noticed." 
 
 " Then — adieu, Monsieur. And thanks again." 
 
 He drove back to town. " I didn't get very far," 
 he thought. " Just another wasted afternoon ! " 
 .... At the livery post he got down and examined 
 the horse's fetlock. 
 
 " So you won several races, eh ? " But the white 
 horse seemed to shake its head. " No ! Oh, well, 
 no matter, old codger ! " And he stroked the long 
 lugubrious muzzle. . . . 
 
 And thus, casually as he would light a match for 
 his cigarette, casually as he would stumble over 
 something, casually as he would pick up a book, he 
 met La Mielleuse on the road to Aix. . . . 
 
 § 4 
 For days now he had been aware of her presence 
 in Marseilles without thinking of her — aware of her 
 as he was aware of the Hotel de Ville, or of the Consigne, 
 or of the obelisk in the Place Castellane. These 
 things were facts, had their place, and she was a fact.
 
 ioo THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 She had become imprinted on his memory as on a 
 sensitive plate. So one dusk night on the Prado, as he 
 met her, he was no more surprised than if, in their 
 appointed places he had come across the obelisk 
 or the Consigne or the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 She was standing looking out to sea, and the 
 little wind from Africa blew against her, and made 
 her seem poised for flight, like a bird. 
 
 And because he saw no reason why he shouldn't 
 and because he was direct and simple as the sea 
 itself, he went to her. 
 
 " Are you a sea-captain's wife ? " 
 
 " No, Monsieur." She seemed to know him without 
 turning. Perhaps she recognized his voice. 
 
 " I saw you looking out toward the Pharo. I 
 thought perhaps you were waiting for someone to 
 come home on a ship." 
 
 " No," she said slowly. " No. I — I come here 
 some dusks, and look out to sea. There is something. 
 It seems to pull me. The great waters and the 
 blinking lighthouse — I seem to stand out of myself. 
 And miles and miles and miles away there is a new 
 land with a new life where one might go . . . and begin 
 . . . What is in me seems to struggle to go out there, 
 but it never gets more than an inch or so outside. 
 But even that . . And the wind ... so clean. Are 
 you a sailor ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am a sailor." 
 
 " It is very beautiful and very pure, the sea ? " 
 
 " Yes, sometimes it is very beautiful. I think 
 it is always beautiful. And it must be pure — I 
 never thought ... It is strong, and sometimes cruel.
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 101 
 
 It heals, and sometimes it is very lonely. One never 
 quite understands. It is so big." 
 
 " Yes, so big and strong . . . and it heals. One 
 seems, one's self, one's little cares, to be so little." 
 
 And they were silent for a while. 
 
 " But perhaps I intrude, Madame. Your husband 
 
 " My husband is dead in Algiers these six years." 
 
 " I am sorry." 
 
 Everything was hushed, the tideless sea, the silent 
 wind. Behind them, and still about them, hung the 
 strange dusk of Pontius Pilate. Before them blazed 
 Marseilles. 
 
 " You are married ? " 
 
 " I was married." 
 
 " Then your wife is — dead ? " 
 
 " Yes, Madame, she is dead." 
 
 " You grieve ? " 
 
 " No, I do not grieve." 
 
 " Did you not love her ? " 
 
 " I loved someone I thought was she. It wasn't 
 she." 
 
 There was another instant's silence as they walked. 
 
 ' Ah, I think I understand," she said. And they 
 walked into the blaze of the city. She paused for a 
 moment. 
 
 " Will you pardon me for asking things like that ? 
 I don't usually . . . But in the dusk I seem to be 
 another person." 
 
 " No. In the light we are other persons." 
 
 " Ah," she smiled understandingly. " You are 
 going to your ship now ? "
 
 102 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 There was a finality in her voice. It was more 
 an affirmation than a question. 
 
 " Madame," Shane said, " will you please let me 
 see you to your door ? " 
 
 She looked at him for an intense second, and a 
 little cloud of — was it fear? — flitted across her face. 
 
 " Madame, there are thieves and villains of all 
 kinds abroad. You have had one experience. Please 
 let me protect you from a possible second." 
 
 " If you wish." She smiled. He called a carriage. 
 
 In the light she was a different person. Along 
 the sea-shore walking in the dusk, she was a troubled 
 phantom, a thing of beauty, but without flesh, 
 without the trappings of clothes — as if a spirit had been 
 imprisoned in cold white statuary. But now she 
 was a beautiful woman, gravely gay, a woman of the 
 world, not of the great world, perhaps, and not of 
 the half- world — just a woman aware of and ex- 
 perienced in life. And poised 
 
 " You are English ? " 
 
 " Not English. Irish." 
 
 Poised she was, but she was like a player playing 
 a game, and the breaks against her. He knew the 
 smile. He had seen it often on Alan Donn's face, 
 playing in some of the great title matches. Four 
 holes to go, and he must better par. It's all right, 
 the smile said ; there's nothing wrong. But in 
 Alan Donn's was the glint of a naked knife, and in 
 this woman's eyes, down deep, veiled, but ill-con- 
 cealed, was appeal. 
 
 They stopped at her house. He helped her out. 
 
 " Adieu, Monsieur. And again a thousand thanks." 
 
 " CHati un vrai plaisir ! "
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 103 
 
 " Monsieur ! " 
 
 " Madame ! " 
 
 The cabman looked surprised when ordered to 
 return. He turned and regarded his fare with 
 amazement. 
 
 " Quai de la Fraternite," I said. 
 
 " Hup, alors ! " The cabby shrugged his shoulders. 
 And they trotted ploddingly through the dusk of 
 Pontius Pilate to the burning cloud which was 
 Marseilles. . . . 
 
 § 5 
 
 He knew he should meet her again, and where 
 he should meet her ; and he did, on the Prado. He 
 knew when. In the Midi dusk. A touch of mistral 
 was out, and the wind blew seaward. She was sitting 
 down, looking towards Africa. 
 
 " You oughtn't to come out here alone," he said. 
 " Marseilles is a bad port." 
 
 " I know," she said. " I know. But it draws me, 
 this spot. You leave soon ? " she asked. 
 
 " In a few days." 
 
 V But you will be back." 
 
 " Yes, I will be back," he told her. " I don't 
 know why, but I think I'd rather die than not see 
 Marseilles again. It is a second home, and yet I 
 know so few people here." 
 
 " If one has the temperament, and conditions are 
 — as they should be — Marseilles is wonderful." 
 
 " One could be happy here." 
 
 " Yes," and she sighed. 
 
 The spell of the archaic dusk came on him again ;
 
 104 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 a dusk old as the world. About them brooded tha 
 welter of passion and romance that Marseilles is. 
 Once it was a Phocaean village, and hook-nosed Afric 
 folk had stepped through on long, thin feet. And 
 then had come the Greeks, with their broad, clear 
 brows, their grey eyes. And further back the hairy 
 Gauls had crept, snarling like dogs. And Greece 
 died. And came the clash of the Roman legions, 
 ruthless fighting hundreds, who saw, did massive 
 things. And Rome died. And over the sea came the 
 Saracens, their high heads, their hard, bronzed 
 bodies, their scarlet mouths. And they conquered 
 and builded and lived. . . . And were hurled back. . . . 
 Years hummed by, and passion died not, or romance, 
 and it was from Marseilles that a battalion had come 
 to Paris gates singing the song that Rouget de Lisle 
 had written in Strasburg i 
 
 Allons, enfants de la Patrie, 
 Le jour de gloire est arrive. 
 
 And passed that day, and came another, when 
 a handful of grizzled veterans left the gates to join 
 their brothers and meet the exiled emperor. . . . 
 Passion and romance ! Their colours were in Mar- 
 seilles still. . . . Over in Anse des Catalans weren't 
 there the remains of the village of the sea-Gipsies, 
 who had come none knew whence ? . . . And along 
 the gulf there were settlements of Saracen blood . . . 
 les Maures, the Provensals called them . . . and 
 the shadow of Pontius Pilate wild-eyed in the 
 dusk. . . . 
 
 " It's strange " — her voice came gently to him, — 
 " but I can hear you think."
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 105 
 
 " And I can feel your silence," he said. " Just feel 
 — you — being silent — " 
 
 The wind whipped up, grew shrill, grew cold. She 
 shivered in her thin frock. 
 
 " You are becoming cold." 
 
 " I am cold." 
 
 " Then hadn't you better go home— to your house." 
 
 She rose silently. It seemed to him somehow 
 that she had put herself under his care. She was 
 like some gentle craft that had anchored humbly 
 under the lee of a great ship. He felt somehow 
 that she was a thing to be protected. He hailed 
 a carriage, and she made no protest — all the time 
 under his lee, so needful of protection. It was a 
 shock when they came into the lights of Marseilles 
 to find a proud, grave woman there and not a shrink- 
 ing, wide-eyed child. . . . Her face, poised for 
 flight, like a bird's wing ; the beautiful, half-opened 
 mouth, the hands, the little feet in their shoes. 
 She was like some beautiful shy deer. And some- 
 where hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit. . . . 
 And yet she was smiling. . . . 
 
 At the door he made to bid her good-bye. 
 
 " Would you — would you care to come in ? ' 
 
 " Why — why, yes." He sent the carriage away. 
 
 He followed her up the path to the little villa and 
 with her entered the house. There were no servants 
 to answer the door ; she let herself in with a latch- 
 key, but so scrupulously clean was the place, so 
 furnished in its way, that there must have been 
 servants somewhere. The living-room into which 
 she conducted him was spacious and a little bare, 
 though not bare for the Midi — a plain white room,
 
 io6 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 high in the ceiling, with chairs of good line. Here 
 was a big piano, here a fireplace, here a few paintings, 
 colourful landscapes, on the wall. Together they lit 
 candles. 
 
 " Back of here is a garden," she said, " where I 
 spend most of the day. And I have a cook " — she 
 smiled — " and a maid who waits on me. And yet 
 I go out to walk on the Prado. ..." 
 
 Shane wasn't surprised. It wasn't home, somehow. 
 The room was like a setting in a play, here light, here 
 shadow. . . . The paintings, the instrument of 
 music, the chairs, they were not things owned and 
 loved. They were properties. ... In the golden 
 candle-light, as she moved, she was like an actress of 
 great restraint. Every step, posture, gesture seemed 
 to have an occult significance. Even her bedroom, 
 away off somewhere, he felt, was not a place where 
 one slept easily and dreamed. It would be like the 
 dressing-room of some woman mummer. ... It was 
 all like a play, of which he was seeing a fragment 
 from the wings. . . . What was it all about ? Who 
 was she ? And why was his heart a-flutter ? 
 
 She had taken off her hat, and her hair was coiled 
 close about her exquisite head. White and black, 
 regular, significant, antique — like a cameo of some 
 Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, 
 one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against 
 her gown. ... It was like a pose — but unconscious, 
 he knew, utterly unconscious. . . . 
 
 " Tell me," she said, " why did you speak to me ? ' 
 " I don't know," he said, " I just spoke." 
 " You weren't " — her words were weighty, picked 
 — " looking for a flirtation with a pretty woman ? '
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 107 
 
 " Why, no. Of course not," he answered. " I 
 never thought " 
 
 " No. No, you didn't." She decided for herself. 
 
 She came toward him suddenly in the candlelight. 
 Stood before him. 
 
 " Tell me, who are you ? What are you ? " There 
 was a tragic appeal in her face. " Where do you 
 come from ? Where are you going ? " 
 
 " I don't know." His throat was dry, his heart 
 pounding. " A few days ago I was a contented man, 
 unhappy but contented. And now I don't know." 
 
 " And I don't know who I am." Her mouth 
 quivered. " I am two people — three people." 
 
 They looked at each other with a sort of agony, 
 as though they had lost something dear to each, and 
 to both of them. They were immensely intimate. 
 He put out his hand 
 
 " Poor . . . poor . . ." 
 
 Their hands touched, and there seemed to rush 
 between them, through them, some powerful current ; 
 and how it happened he did not know, but they were 
 kissing each other. ... He thought with a queer 
 shock, was a woman's mouth so soft, so sweet, so 
 vibrant ? He hadn't known. And was he kissing 
 her ? And how had it happened ? It was im- 
 possible ! . . . Or was he dreaming ? . . . Or 
 was he — was he dead ? . . . 
 
 She released herself from him for an instant, 
 putting her hands on his shoulders, her eyes looking 
 into his eyes. . . . 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 " Campbell. Shane Campbell." 
 
 " Campbell. Shane Campbell. Shane — Shane 
 Campbell. Mine is Claire-Anne — Claire-Anne Godey.''
 
 108 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 §6 
 
 It seemed to him as he went to Les Bains next 
 evening that the world had somehow changed into 
 another dimension, so much clearer the air was, so 
 much brighter the stars. ... He had discovered a 
 higher, more rarefied stratum of life, in the dim, keen 
 atmosphere of which things took on incomparable 
 beauty and mystery, so that the water on his left 
 hand, unseen, yet so blue, was not the Gulf of Lyons, 
 but the whole Mediterranean, which washed Genoa 
 and Naples and Sicily, and the little islands of the 
 Greeks, and the barbaric shores of Africa, Morocco, 
 and Algiers ; and Gibraltar, where the English were, 
 like an armed sentry in a turret. The ships in the 
 harbour were not ships of commerce, but stately 
 entities each whispering to each in the shush-shush 
 of water and wind, telling of the voyages they had 
 made, adventurous as sturgeons. Even from the 
 mud-and-rush huts along the seashore came the note 
 of brave romance. And the softly singing trees I 
 And in the great amphitheatre of the woods no longer 
 the shade of Pontius Pilate gnawed his bitten nails, 
 but more gallant presences were, grey-eyed Greek 
 women, with proud composed faces and eloquent 
 hands, and Saracens calmly awaiting the morrow's 
 battle, and troubadours puzzling keenly for a rhyme. 
 . . . They were not coloured thoughts, but sentient 
 presences. Spirit and thought had united in him 
 into a being like a bird, leaving the earth, and flying 
 into a realm of ancient forgotten beauty, spirit being 
 the will, and thought the vibrating wing. . . . How 
 harmonious everything was, the stars, the earth,
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 109 
 
 the sea, the people ! How clear it had all become ! 
 How one ! . . . 
 
 He came to her in her garden where she sat beneath 
 a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking 
 trees. Zig-zig-zig-zig. But they were no longer 
 strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high 
 atmosphere in which he was. . . . 
 
 " Claire- Anne ! Claire- Anne. ..." 
 
 " Yes . . . yes, lover ..." 
 
 " Claire- Anne ! " 
 
 She stood up as he took her lovely, pale hands. 
 There was no shame to her glance, nothing but a 
 wonderful frankness, her eyes going to his like brave 
 winged things. 
 
 " Claire- Anne, I want to ask you something.'' 
 
 " Yes . . . lover ..." 
 
 " Claire- Anne, when will you marry me ? " 
 
 Her hands never quivered, but he was aware 
 that her mouth did, in the high diluted starlight. 
 
 " Why do you want to marry me ? Is it because 
 . . . ? Do you feel bound ? . . . or . . . just why ? " 
 
 " I want to be with you, Claire-Anne." 
 
 " Then — dearest, does it matter to go before the 
 mayor and arrange about property ? And to go before 
 a priest and make promises — to God ! ... Sit down, 
 lover ; sit down with me here, in the dusk, under the 
 tree." 
 
 She still clasped both his hands. He might have 
 been talking to some beautiful disembodied spirit, 
 as Pontius Pilate was a poor panic-stricken spirit, 
 or to something he had conjured out of his head, but 
 for her firm, warm J hands. To-night it was she 
 had strength. . . .
 
 no THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Dearest, promises are so easy to make. I have 
 made promises, oh, so many promises ! . . . And life 
 or destiny . . . And when you can't keep them, 
 your heart breaks. You know nothing of me — 
 Shane." . . . 
 
 " I don't want to know ; I just want you, Claire- 
 Anne ! " 
 
 " You must know something. I was just a girl, 
 well brought up, well educated ... I dreamed of being 
 a great actress. I was an actress, but I was . . . 
 manqude . . . didn't succeed, get success . . . And then 
 I married, and my husband died . . . And here I am. 
 . . . And there are other things you mustn't know. . . . 
 Not that they are dear to me ; oh no ! ... . but 
 you must never hear them . . . O Shane, if seven years 
 ago. . . . But destiny or life wouldn't let us. And now 
 we can only cheat him, and that only for a while. . . . 
 Because destiny is all-seeing and jealous and cruel. 
 . . Only for a while, a sweet while. ..." 
 
 " But, Claire- Anne, I don't understand — " 
 
 " Don't understand, don't, my lover. Don't any- 
 thing . . . Only let me give all I have, can give to you, 
 and let me take what you care to give in return, only 
 that ... Shane, we are two people in a dark wood, 
 and it is lonely and terrifying . . . And we have met, 
 and our hands . . . se sont serrdes . . . gripped and held. 
 . . . And we aren't lonely any more, or afraid. And 
 you have a picture in your mind of me, a beautiful, 
 warm picture. . . . But if the night passed, and 
 we came to the meadow-lands . . . Oh Shane, don't 
 let's go into the light — not into the open, not into the 
 light. ... Oh, no ! no ! " 
 
 " But, Claire-Anne ..."
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY in 
 
 " Come closer, Shane. The night is empty. There 
 are only we two in the world . . . Come close. Closer. 
 Closer still ..." 
 
 § 7 
 
 He was sitting in her garden one sunset, under the 
 mulberry-tree, and she had gone into the house for a 
 minute, moving with the firm, gracious walk of hers 
 that was like the firm swimming of swans. In the 
 little hush of sunset, and she gone, there came a 
 sudden knowledge to him. . . . For a space of time, 
 how long he knew not, he was in an Antrim study. . . . 
 Without, the sun had gone down, and there was the 
 purple, twilight water and the gentle calling of the 
 cricket. . . . And within was a grey head that had 
 fallen on a book . . . fallen . . . fallen as the sun went 
 down. 
 
 " Why, Uncle Robin ! " he called. 
 
 Then came a great gush of tears to his heart and 
 eyes. . . . 
 
 She came from the house, as again he became 
 cognizant of the Midi garden instead of the Antrim 
 glen, of the Mediterranean instead of the waters of 
 Moyle. She came down the dusky pathway. At a 
 little distance she saw his face. She stopped short, 
 her face white. . . . 
 
 " Shane ! Shane ! what is wrong ? Are you 
 hurt ? Ill ? " 
 
 " My Uncle Robin is dead, Claire-Anne." 
 
 She looked at him for a little instant, not quite 
 understanding. She came to him swiftly as a 
 swallow. She sat close beside him. Her arm went 
 through his. Her hands clasped his hands.
 
 U2 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me, heart ? " she whispered. 
 
 " I just knew this instant. I felt, saw . . . We 
 were that close . . . my Uncle Robin ! Beannachi 
 Dt ar a anam ! God's blessing on his soul ! " 
 
 She never spoke. She never stirred. She hardly 
 breathed. She was just there, her hands, firm and 
 strong, on his, did he want her. 
 
 " Was it ... a hard death, Shane ? " 
 
 " No ; I seemed to see him, asleep, among his 
 books." 
 
 " His books were his friends . . . you told 
 me. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, dear. His life was with them." 
 
 " And he wasn't a young man, your Uncle Robin ? " 
 
 " Eight and sixty years of age." 
 
 "Is it so ill, heart, to go quickly, quietly, with 
 your friends about you, on an autumn afternoon ? " 
 
 " No, dear, not ill. Very rightly ... I think. 
 But there is something . . . something is gone from 
 the world, like a fine tree from a garden . . . And he 
 was awful dear to me, my Uncle Robin. ... It will 
 be a hard thing to go home and he not there to come 
 and ask : ' Are you all right, laddie ? You're no 
 sick ? ' Claire- Anne, I'll be thinking long. ..." 
 
 She sat with him in silence in the garden, and after 
 a little while got up and went without a word. . . . 
 And he sat in the garden thinking to himself, had he 
 been lax to Uncle Robin in any way ? He might 
 have written oftener. It wasn't fair to have kept the 
 old man worried and he an apprentice at sea. Yes, 
 he could have written, could have written oftener. 
 And thought more. And there were books he might 
 have brought the old man — books from 'Frisco and
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 113 
 
 New York and Naples. The book stores were so far 
 from the quays, and he had put it off. And he could 
 have so easily. . . When one is young, one is so 
 thoughtless. ... A message from somewhere ran 
 into his consciousness like a ripple of code-flags : "It 
 doesn't matter, dear laddie. Don't be taking on. 
 Don't be blaming yourself. You were the dear lad 
 . . . and I'm happy. . . ." 
 
 Ah, yes, but a great tree was gone from the garden. 
 An actuality had been converted into thought and 
 emotion, and thought and emotion may be all that 
 endure, and an actuality be unreal . . . but an 
 actuality is so warm ... so reassuring . . . 
 
 He rose and went toward the house, and as he 
 walked he met her. . 
 
 " Claire-Anne, do you mind if I go back to the ship ? 
 .... Somehow, I'm a little lost. ..." 
 
 " There is a carriage waiting for you outside." 
 
 For the first time it occurred to him that in this 
 occult experience she had not uttered one jarring 
 note. She had not asked questions, nor had she tried 
 to argue with him, as other women would have, 
 telling him he fancied all this. Nor had she bothered 
 him with vain, unwelcome sentiment. She had just 
 — stood by, as at sea. And how swiftly she had 
 divined his need of privacy, of his own ship ? 
 
 " There are none like you in this world, Claire- 
 Anne," he told her. 
 
 "lam what you make me, Shane — what you need 
 of me." Her hand sought his in the stilly dusk. 
 ' Come back only when you are ready, dearest . . , 
 dearest ... I am here ! Always here ! "
 
 ii4 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 §8 
 
 Though she never said so, yet he knew she wanted 
 to go on board the ship that was so much of his life, 
 and one day he had her rowed across to the Ulster 
 Lady. He smiled as he saw how firmly she got on 
 board, though ships were unknown to her. Queer, 
 how she never lost dignity, grace. And it was so 
 easy for a woman to look silly, undignified, getting on 
 board ship. She never disappointed him. . . . 
 
 She mused over the sweet line of the schooner, the 
 tapering masts, the snug canvas, the twinkling brass. 
 The wake of a passing paddle-steamer made the boat 
 pitch gently. It was like breathing. 
 
 " She is so much a pretty lady," Claire-Anne said. 
 " So much like you, Shane, in a way. She might be 
 a young sister — a young, loved sister. And where is 
 your place on board when she sails ? " 
 
 He pointed out the space behind wheel and binnacle. 
 
 " Whenever there's any need, I'm there, just 
 there." 
 
 " And, Shane, great waves like you see in pictures 
 — great enormous waves, does she stand those ? ' 
 
 " Yes, great waves, like you see in pictures, she 
 stands those. Drives through them, and over them, 
 and under them." 
 
 " And Solomon said " — she was just thinking 
 aloud — " that he couldn't understand the way of a 
 ship on the sea. And he was immensely wise. 
 Dearest ... it can't be just wood and canvas, a 
 ship . . . power and grace and beauty. . . . It's 
 like great people. ..." 
 
 " They're as different as people are, Claire- Anne."
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 115 
 
 " Are they, Shane ? I knew they weren't ... just 
 things." 
 
 He took her below in the dusk of his cabin. She 
 filled the space like some gracious green tree. 
 
 " And here is where I live on board ship." 
 
 The Aberdeen terrier came forward to greet her, 
 his tail waving gently, his ears up, his brown eyes 
 grave and warm. 
 
 " Duine uasal ! Duine uasal ! " she knelt to him. 
 
 " You remember ? " He minded he had told her 
 casually of the dog's name. 
 
 " Of course I remember ! Shane, what does 
 Duine uasal mean ? " 
 
 " Gentilhomme," he translated. 
 
 " He has the eyes," she said. 
 
 The framed manuscript of his father's verses caught 
 her eyes, and she looked at him in inquiry. 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " A poem of my father's, in Gaidhlig, Claire-Anne. 
 ' The Bed of Rushes.' " 
 
 ' How queer the letters are ! Slim and graceful, 
 and powerful, too. Would you read it, Shane ? " 
 
 " Leaba luachra," he read, " a bed of rushes, bhi 
 fum ariir, was beneath me last night, agas do chaitheas 
 amach 6 le banaghadh an lae, and I threw it out with 
 the whitening of day. Thainic mo chdad grddh le 
 mo thaobh, my hundred loves came to my side ; 
 guala le gualainn, shoulder to shoulder, agas beal re 
 bdal, and mouth to mouth." 
 
 " Now I know you better, Shane." 
 
 " How, dearest ? " 
 
 " I know how you come by your — your sense of 
 beauty, Shane. It's from your father. You have
 
 n6 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 it just as he had. But he could say and you can't, 
 Shane. You have it, but it doesn't come out that 
 way. It comes out in the sailing of the ship Shane. 
 You must sail beautifully. Shane, I should love to 
 see you sail." 
 
 With a quick movement she dropped on her knees, 
 and her beautiful dark head on the pillow of his bed. 
 
 " Couldn't you take me with you once, Shane, 
 when you sail ? Away on just one voyage ? " 
 
 " Of course I could, dearest, and will." 
 
 " Would you, my heart ? Would you ? " She 
 stood up again, and swift tears came to her eyes. 
 
 " I couldn't come," she said. 
 
 " But, Claire- Anne— " 
 
 " No," she said. She turned her back to him, so 
 that he shouldn't see her face, and her voice vibrated. 
 " No, Shane dear. No. You go to sea and sail your 
 ships, and take care of them in the tempest and coax 
 them in light weather. And go from port to port, 
 watching the strange cities and the peoples, and seeing 
 into them, with . . . tes yeux d' enfant . . . your eyes of a 
 child . . . And have your life, free, big, clean . . . And 
 just in a corner . . . le plus petifyoin . . . keep me . . . 
 so when you come to Marseilles, you will come up the 
 garden path in the dusk, and call, ' Claire-Anne ! ' " 
 There was something like a sob from her. " Just say, 
 ' Claire-Anne ' . . . 
 
 She turned around and caught his hands for a 
 minute, looked at him, smiled, laughed . . . From 
 his desk she picked up the Young Pretender's dagger. 
 
 " What is this for, Shane ? Is this yours ? " 
 
 " Mine now, Claire- Anne ; but it was — someone 
 else's once. My Uncle Alan, Alan Donn,gaveittome."
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 117 
 
 "Yes?... " 
 
 " It belonged once to Charles Edward Stuart, 
 the Young Pretender. He wore it at his knee in 
 '45. Do you remember, Claire- Anne ? He landed in 
 Scotland and advanced on England, and got as far as 
 Derby at the head of the Scottish clans and Jacobite 
 gentlemen. ' Black Friday ' they called it in Lon- 
 don." 
 
 " But he never got to London." 
 ' No, he never got to London. Crash and whir 
 of battle, and when the smoke cleared, there were the 
 gallant Highland clansmen scattered, and the sturdy 
 English nobles, and the bonny Irish gentlemen. And 
 a king on the run ! " 
 
 ' And Shane, what happened to him after that ? " 
 
 " I think — my history may not be right, but I 
 think he spent the rest of his life a pensioner of the 
 king of France, playing petty politics, drinking, and 
 accepting love from romantic women, and loyalty 
 from the beaten clans." 
 
 " What a pity, Shane ! What a pity." 
 ' That he failed, dearest ? I don't know." 
 
 " Not that he failed, Shane ! No ! The most 
 gallant fail, nearly always fail, for they take the 
 greatest odds. But that he lived too long, Shane . . . 
 the high moment gone ..." 
 
 She looked at the dagger again that had 
 once snuggled to Prince Tearloch's knee, hefted it, 
 caressed it. 
 
 ' Shane dearest, why didn't he use his own knife 
 to — set himself free ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " I think I know."
 
 n8 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 She faced him suddenly. 
 
 " Shane, why didn't somebody do it for him ? " 
 
 " I suppose they couldn't see the end, Claire- 
 Anne. They couldn't foresee the king of France's 
 charity, the tricked women, the wine-stained cards. 
 There's many the Scots gentlemen who would have 
 — set him free." 
 
 " But they didn't, Shane dearest. It seems destiny 
 must always win. Shane, what is that poem in 
 Gaidhlig about the world, the verses you once said ? " 
 
 " Treasgair' an saoghal, agus tigeann an gaoth mar smal. 
 Alaistir, Ccssar, 's an mead do bhi d'a bpairt 
 Ta an Theamhair na fear agas /each an Traoi mar ta — 
 Life goes conquering on. The winds forever blow 
 Alexander, Caesar, and the crash of their fighting men 
 Tara is grass, and see how Troy is low — " 
 
 He stopped with a little shock, for her face was a 
 mask of tears. 
 
 " Dearest, dearest, it's only an old, sad story. It 
 has nothing to do with us. Claire-Anne — " 
 
 " Is any story old, Shane ? Is any story ever new ? 
 Isn't it always the same story ? " 
 
 She looked at the dagger for an instant more, and 
 put it down with a little sob. 
 
 " Poor gentleman ! " 
 
 §9 
 
 From his cabin below he could hear the Belfast 
 mate roaring at the helmsman : 
 
 " What kind of steering do you call that ? Look 
 at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep 
 her full, and less of your damned luffin'." 
 
 " Keep her full, sir ! " the steersman repeated.
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 119 
 
 " Look at your foretopsail ! Bouse it, blast ye ! 
 Bouse it ! You Skye cut-throats ! " 
 
 If the nor'easter held, Shane calculated, he could 
 run through Biscay full, come into the Mediterranean 
 on a broad reach, and jam her straight at Marseilles. 
 About him was the tremor as she took the head 
 seas. Plunge! Tremble! Dash on! Overhead the 
 squeaking of the sheets, the squeal of blocks, the 
 thrap-thrap-thrap of the lee halyards, the melancholy 
 whining of the gulls. With luck he would be in 
 Marseilles within the week. And if the wind swung 
 westward after he left Gibraltar to port, he would nip 
 off hours, a day even. And every hour counted until 
 the moment he went up the dusky path and called 
 " Claire- Anne ! " 
 
 He had never before driven the Ulster Lady as he 
 was driving her now. Before, he had been content 
 to get what he could out of her, coaxing her, nursing 
 her, as a trainer does a horse he is fond of ; but now 
 he was riding her like a jockey intent on winning a 
 race. On deck the crew wondered what had got into 
 the old man, as they called him, for all his twenty- 
 eight years. 
 
 " Before he was a sailor," the isles crew complained. 
 " Is he now a merchant at last. A Righ is truagh I 
 O King, the pity ! " 
 
 But it was not interest in cargoes that compelled 
 him ; it was the thought of a face like the wing of a 
 bird, ready to soar. The dark, gracious face, with 
 the eyes where emotion swirled like a mill-race, the 
 parted, ruddy lips — la Mielleuse — mouth of honey. 
 And the word he must not say aloud, like some occult 
 word of magic until a certain moment should come :
 
 120 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Claire-Anne ! " Just " Claire-Anne ! " 
 
 Before he had left Marseilles he had not been able 
 to think of her, to weigh what happened, to under- 
 stand. Things were too close. But at sea, and in 
 the dusk of the Antrim glen, and in Belfast and Liver- 
 pool, he had had time to view the incident in per- 
 spective ; to stand aside, as one stands back from a 
 picture, and appreciate the colour, the line, the 
 truth ; to see that that rich purple, that splash of 
 orange, that rippling, rich silver-gray are not spots 
 like flowers, but a definite design. . . . 
 
 In Antrim he had remembered Dancing Town, the 
 vision of Fiddlers' Green. Fourteen years before ! 
 
 And now that he remembered, it seemed to him 
 foolish not to have known he was sailing somewhere. 
 He was always sailing. . . . And unexpectedly, 
 after he had given up all hope, under his lee bow had 
 risen suddenly Fiddlers' Green. . . . Once before 
 he thought he had made port there, but that only 
 made this island the true one. . . . For there were 
 always two things, and the second was right. . . . 
 False dawn and dawn ; the False Cape and Cape 
 Horn ; the Southern Crosses, the false and true. . . . 
 
 And he would tell her this, when he met her again, 
 of how he had been thinking, and discovered her to be 
 the true life 
 
 The wife he had married and buried seven years 
 before he thought of now ; she was the second woman 
 he had known, his mother the first. And from the 
 cold precipice of his mother he had fled into the 
 flinty fields of Moyra Dolan. ... He felt a little 
 sorry for the boy he was seven years before — so young, 
 so gallant, so wrong. ... He had thought that all
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 121 
 
 there was in life was a home to return to, a wife, 
 children. . . . He had wanted an acre of land in 
 the sun, where all the world was his. When one was 
 young, one knew so little. . . . Wisdom came with 
 the lapping of the waves, and years of quiet thinking 
 under the gigantic stars. ... A plot of land he had 
 wanted then, and now he had the stars, they belonging 
 more to him than to the astrologers who conned them, 
 the fields, more than to the tillers who cultivated 
 them, the sea than to the fishermen who trawled. . . . 
 He was one with everything, understanding every- 
 thing, its immense harmony. . . . From hard earth 
 and wet sea he had arisen on swift, dark pinions until 
 he had been one with the spirit that infused all earth 
 and sea and sky holding the multitudinous atoms in 
 One with immense will and scheme. . . . And it was 
 she who had given them to him — Claire-Anne . . . 
 the wings of the morning. . . . The flutter of her 
 white hands . . . the eyes that looked and drooped 
 looked, drooped . . . the little catch in her 
 breath . . . 
 
 His life opened before him now, like a fair seaway. 
 About his appointed tasks he would go in his appointed 
 life . . . sailing ships with needed cargoes ... a 
 despatch messenger for the peoples of the world over 
 the vast solitudes of sea . . . doing his work well and 
 willingly . . . and asking no reward but that the 
 bird of dusk, the mouth of honey, be his to love and 
 be loved by ... to melt with and be one in occult 
 alchemy of soul and mind and body ... to get 
 strength and knowledge, and the understanding which 
 is more than strength and knowledge. 
 
 He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-five. There
 
 122 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 were twenty years before them still, twenty years of 
 love and understanding, and then a strange happy 
 twilight, like the dusk of Antrim, that gives way 
 hardly to the short night . . . Some day she would 
 marry him and come to his house . . . some day when 
 something that was wrong in her heart was righted 
 and forgotten, something he had no wish to intrude 
 upon, so closely did she conceal it . . . There was a 
 locked, haunted room in her heart . . . poor heart ! 
 . . . but one day the presence would be exorcised, and 
 the room swept and garnished . . . Some day she 
 would marry him, and he would bring her home to 
 Ulster . . . And who better than she could understand 
 the springy heather and the blue smoke-reek, the 
 crickets of the evening and the curlew's call ? And 
 in the house where his mother was cold and arrogant, 
 would be a warm and gracious lady . . . Claire- 
 Anne ! . . . 
 
 God ! he was thinking long to be in Marseilles 
 again, to go up the dusky path, to call, " Claire- 
 Anne ! " 
 
 The big Belfast mate larruped down the short 
 companionway. 
 
 " How's she doing, Mr. McKinstry ? " 
 
 " She's doing fine, sir. If I may say so, there's 
 not a better boat sail the water, not the Sovereign 
 of the Seas itself. Nor a better crew to handle things, 
 not on board the king's yacht." 
 
 " Not a better mate, Mr. McKinstry." 
 
 " Ah, well, sir ; we do wir best." 
 
 He tumbled on deck again, and Shane could hear 
 him roar from amidships : 
 
 " Lay forward a couple of you damned farmers,
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 123 
 
 and see if you can't get more out of those jibs. 
 Faster ! faster ! You're as slow as the grace of God 
 at a miser's funeral. ... If I only had a crew ..." 
 
 § 10 
 
 She stopped in her swift flight to him through 
 the dusk of the Midi garden. 
 
 " Dearest, why is your face so white ? Your 
 hands bruised ? " 
 
 ' The consul said something to me — about you — 
 and I knocked him down." 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, a shocked little cry, and : " Oh !" 
 a drawn-out wail of pain. " Why did you strike 
 him ? " 
 
 " Because he lied about you." 
 
 Her face was turned from him, in the dusk of the 
 crickets, towards the wooded amphitheatre, where 
 dead Pontius roved wild-eyed in the dusk, where 
 Lazarus tossed uneasily in his second sleep, where 
 the Greeks lay in alien soil, and the shadows of Roman 
 legionaries looked puzzled at the flat sea, nor recogniz- 
 ing busy Tiber — her back was to him, her head up 
 in pain, her nerve-wrenched hands uneasy, white . . . 
 
 " He didn't lie," she said at last. " Oh, you'd 
 have known it sooner or later. No ! no ! He didn't 
 lie." 
 
 " Claire-Anne ! " 
 
 " He didn't lie. I was just a fool to think — oh, 
 well, he didn't lie. No, no ! " she repeated. " He 
 didn't lie." She threw out a hand hopelessly. " He 
 didn't lie." 
 
 He went up to her in the dusk, put his hands
 
 124 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 gently on her shoulders. The quivering frame 
 became still suddenly, with a greater nervousness. 
 She was like a deer ready to bound away . . . 
 
 " I don't see what I could have done, Claire-Anne. 
 But — can I do anything now ? " 
 
 She turned toward him suddenly. Her face was 
 a mask of pain — and surprise. 
 
 " Then you haven't grown cold to me, unmerciful, 
 ... or gross ? " 
 
 " Why, no, Claire-Anne ! " 
 
 " And you know." 
 
 " I — know, but I don't understand ..." 
 
 She gave a queer, little shuddering cry, half laugh, 
 half sob. She moved over to the seat by the whisper- 
 ing mulberry-tree, and dropped in it, her hands cover- 
 ing her face. 
 
 " All the wrong," she said, " that people call 
 wrong I've done I didn't mind. But the one decent 
 thing — of loving you — that's kept me awake all the 
 time you were away. It's been like a sin, letting you 
 love me. The rest was destiny, but this one thing 
 was— I." 
 
 She suddenly raised her face, her eyes shining 
 through the humid mask of it. 
 
 " Would you — could you — understand ? " 
 
 " Tell me, Claire-Anne, what you want to." 
 
 She drew a short gasping breath, turned her 
 head away, looked up, turned it away again, paused 
 for breath, gripped his hand by the wrist. . . . 
 
 " I ... I ... I was the child of actors, and they 
 died, and there was enough money to bring me up 
 and educate me, and give me my chance on the stage 
 . . . And I wasn't good enough ... I was too much
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 125 
 
 myself. Couldn't quite be other characters. I don't 
 know if you understand . . . But . . . then a man got 
 infatuated with me and married me . . . And later he 
 wished he'd married a comfortable woman with a 
 fortune . . . And then he died and left me . . . not very 
 much . . . But that was not the reason ... I was left, 
 how do you say ? . . . stranded. I had no career, no 
 husband, no child, no business. France, it is not 
 easy . . . not easy anywhere . . . Friends ? People 
 are too busy . . . And I was . . . just there . . . And 
 all around me life bubbled and flowed, and I was . . . 
 not dead, not alive . . . and alone ... I might have 
 been a leper, but even lepers have colonies, and some 
 one to be kind to them . . . not dead, not alive . . . 
 and alone. I was so young ... It was unfair. Life 
 was everywhere like a sparkling wine . . . but where 
 I was, was flat . . . 
 
 " And then — then I met a man ... it was 
 pleasant for a while — to have some one to talk to, to 
 go around with. It's so pleasant to laugh. You 
 don't know how pleasant until you haven't laughed 
 for a long time. ... He didn't want to marry . . . 
 and in the end it was a choice of — oh, well ... or 
 going back to being not dead, not alive . . . and I 
 couldn't go, just couldn't. And he gave me presents 
 and money. . . . And then he got married. I don't 
 blame him ... a comfortable woman with a fortune 
 . . . but I wasn't left for long . . . where one goes, 
 others always follow. . . . There's a sort of . . . 
 sentier intuitif, a psychic path. . . 
 
 " And I wasn't so ashamed ... I was a little glad 
 I had a place in the world ... a work even. . . . 
 And everyone might despise me, but I had a place
 
 126 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 ... I was no longer not dead, not alive ... I was 
 even thankful for that . . . until I met you with 
 your — terrible courtesy, with your understanding. 
 ... My head and my heart melted, and my body, 
 too, and all had been so firm, so decided. . . . And 
 I dreamed that I could snatch a while from destiny. 
 . . . But — you see. . . . What the consul said 
 was true, so . . . dearest— but I mustn't ever call 
 you dearest again." 
 
 " Claire- Anne ! " 
 
 " Well, then — dearest, you see why I couldn't 
 marry you when you asked." She laughed bitterly. 
 " If you had only known. ..." 
 
 He took a terrible grip on himself, faced her, looked 
 at her. 
 
 ' Claire- Anne, will you marry me now ? " 
 
 " I don't know why you say it, but I know one 
 thing : you are true. And I thank you . . . but 
 please don't make me cry any more. I have cried so 
 much when you were away. ... If only five years 
 ago before I was . . . estropide . . . crippled. . . 
 
 " Destiny ..." 
 
 § ii 
 
 Dusk had gone ; darkness had come, and now 
 darkness itself would leave soon, for the third quarter 
 of a great saffron moon showed its edge in the east- 
 ward. Marseilles was like the pale light of a candle. 
 And a great palpable darkness had settled like water 
 in the hollow of the woods. 
 
 " Dearest " — her voice took sudden strength — 
 " will you forgive me ? I don't say that just as if
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 127 
 
 I'd done a small wrong. But will a big power come 
 out of your heart and say : ' It's all right, Claire- 
 Anne. I understood.' It will be so much for me to 
 know that — in the days when you are gone " 
 
 " But, Claire-Anne, I'm not gone " 
 
 " You must go, dearest. You must go now. 
 Don't you see ? " Her voice grew gentle. " You 
 couldn't stay any more. It wouldn't be like you, 
 somehow. And I wouldn't have you spoiled in my 
 eyes . . . darling, you could never be . . . but you 
 must go . . ." 
 
 " And you, Claire- Anne " 
 
 " Destiny ... a long, lean finger ... a path 
 
 9$ 
 
 • • * • 
 
 " But you never know- 
 
 We know, we poor women, Shane. We know 
 . . . Shane, don't you understand . . . what makes 
 the . . . girl in the archway, the emperor's mistress, 
 drink, take ether ... do strange horrors ? . . . They 
 know . . . and they want to escape from seeing it 
 ... for an instant even . . . the terrible story of 
 the Belle Heaulmiere ... the 'Armorer's Daughter ' : 
 
 " Ainsi le bon temps regretons 
 
 Entre nous, pauvres vielles sotes, 
 Assises bas, a crouppetons, 
 
 Tout en ung tas commes pelotes, 
 
 A petit feu de chenevotes. 
 Tost allumees, tost estaintes ; 
 
 Et jadis fusmes si mignotes ! . . . 
 Ainsi emprent a tnaintes et maintes. 
 
 " Do you understand, Shane, do you under- 
 stand ? So we regret the good old times, poor old
 
 128 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 light women, gathered together like faggots, and 
 hunkering over a straw fire, soon lit, soon out — tost 
 allumdes, tost estaintes . . . and once we were so 
 dainty. To many and many's the one it happens. 
 Pauvres vielles sotes ! Poor old light women, Shane 
 . . . Et jadis fusmes si mignotes ! . . . Dainty as I 
 am, they were once . . . and do you blame them now 
 when they see it coming ... the drink, the ether 
 . . . the abominable things. . . ." 
 
 "Omy God ! Claire- Anne ! " 
 
 " Hearts of hearts, Shane. I once escaped to light, 
 where they escape to oblivion. . . . Once I had you, 
 and all my life I'll remember it. . . . All my life 
 I'll remember : I once knew a man . . . and it will 
 be a help, so much a help. ..." 
 
 " Oh, Claire-Anne, it can't be ! " 
 
 " It must be, dearest heart. It is — decreed. 
 
 Darling, sometimes I thought Do you remember 
 
 your showing me the poor prince's dagger, and our 
 talking about him — setting himself free — and I said 
 I thought I could understand why he did not. . . . 
 I've wanted to, myself. . . . But . . . there's a way 
 you're brought up, when you're young. . . . They 
 put such fear of God in you . . . such fear of hell . . . 
 you never could — throw things down and go straight 
 to Him, and say : ' I couldn't. I just simply 
 couldn't. I hadn't the strength. I couldn't . . . 
 just . . .' And they never think of Him saying : 
 ' Of course you couldn't . . . and it was all My fault. 
 I wasn't looking. . . . I've so much to think of . . . . 
 You did right to come to Me. . . .' But, no! no! One 
 fears. They teach you so much fear, Shane, when 
 you are young ... so that even this is better — this 
 — game, where none win. . . . And so — one goes 
 on. . . ."
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 129 
 
 She rose suddenly and clutched his shoulders in 
 panic. Her mouth twisted in piteous agony. . . . 
 
 ' Oh, but dearest, dearest, pauvres vielles sotes, 
 poor old light women. . . . Shane, assises has, a 
 crouppetons, in an archway, hoping for a drunken 
 farmer with a couple of sous . . . and so cold, so 
 cold, with a little fire of straw stalks . . . tost allu- 
 mees, tost estaintes ! " . . . 
 
 " No, Claire-Anne ! no ! " 
 
 ' A drunken farmer, or travelling pedlar. ... Et 
 jadis fusmes si mignotes . . . and so dainty once ! " 
 
 ' No ! ' His voice took the ring of decision. She 
 didn't hear him. Her voice broke into a torrent of 
 sobs. 
 
 ' Take me in your arms, Shane, once more. And 
 let my heart come into your heart, where it's so warm 
 . . . and I'll have something to remember in the 
 days when it will be ... so cold, so cold . . . and 
 I'll be there warming old bones. ... A petit feu 
 de chenevotes. . . Shane, dearest, please. . . ." 
 
 He took her in his arms, and her body seemed to be 
 some light envelope in which a great turmoil of spirit 
 beat, as a wild bird beats against a cage. ... He 
 could hardly hold her body so great was her tortured 
 sobbing. ... So much did what was within wheel 
 and beat, beat and wheel, in unendurable panic. Her 
 voice murmured in his wet shoulder : 
 
 ' Paavre vielle sote ! O Shane, Shane . . pauvre 
 vielle sote ! . 
 
 § 12 
 Above him, to starboard, he could hear the churning 
 of the tug that was to take them from the docks to 
 
 K
 
 130 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 the open sea. Overhead the pilot was stamping im- 
 patiently. Forward the mate was roaring like a bull : 
 
 " Where is that damned apprentice ? Tell him to 
 lay aft and bear a hand with the warps." 
 
 In a minute or so he would have to go on the poop 
 and give orders to let go and haul in. The tug was 
 blowing, " Hurry up ... " He ought to be on 
 deck now. ... He hated to go up . . . he hated to 
 see the last of Marseilles ... he would never see 
 Marseilles again. . . . 
 
 Was all ready ? Yes, all was ready. Cargo, sup- 
 plies, sea-chest, everything for the long voyage he 
 had decided — had to decide — on at the last minute. 
 Forward across the Atlantic to where the sou'-east 
 trades blew, and then south'ard reaching under all 
 sail — the fleecy clouds, the bright constellations of 
 the alien pole, the strange fish -like birds, the flying- 
 fish, the bonita, the albacore ; the chill gust from the 
 River Plate ; the roar of the gales of the forties ; the 
 tremendous fight around the Horn, with a glimpse of 
 land now and then as they fought for easting — the 
 bleak rocks of Diego Ramirez and the Ildefonsos, and 
 perhaps the blue ridge of Cape Horn, or of the False 
 Cape ; then, northward to Callao . . . anywhere, 
 everywhere . . . new seas, new lands, new cities . . . 
 but never again Marseilles. . . . 
 
 And he would never see her again, La Mielleuse — 
 couldn't if he wanted to . . . never again . . . 
 irrevocable . . Her head, her dark, darling head ! 
 . . . And last night he had seen it for the last time, 
 dark, smiling in sleep, on a snowy pillow. ... He 
 remembered as he might remember a strange panto- 
 mime. . . . His going to his coat for — what he had
 
 THE MOUTH OF HONEY 131 
 
 there . . . the silent tiptoe . . . the gentle raising of 
 her left arm, as she smiled in her sleep . . . the 
 sudden weakness at her soft, warm beauty . . . the 
 decision. ... Of course he had done right ! . . . 
 Of course ! 
 
 Of course ! . . . 
 
 Overhead the pilot stamped on the deck in a flurry 
 of impatience. The tug wailed in irritation. He 
 must get on deck. . . . 
 
 He threw one last glance around. ... He had 
 everything he needed for himself. . . . Nothing 
 lacking. . . . His eyes paused for a moment on his 
 desk. Wait ! Where was the dagger ? Prince 
 Charles' dagger ? 
 
 He gripped himself in fright. Was he going — had 
 he gone — mad ? He knew where that was ... he 
 knew ... he knew ... It was — 
 
 ' Ogh ! ' A flash of horror went over him. . . . 
 But he had done right ... of course he had done 
 right. . . . 
 
 ' All's ready, sir," the mate called in to his cabin. 
 
 " Yes ? . . . " 
 
 ' Man, you're no' ill ? " the mate looked at him 
 queerly. 
 
 ' Of course I'm not ill." He swung on deck. 
 
 ' All right ? Let go aft, then, and haul in. Tvg a 
 
 little westward : a little more westward. Hard a 
 
 port, Mr. McKinstry. All right ! Let go all, for'a'd. 
 
 . . . She's off. ..."
 
 BOOK FOUR 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 
 § I 
 
 " \7A ZAN," came his wife's slow, grave voice, 
 A " Shane, when your ship is in trouble, or 
 does not go fast, do the passengers beat you ? " 
 
 " Of course not," Campbell laughed. " What put 
 that in your little head ? " 
 
 1 When I went with my uncle, Arif Be)', on the 
 pilgrimage to Mecca — Arif was a Moslem that year," 
 she bit the thread of the embroidery she was doing 
 with her little sharp teeth, Ikk I — " our ship anchored 
 for the night in Birkat Far aim — Pharaoh's Bay. In 
 the morning it would not move, so the Maghrabi 
 pilgrims beat the captain terribly. And once at 
 Al-Akabah, when the captain lost sight of shore for 
 one whole day, the Maghrabis beat him again. They 
 said he should have known better. Don't — don't 
 they ever beat you, ya Zan ? " 
 
 ' Not yet, Fenzile. They only beat bad skippers." 
 ' But our Rais was a good sailor. He must have 
 been a good sailor, Zan. He was very old. He was 
 very pious, too. He said the prayers. Do you ever 
 say the prayers, Zan, when the sea looks as if it were 
 about to be angry ? 
 
 " What sort of prayers, Fenzile ? " 
 ' Oh, prayers. Let me see." Her dark eyes 
 had the look he loved, as if she had turned around 
 and were rummaging within herself, as a woman 
 seeks diligently and yet slowly in a chest. " Oh, 
 like the Moslem's Hizb al-Bahr. You ought to 
 know that prayer, ya Zan. It will make you safe at 
 
 135
 
 136 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 sea. I wonder you, a great Rais, do not know that 
 prayer." 
 
 " What is the prayer, Fenzile ? " 
 
 We pray Thee for safety in our goings forth and 
 our standings still . . . Subject unto us this sea, even 
 as Thou didst subject the deep to Moses, and as Thou 
 didst subject the fire to Abraham, and as Thou didst 
 subject the iron to David, and as Thou didst subject 
 the wind and the devils and djinns and mankind to 
 Solomon, and as Thou didst subject the moon and 
 Al-Burah to Mohammed, on whom be Allah's mercy 
 and His blessing ! And subject unto us all the seas 
 in earth and heaven, in Thy visible and Thine in- 
 visible worlds, the sea of this life and the sea of 
 futurity. O Thou Who reignest over everything and 
 unto Whom all things return, . . . You must know 
 that prayer, and say that prayer, ya Zan. What 
 do you do when it is very stormy ? " 
 
 " Oh, take in as little sail as possible and keep 
 shoving ahead." 
 
 " I don't understand," she let the embroidery fall 
 in her lap. " I see your ship from the quays and I 
 can't understand how you guide such a big ship. 
 And how you go at night, Zan, that I cannot under- 
 stand. It is so dark at night. There is a terrible 
 lot I do not understand. I am very stupid." 
 
 " You are very dear and darling, Fenzile. You 
 understand how to take care of a house and how 
 to be very beautiful, and be very loving — " 
 
 " Do I, Zanim ? That is not hard. That is not 
 very much. That is not like sailing a ship on the 
 sea." 
 
 Without, Beirut seethed with life. Thin, gaun
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 137 
 
 dogs barked and snarled in the narrow staired streets. 
 Came the cry of the donkey-boys. Came the cry of 
 the water-sellers. Came the shouts of the young 
 Syrians over the gammon game. Loped the laden 
 camels. Tramped the French soldiers. Came a new 
 hum. . . . 
 
 Fenzile rose and went through the courtyard, 
 past the little fountain with the orange-trees, past 
 the staircase to the upper gallery, came to the barred 
 iron gates, looked a moment, moved modestly, back 
 into the shadows. . . . 
 
 " O look, ya Zan," her grave voice became excited. 
 ' Come quickly. See. It is Ahmet Ali, with his 
 attendants and a lot of people following him." 
 
 " And who is Ahmet Ali ? " 
 
 " Ahmet Ali ! don't you know, Zanim ? The 
 great wrestler, Ahmet Ali. The wrestler from Aleppo. 
 
 §2 
 Through the grilled door, in the opal shade of the 
 walls, Shane saw the wrestler stroll down the street ; 
 a big bulk of a man in white robe and turban, olive- 
 skinned, heavy on his feet, seeming more like a 
 prosperous young merchant than a wrestling champion 
 of a vilayet. Yet underneath the white robes Shane 
 could sense the immense arms and shoulders, the 
 powerful legs. Very heavily he moved, muscle- 
 bound a good deal, Shane thought ; a man for pushing 
 and crushing and resisting, but not for fast, nervous 
 work, sinew and brain co-ordinating like the crack of a 
 whip. A Cornish wrestler would turn him inside 
 out within a minute ; a Japanese would pitch him
 
 138 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 like a ball before he had ever even taken his stance. 
 But once he had a grip he would be irresistible. 
 
 " So that's Ahmet Ali." 
 Yes, Zan," Fenzile clapped her hands with 
 delight, like a child seeing a circus procession. " Oh, 
 he is a great wrestler. He beat Yussuf Hussein, 
 the Cairene, and he beat a great Russian wrestler 
 who came on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And he 
 beat a French sailor. And he beat a Tartar. Oh, 
 he is a great wrestler, Ahmet Ali." 
 
 The wrestler had come nearer. Behind him came 
 four or five supporters, in cloth white as his. Behind 
 them came a ruck of Syrian youths, effeminate, 
 vicious. Came a crowd of donkey-boys, impish, 
 black. The wrestler walked more slowly as he 
 approached to pass the iron doors. And Shane was 
 startled into a sudden smile at the sight of his face 
 — a girl's face, with a girl's eyes. And in his hand 
 was a rose. A wrestler with a rose I 
 
 " Why, a man could kill him." 
 
 " Oh, no ! Oh, no, Zan ! " Fenzile said. " He 
 is very strong. He conquered Yussuf Hussein, the 
 Cairene, and Yussuf Hussein could bend horseshoes 
 with his bare hands. He is very strong, very power- 
 ful Ahmet Ali." 
 
 The wrestler was walking slowly past the house 
 throwing glances through the grill with his full girl's 
 eyes. A quick suspicion came into Campbell's 
 mind. He turned to his wife. 
 
 " Does he come past here often ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, Zan. Every day." 
 
 " Does he stop and look into the court like that, 
 every time ? "
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 139 
 
 " Yes, Zan. Every time," she smiled. 
 " Do you know whom he's looking for ? " 
 " Yes, Zan. For me." 
 
 Campbell's hand shot out suddenly and caught 
 her wrist. 
 
 " Fenzile," his voice was cold. " You aren't 
 carrying on with, encouraging this — Ahmet Ali ? ' 
 
 " Zan Cam'el," her child's eyes flashed unexpectedly 
 "I am no cheap Cairene woman. I am a Druse 
 girl. The daughter of a Druse Bey." 
 " I am sorry, Fenzile." 
 
 She looked at him steadily with her great green 
 eyes, green of the sea, and as he looked at her sweet 
 roundish face, her little mouth half open in sincerity, 
 her calm brow, her brown arch of eyebrow, she seemed 
 to him no more than a beautiful proud child. There 
 was no guile in her. 
 
 " You mustn't be foolish, you know, Fenzile." 
 " Severim seni. I love only you, Zan. But it 
 is so funny to see him go by, I must always smile. 
 Don't you think it funny, Zan ? 
 " No, I don't think it at all funny." 
 " Oh, but is is funny, Zan. A big strong wrestler 
 like that to be foolish over a very little woman. And 
 for a cheap showman of the market-place to be 
 lifting his eyes to a daughter of the Druse emirs. It 
 is funny." 
 
 " It isn't funny. And he isn't much of a wrestler 
 anyway " 
 
 " Oh, but he is Zan. He is a very great wrestler. 
 They say he threw and killed a bear." 
 
 " O kooltooluk. Hell ! I could throw him my- 
 self."
 
 140 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 She said nothing, turning her head, and reaching 
 for her embroidery. 
 
 ' Don't you believe me, Fenzile ? I tell you I could 
 make mince-meat of him." 
 
 " Of course, Zan. Of course you could." And 
 she smiled. But this time it wasn't the delighted 
 smile of a child. It was the grave patient smile 
 of a wise woman. And Shane knew it. Past that 
 barrier he could not break. And on her belief he 
 could make no impress. There was no use arguing, 
 talking. She would just smile and agree. And her 
 ideal of strength and power would be the muscle- 
 bound hulk of the Aleppo man, with the girl's face 
 and the girl's eyes, and the rose in his hand. And 
 Shane, all his life, inured to sport, hard as iron, supple 
 as a whip, with his science picked up from Swedish 
 quartermasters and Japanese gendarmes, from 
 mates and crimps in all parts of the world, would 
 always be in her eyes an infant compared to the 
 monstrous Syrian ! Not that it mattered a tinker's 
 curse, but — 
 
 Oh, damn the wrestler from Aleppo ! 
 
 § 3 
 
 He had thought, when he left Liverpool on a gusty 
 February day, of all the peace and quiet, of the 
 colour and life there would be on the Asian shore. . . . 
 Europe had somehow particularly sickened him on 
 this last voyage. . . . All its repose was sordid, all its 
 passion was calculated. England and its queen 
 mourned the sudden death of the prince consort, but 
 it mourned him with a sort of middle-class domes-
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 141 
 
 ticity, and no majesty. So a grocer's family might 
 have mourned, remembering how well papa cut the 
 mutton. ... He was so damned good at everything, 
 Albert was, and he approved of art and science — 
 within reason. . . . There was a contest for a human 
 ideal in America, and in the ports of England priva- 
 teers were being fitted out, to help the South, as the 
 Greeks might, for a price. . . . And Napoleon, that 
 solemn comedian, was making ready his expedition to 
 Mexico, with fine words and a tradesman's cunning. 
 . . . And the drums of Ulster roared for Garibaldi, 
 rejoicing in the downfall of the harlot on seven hills, 
 as Ulster pleasantly considered the papal states, 
 while Victor Emmanuel, sly Latin that he was, 
 thought little of liberty and much about Rome . 
 Aye, kings ! 
 
 And so a great nostalgia had come over Shane 
 Campbell on this voyage for the Syrian port and 
 the wife he had married there. He wanted sunshine. 
 He wanted colour. He wanted simplicity of life 
 Killing there was in Syria, great killing too. But 
 it was the sort of killing one understood and could 
 forgive. A Druse disliked a Maronite Christian, so 
 he went quietly and knifed him. Another Maronite 
 resented that, and killed a Druse ; and they were all 
 at it, hell-for-leather. But it was passion and 
 fanaticism, not high-flown words and docile armies 
 and the tradesmen sneaking up behind. . . . Aye, war ! 
 
 And he was sick of the damned Mersey fog, and 
 he was sick of the drunkenness of Scotland Road, and 
 he was sick of the sleet lashing Hoylakc links. He 
 was sick of Pharisaical importers who did the heathen 
 in the eye on Saturday and on Sunday in their blasted
 
 142 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 conventicles thumped their black-covered craws in 
 respectable humility. ... In Little Asia religion was a 
 passion, not a smug hypocrisy ; and though the 
 heathen was dishonest, yet it was not the mathemati- 
 cal reasoned dishonesty of the Christian. It was a 
 childish game, like horse-coping. . . . And in the East 
 they did not blow gin in your face, smelling like 
 turpentine. . . . 
 
 And he was sick of the abominable homes, the 
 horsehair furniture with the anti-macassars — Lord ! 
 and they called themselves clean. . . . He wanted the 
 spotlessness of the Syrian courtyard. . . . The daubs 
 on the British walls, sentimental St. Bernard dogs 
 and dray-horses with calves' eyes, brought him to a 
 laughing point when he thought of the subtlety of 
 colour and line in strange Persian rugs. . . . 
 
 And he was sick of British women, with their 
 knuckled hands, their splayed feet. Their abomin- 
 able dressing, too, a bust and a brooch and a hooped 
 skirt — their grocer's conventions, prudish, almost 
 obscene, avoiding of the natural in word, deed, or 
 thought. ... He wanted Fenzile, with her eyes, vert 
 de mer, her full childish face, her slim hands with the 
 orange-tinted finger nails, her silken trousers, her 
 little slippers of silver and blue. . . . Her soft arms, 
 her back-thrown head, her closed lids. . . . And the 
 fountain twinkling in the soft Syrian night, while 
 afar off some Arab singer chanted a poem of Lyla 
 Khanim's : 
 
 " Beni ser-mest u hay ran eyleyen ol yar ; janim dir 
 . . . The world is a prison and my heart is scarred. . . . 
 My tears are like a vineyard's fountain, O absent 
 one "
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 143 
 
 And here was Beirut again : here the snowy crest 
 of Lebanon, here the roadstead crowded with craft ; 
 here the mulberry groves. Here the sparkling 
 sapphire sea ; here the turf blazing with poppies ; here 
 the quiet pine road to Damascus ; here the forests, 
 excellent with cedars. Here the twisting unexpected 
 streets. Here his own quiet house, with the courtyard 
 and its fountain. Here the hum of the bazaars, 
 here the haha of the donkey boys, here the growling 
 camels. Here the rugs on the wall ; here the little 
 orange-trees. Here the two negress servants, clean, 
 efficient. Here colour, and peace, and passion. Here 
 Fenzile. . . . 
 
 And this damned wrestler from Aleppo must go 
 and spoil it all. 
 
 §4 
 
 He might have shipped with one of the great 
 American clippers racing around Cape Hope under 
 rolling topsails, and become in his way as well known 
 as Donald Mackay was, who built and mastered the 
 Sovereign of the Seas, with her crew of one hundred 
 and five, four mates and two boatswains. He might 
 have had a ship like Phil Dumaresq's Surprise, that 
 had a big eagle for her figurehead. He might have 
 clipped the record of the Flying Cloud, three hundred 
 and seventy-four miles in one day, steering northward 
 and westward around Cape Horn. He might have 
 had a ship as big as the Great Republic, the biggest 
 ship that ever took the seas. He might have had one 
 of the East Indiamen, and the state of an admiral. 
 He might have had one of the new adventurers in 
 steel and steam.
 
 144 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 But fame and glory never allured him, and destiny 
 did not call him to be any man's servant. He was 
 content to be his own master with his own ship, and 
 do whatsoever seemed to him good and just to do. 
 If they needed him and his boat anywhere, he would 
 be there. When they needed boats to America, he 
 was there. But if they didn't need him, he was not 
 the one to thrust himself. Let destiny call. 
 
 Success, as it was called, was a thing of destiny. 
 When destiny needed a man, destiny tapped him on 
 the shoulder. Failure, however, was a man's own 
 fault. There was always work to do. And it was up 
 to every man to find his work. If there were room 
 for him in a higher work it was no excuse for his not 
 working in a lower plane. There would be no failures 
 he thought, if folk were only wise. If a man came a 
 cropper in a big way, it was because he had rushed 
 into a work before destiny, the invisible infallible 
 nuncio of God, had chosen her man. Or because he 
 was dissatisfied, ambition and ability not being equal. 
 Or because he was lazy. 
 
 Always there was work to do, as there was work 
 for him now. Clouds of sail and tubby steamboats 
 went the crowded tracks of the world's waters, not 
 to succour and help but for gain of money. And 
 Lesser Asia was neglected now that the channel of 
 commerce to the States was opened wide. Syria 
 needed more than sentimental travellers to the Holy 
 Land. It needed machinery for its corn-fields and 
 its mines. It needed prints and muslins from the 
 Lancashire looms. It needed rice and sugar. And it 
 had more to give than a religious education. Fine 
 soap and fruit and wine and oil and sesame it gave,
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 145 
 
 golden tobacco, and beautiful craftsmanship in silver 
 and gold, fine rugs from Persia. Brass and copper 
 and ornamental woodcarving from Damascus, mother 
 of cities ; walnuts, wheat, barley, and apricots from 
 its gardens and fields. Wool and cotton, gums and 
 saffron from Aleppo, and fine silk embroidery. 
 
 Others might race past Java Head to China for 
 tea and opium. Others might make easting around 
 the Horn to the gold-fields of California. Others 
 might sail up the Hooghly to Calicut, trafficking with 
 mysterious Indian men. Others might cross to the 
 hustle and welter of New York, young giant of cities, 
 but Campbell was content to sail to Asia Minor. He 
 brought them what they needed, and they sent colour 
 and rime to prosaic Britain, hashish to the apothe- 
 caries, and pistachios from Aleppo, cambric from 
 Nablus and linen from Baghdad, and occasionally for 
 an antiquary a Damascene sword that rang like a 
 silver bell. 
 
 For others the glory and fame to which destiny 
 had called them. For others the money that they 
 grubbed with blunted fingers from the dross-heaps of 
 commerce. But for Campbell what work he could do, 
 well done — and Lesser Asia. . . . 
 
 § 5 
 Of all the seas he had sailed it seemed to Shane that 
 Mediterranean had more colour, more life, more 
 romance than any. Not the battles round the Horn, 
 not the swinging runs to China, not the starry 
 southern seas had for him the sense of adventure that 
 Mediterranean had. Mediterranean was not a sea
 
 146 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 It was a home haven, with traditions of the human 
 house. Here Sennacherib sailed in the great galleys 
 the brown Sidonian shipwrights had made for him. 
 Here had been the Phoenicians with their brailed 
 squaresail. Here had been the men of Rhodes, sailors 
 and fighters both. Here the Greek penteconters with 
 their sails and rigging of purple and black. Here the 
 Cypriotes had sailed under the lee of the islands Byron 
 loved and where Sappho sang her songs like wine and 
 honey, sharp wine and golden, honey. Here had the 
 Roman galleys splashed and here the great Venetian 
 boats set proud sail against the Genoese. Here had 
 the Lion-heart sailed gallantly to Palestine. Here 
 had Icarus fallen in the blue sea. Here had Paul 
 been shipwrecked, sailing on a ship of Andramyttium 
 bound to the coast of Asia, crossing the sea which is off 
 Cilicia and Pamphylia, and transhipping at Myra. 
 How modern it all sounded but for the strange antique 
 names. 
 
 " And when we had sailed slowly many days " — 
 only a seaman could feel the pathos of that — " and 
 scarce were come over against Cnidus, the wind not 
 suffering us, we sailed under Crete, over against 
 Salmone ; 
 
 " And, hardly passing it, came unto a place which 
 is called The Fair Havens — — " 
 
 Was Paul a sailor, too, Campbell often wondered ? 
 The bearded Hebrew, like a firebrand, possibly 
 epileptic, not quite sane, had he at one time been 
 brought up to the sea ? " Sirs," he had said, " I 
 perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much 
 damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of 
 our lives." There spoke a man who knew the sea —
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 147 
 
 not a timid passenger. But the master of the ship 
 thought otherwise, and yet Paul was right. And then 
 came " a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon." 
 And that was the Levanter of to-day, Euraquilo, they 
 call it — hell let loose. Then came furious seas, and 
 the terrors of a lee shore ; the frapping of the ship 
 and the casting overboard of tackle, the jettisoning of 
 freight — 
 
 " And when neither sun nor stars in many days 
 appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope 
 that we should be saved was then taken away." 
 Somehow the absolute fidelity of the sea-life of the 
 story went to Campbell's heart, and the figure of 
 Paul the mariner was clearer than the figure of Paul 
 the Apostle. 
 
 " Howbeit, we must be cast upon a certain island. 
 
 ' But when the fourteenth night was come, as we 
 were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight 
 the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some 
 country " 
 
 The intuition of seamanship. The flash. How 
 modern ! Oh, Paul lived in that sea. His ghost and 
 memory were forever there, as were the ghosts of the 
 Lion-heart ; and of Sappho, singer of songs ; and of 
 the stout Phoenician sailing men ; and of the doges of 
 Venice, lovers and husbands of the sea. On the tide- 
 less Mediterranean beauty still abided, as nowhere 
 else ; would abide, when nowhere else 
 
 Would it, though ? Would it abide anywhere ? 
 A pang came into Campbell's heart. Off Finisterre he 
 had been passed by Robert Steel of Greenock's Falcon, 
 every sail drawing, skysails and moonrakers set, a 
 pillar of white cloud she seemed, like some majestic
 
 i 4 8 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 womanhood. And while boats like the Fiery Cross 
 and the Falcon tore along like greyhounds, there were 
 building tubby iron boats to go by steam. The train 
 was beating the post-chaise with its satiny horses, the 
 train that went by coal one dug from the ground. 
 And even now de Lesseps and his men were digging 
 night and day that the steamboat might push the 
 proud clipper from the seas. Queer ! Would there 
 come a day when no topgallants drew ? And the 
 square-rigged ships would be like old crones gathering 
 fagots on an October day. And what would become 
 of the men who built and mastered great racing ships ? 
 And would the sea itself permit vile iron and smudgy 
 coal to speck its immaculate bosom ? Must the sea, 
 too, be tamed like a dancing bear for the men who are 
 buying and selling ? It seemed impossible 
 
 But the shrewd men who tramcked^said it must be 
 so. They were spending their money on de Lesseps' 
 fabulous scheme. And the shrewd men never spent 
 money without a return. They would conquer. 
 
 Poor sea of the Vikings ! Poor sea of the Lion- 
 heart and of the Sappho of the songs ! Poor sea of 
 Admiral Columbus ! Poor sea to whom Paul made 
 obeisance ! Sea of Drake and sea of Nelson, and sea 
 of Philip of Spain. Poor sea whom the great doges of 
 Venice wed with a ring of gold ! Christ ! If they 
 could only bottle you, they would sell you like Holland 
 gin ! 
 
 §6 
 He had figured his work. He had figured his field. 
 It seemed to him that this being done life should flow 
 on evenly as a stream. But there were gaps of un-
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 149 
 
 happiness that all the subtle sailing of a ship, all the 
 commerce of the East, all the fighting of the gales 
 could not fill. Within him somewhere was a space, 
 in his heart, in his head, somewhere, a ring, a pit of 
 emotion — how, where, why he could not express. It 
 just existed. And this was filled at times with con- 
 centration on his work, at times with plans of the 
 future and material memories of the past or thoughts 
 of ancient shipmates, of his Uncle Robin. It was like 
 a house, that space was, with a strange division of 
 time, that corresponded not with time of day, but 
 with recurrent actions, memories, moods. There 
 would be the bustle of his work, and that seemed to be 
 morning. There would be the planning of future 
 days, and that seemed like an afternoon of sunshine ; 
 and there would be memories, as of old shipmates, as 
 of Uncle Robin — God rest his dear soul ; as of Alan 
 Donn with his hearty cursing, his hearty laugh. And 
 that was like an evening with golden candlelight and 
 red fire burning. And then came the quietness of 
 night, all the bustle, all the plans, all the memories 
 gone. The fire out, the rooms empty. And in the 
 strange place somewhere within would come a strange 
 lucidity, blue and cold and absolute as the stars, and 
 into that place would walk, as players stalk upon the 
 stage, each of three ghosts. 
 
 The first was his mother, who was dead, an appari- 
 tion of chilling terror. From afar she beheld him 
 with eyes that were queerly inimical. She had done 
 nothing to him, nor he anything to her. She had 
 done nothing for him, nor he for her. Between them 
 was nothing. When she had died he had felt nothing, 
 and that was the tragedy. No tears, no relief,
 
 150 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 nothing. She had carried him in her womb, borne him, 
 suckled him ; and he had always felt he had been un- 
 welcome. There had been no hostility in her body ; 
 just constraint. She had had no welcome for the 
 little guest of God ; her heart had been hard to him 
 and he at her breasts. Nothing common to them 
 in life and now joined through the horrible significant 
 gulf of death. She could be with him always now, 
 being dead. But where a man's mother should come 
 to him smilingly, with soft hands, with wisdom and 
 comfort passing that of life, she came with terrible 
 empty eyes. He could see her gaunt profile, her black 
 brows. She was like an engraving he had once seen 
 of the witch Saul had used at En-dor, to call up 
 Samuel, who was dead. She had the same awful 
 majest}', the same utter loneliness. 
 
 " You gave me nothing in life. In death give me 
 peace," he would cry. But she stayed until it suited 
 her to go, as she would have done in life. Her 
 haunted, haunting eyes ... I 
 
 And there would come another ghost, the ghost of 
 the girl he had married and he a boy — fourteen years 
 ago. It was strange how he could remember her — 
 her red hair, her sullen mouth, her suspicious eyes. 
 Her shoulders drooped a little, there was no grace to 
 her stance. She complained against something, but 
 she did not accuse him. He had married her, and 
 she had married him, and she had died. That was 
 all there was to it. And though she had sorrowed his 
 younger days, yet he felt very kindly to her. There 
 she was, with her sullen mouth, her drooping shoulders 
 complaining. " Life is so short, and there was so 
 little to it, and others have so much," she seemed to
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 151 
 
 say. " I had a right to have my man and a place in 
 the country, the like of other girls, but all I got was 
 you. And death at the end of a short year. Wasn't 
 it hard, och, wasn't it so ! " And he had to comfort 
 her. ' It was nobody's fault, Moyra. It just 
 happened. We were awfully young." But her lips 
 were still sullen, her eyes suspicious as she went away. 
 ' A short life and a bitter one. A hard thing surely ! " 
 When she left him there was a sigh of relief. Poor 
 girl ! 
 
 And the third ghost was hardly a presence, but an 
 absence, or a presence so intangible that it was worse 
 than an absence — Claire-Anne, who was dead, whom 
 he had — made dead, whom he had taken it upon 
 himself to set free. For a year after he had left 
 Marseilles she had seemed to be always with him, 
 closer in spirit, now she was dead, than she had ever 
 been in flesh and spirit when alive. A part of him 
 she seemed always to be. Always there, in the quiet 
 cabin, on the heeling decks, on the solid shore. And 
 the long thoughts of him seemed to be conversation 
 with her, on strange beautiful things, on strange 
 terrible things, on the common commodity of life. . . . 
 And then one day she left him. . . . 
 
 He was coming into Southampton Water and 
 waiting for the pilot's cutter from the Solent, one 
 bright July morning. And all the Solent was dotted 
 with sails, the snowy sails of great yachts and the 
 cinnamon sail of small ones. Little fishing-craft 
 prowled near the shore. And afar off, in fancy, he 
 could see the troops of swans, and the stalking herons. 
 The pilot's cutter ploughed toward him, her deep 
 forefoot dividing the water like a knife. Immense,
 
 152 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 vibrant beauty. And he felt, as always, that Claire- 
 Anne was by him, her dark understanding presence, 
 her clear Greek face, her little smile. 
 
 " In a minute now we will come into the wind and 
 lower a boat, Claire-Anne." And a shock of surprise 
 came over him. She was not there. It was as though 
 he had been talking with his back turned to some one, 
 and turning around found they weren't there. For an 
 instant he felt as if he had lost somebody overboard. 
 And then it came to him that water, earth, material 
 hazards were nothing to her any more. She had 
 gone somewhere for a moment. And he turned to 
 greet the pilot as he swung aboard. 
 
 " She will come back," he thought. . . . But she 
 never came back. Once or twice or maybe three 
 times, a month, six months, and ten months later, he 
 felt her warm lover-like presence near him. " Claire- 
 Anne ! Is it you, Claire- Anne ? " And she was gone 
 again. Something that had hovered, fluttered, kissed, 
 and flown away. Never again ! 
 
 She had become to him in death much more real 
 than she had ever been in life. In life she had been 
 dynamic, a warm, multicoloured, perfumed cloud. 
 In death she was static. All the tumult of material 
 things gone, he had a vision of her clear as a line 
 drawing. And he had come to depend on her so 
 much. In difficulty of thought he would say : " Is 
 this right, Claire-Anne ? " And her answer would 
 come : " Yes, Shane ! " Or possibly when some 
 matter of trade or conduct seemed dubious, not 
 quite — whatever it was, her voice would come clear 
 as a bell. " You mustn't, Shane. It isn't right. 
 It isn't like you to be small." It might have been
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 153 
 
 conscience, but it sounded like Claire-Anne. And 
 oftentimes in problems, she would say : " I don't 
 know, Shane. I don't quite know." And he would 
 say, " We must do our best, Claire-Anne." 
 
 Well, she was gone. And he thought to himself : 
 What do we know of the destiny of the dead. They, 
 too, must have work, missions to perform. The God 
 he believed in — the wise firm and kindly God — 
 might have said : " Clare- Anne, he'll be all right 
 now. At any rate he'll have to work out the rest 
 for himself. Leave that. I want you to — " And 
 she had gone. 
 
 That was one majestic explanation, but at times it 
 seemed to him that no matter what happened in the 
 world, or superworld, yet she must be in touch with 
 him. " Set me, as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal 
 upon thine arm," cried the prince's daughter, " for 
 love is strong as death." If she loved him she must 
 love him still. 
 
 It suddenly occurred to him that the fault was 
 not occult, but a matter of spiritual deterioration 
 in himself. To be in harmony with the lonely dead 
 there must be no dross about the mind. The pre- 
 occupations of routine, the occasional dislikes of some 
 stupid ship's officer, or boatswain, the troubles about 
 cargo — this, that, the other pettinesses might cloud 
 his eye as a mist clouds a lens. There came to him 
 the memory of a translation from some Chinese poet 
 he had heard somewhere, in some connection : 
 
 How am I fallen from myself I For a long time now 
 I have not seen the prince of Chang in my dreams. 
 
 He decided he would clear and make ready the
 
 154 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 quiet sweet place in his heart, the room of ghosts, 
 so that she might come and dwell there. But induce 
 the spiritual mood of the quiet October evening much 
 as he could, yet she never came again. 
 
 From his mind now there faded the memory 
 of her face, the memory of her hands, the memory of 
 her voice even. With every week, with every month, 
 with the year, she was gone. Like a lost thought, 
 or a lost bar of music, she was gone. She had been 
 there, but she was gone. The loss was a terrible one. 
 To lose one who was alive was much. But to lose 
 one who was dead was unbelievable, horrible . . . 
 to lose the sun . . . forever . . . 
 
 He decided he could go back to the Prado of 
 Marseilles, where first he had met her, where she 
 would of all places have kept a tryst with him. 
 There was no risk. The folk of the sea come and go 
 so easily, so invisibly, and French law bothers itself 
 little about the killing of a woman of evil repute. . . . 
 One of the risks of the trade, they would say. Even 
 had there been a risk he would have gone. He went. 
 
 It was a dark night, a night of wind with the 
 waves lashing the shore. A night of all nights to 
 keep a tryst with a dead woman. Immense privacy 
 of darkness and howling winds and lashing waves. 
 With awe he went there, as a shaken Catholic might 
 enter a cathedral, dubious of the mystery of the 
 eucharist, expecting some silent word, some invisible 
 sign from the tabernacle. . . . He went with bowed 
 head. . . 
 
 She never came. 
 
 He concentrated until all faded away, even the 
 night, the wind, the insistent waters. He might have
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 155 
 
 been standing on a solitary rock in an infinite dark 
 sea, to which there was no shore. Asking, pleading, 
 willing for her . . . But she never came . . . 
 
 And it suddenly became inevitable to him that she 
 would not come ; and slowly, as a man comes slowly 
 out of a drug into consciousness, he came back into 
 the world of lights and laughter and sodden things. 
 And turning on his heel without a look, he went 
 away. . . . 
 
 He never called to her again . . . He thought over 
 her often enough, and she had never been real, he 
 decided. His mother and his wife had been real. 
 They were their own dimensions. But she was 
 something he had made in his head, as an author may 
 create a character. She was a hallucination. And 
 she had never been with him after death ; that 
 had been a mirage in the hinterland of the mind. 
 
 And he asked : Who was she, anyway ? She was 
 a woman who said she loved him, might even have 
 believed it. Women under stress believe so many 
 things. A little anger, a little passion, a little melan- 
 choly, and things resolve themselves into so many 
 differences of colour and line. And what standard 
 of truth is there ? Suppose he were to tell any man of 
 the world of the occurrence, and to ask who she was, 
 what she was, and what he had been to her. They 
 would have said it was simple. She was a harlot of 
 Marseilles, and he was her amant de cceur. But the 
 beauty of it I he would have objected. All the 
 beauty was in yourself. Or as they would have put 
 it : All imagination I 
 
 What a snare it all was, and what was truth ?
 
 156 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 How much better off a man was if he had never 
 anything to do with them, and yet. . . . 
 
 A world of men, there would be something lacking ! 
 Friends he had in plenty, men would help him, as a 
 ship stands by another ship at sea. Friends to talk 
 to, of ships and sports, of ports and politics ; but 
 when one left them, one was left by one's self. And 
 all the subtleties of mind came again like a cloud of 
 wasps. To each man his own problem of living. To 
 each man to decide his own escape from himself. 
 
 " And the Lord God said : It is not good that 
 the man should be alone — " the Hebrew chronicler 
 had imagined. No, it was not good. It was terrible. 
 After the day's work was done, after the pleasant 
 evenings of friends, then came the terror of the 
 shadows. Unreal they might be, but they hurt more 
 than real things did. Unless one sank into the un- 
 dignified oblivion of drink, there was no escape. 
 Shadows came. Acuter than the tick of a watch, 
 they were there, the cold mother with the haunting 
 eyes, the dead wife with the sullen mouth, visible 
 as stars. And empty as air was the space Claire- 
 Anne should have occupied, with her clear-cut 
 beautiful features, her understanding eyes. Three 
 ghosts, and the ghost that was missing was the most 
 terrible ghost of all . . . He could not stand them any 
 more . . . He must not be alone . . . 
 
 § 7 
 He could not marry a Christian of the East, they 
 were such an unspeakably treacherous race. He 
 could not marry a Jewess, for about each one of the
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 157 
 
 nation there seemed to be an awesome destiny, a 
 terrible doom or an ultimate majesty blinding human 
 eyes ; a wall, so high that it was terrible ... He 
 could not marry a Moslem woman, for that would 
 mean acceptance of Islam. And though Islam was 
 very fine, very clean, and Campbell believed in 
 resignation, and acknowledged there was no god but 
 God, as the crypticism was, yet the Scots-Irish honesty 
 of him would not accept Mohammed as the prophet 
 of God. It would be like putting Bonaparte above 
 the Lord Buddha. A faith is a very solemn thing 
 and not to be approached lightly. To accept a faith 
 publicly, the tongue in the cheek, was the sin of 
 insincerity and rank dishonesty, having committed 
 which no man should hold up his head. And moreover 
 Moslem women were queer things. For centuries 
 they had been held to be a little more beautiful than 
 a flower, a little less valuable, less personal than a fine 
 horse. Being told that for centuries they had come 
 to believe it, and believing one's self to be particular 
 leads one to become it. Moslem women, no ! 
 
 He had become familiar with the Druses around 
 Beirut. There was something in the hard indepen- 
 dent tribesmen that reminded him of the Ulster 
 Scot. Aloof, unafraid, inimical, independent, with a 
 strain of mysticism in them, they were somehow like 
 the glensmen of Antrim. Fairly friendly with the 
 Moslems, contemptuous of the Latin Christians, 
 impatient of dogma, they might have been the Orange- 
 men of Syria. Their emirs had a great dignity and 
 a great simplicity, like an old-time Highland chief. 
 They acknowledged God, but after that their faith 
 ran into esoteric subtleties of nature-worship, which
 
 158 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 they kept to the initiates among themselves . . . 
 And the common run of them had strange legends, 
 as that in a mountain bowl of China lived tribe on 
 tribe of Druses, and that one day these of Syria and 
 of China would be reunited and conquer the world. . . . 
 They were very dignified men, and muscular. . . . 
 Their women had the light feet of gazelles . . . One 
 only saw their sweet low foreheads, their cinnamon 
 hands . . . They claimed they were Christians some- 
 times, and other times they said they were Moslems, 
 but the truth no stranger knew ... A secret sect, 
 like the ancient Assassins, who had the Old Man of 
 the Mountain for their king. . . . With them dwelt 
 beauty and terror and the glamour of hidden 
 things. . . . 
 
 To Shane they were very kindly. They recognized 
 him for a mountain man born, and for an honest man. 
 They could not understand him as a Christian, seeing 
 he took no part in Greek or Latin politics. They 
 decided he must have some faith of his own . . . 
 He did them some kindness of errands, and they were 
 very hospitable to him . . . 
 
 In 'Ci, after the massacres, when the tribesmen were 
 preparing to retreat to the mountain of the Druses, 
 he returned to find Syria occupied by the troops of 
 Napoleon III and to hear that his friends Hamadj 
 Beg of Deir el Kour was dead in the war ... He went 
 to condole with the family . . . Arif Bey, Hamadj 's 
 brother, was preparing to retreat towards Dam- 
 ascus. . . . 
 
 ' Arif Bey," Campbell suddenly said, " also this, 
 I seek a wife."
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 159 
 
 " Yes." The grizzled Druse scratched his head, 
 and looked at him keenly. 
 
 " I am making Lebanon my home ; therefore I 
 don't want a wife of my country. There is no people 
 sib to me here but the Druse people. . . . Would a 
 Druse woman marry me ? " 
 
 " I — I see nothing against it." 
 
 " Do you know a Druse woman who would have 
 me? " 
 
 " Well, let me see," Arif said. " There is Hamdj's 
 daughter, Fenzile." 
 
 " Is she young, Arif Bey ? " 
 
 ' Not so young, nineteen, but she is a mountain 
 woman and lasts." 
 
 " Is she good-looking ? " 
 
 " Yes, she is very good looking." 
 
 " Is she kindly ?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, I think so." 
 
 " Is she wild ? " 
 
 " No. She is very docile." 
 
 " You trust me a lot, Arif Bey." 
 
 " Yes, we trust you much." 
 
 ' And I trust you, Arif Bey . . . Will Fenzile 
 marry me ? " 
 
 ' Yes," Arif Bey decided, " Fenzile will marry you." 
 
 § 8 
 It seemed to him, at thirty-five, that only now had 
 he discovered the secret of living. Not until now 
 had his choice and destiny come together to make 
 
 this perfect equation of life. The work he loved 
 
 the bark Queen Maeve, with her beautiful sails like
 
 160 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 a racing yacht's, her white decks, her shining brass. 
 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 — "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 I Beauty ! The Arab 
 shepherds in abbas of dark magenta, the black Greek 
 priests, the green of a pilgrim's turban, the veiled 
 women smoking narghiles and daintily sipping 
 sherbets, pink and yellow and white. The cry of the 
 donkey-boy, and the cry of the cameleer, and the cry 
 of the muezzin from the mosque. The quaint 
 salutations as he passed along the staired streets : 
 Naharkum Sayeed ! — May your day be blessed. 
 Naharaka abyad ! — May your day be white. Allah 
 yahtikum el afiyeh ! — God give health to you. They 
 were chanted like a refrain of a song. 
 
 Beauty ! Riot and slashing of colour. Yet there 
 was line here and massive proportion. The sparkling, 
 magenta city had been the theatre of great marching 
 hosts. The Phoenicians had built it : " the root of 
 life, the nurse of cities, the primitive queen of the 
 world," they had named her. And gone the Phoeni- 
 cians, and came the slim subtle Egyptians. And the 
 massive burly Assyrians came next : and now the 
 memory of them was forgotten, also their love and 
 their hatred and their envy was now perished. And
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 161 
 
 then came the tramp of the Roman legions, Agrippa's 
 men, and held the city for centuries. Justinian 
 had one of his law schools there, until the earth 
 quaked and the scholars dispersed. And then the 
 Saracens held it until Baldwin, brother of Godfrey de 
 Bouillon, clashed into it with mailed crusaders. 
 Baldwin, overcome with the beauty of the land, 
 took to him a Paynim queen. And then came the 
 occult reign of the Druse. And then the Turk. 
 
 And St. George had killed the Dragon there, after 
 the old monk's tale. 
 
 Shane Campbell was never weary of looking at 
 the inscriptions on the great cliffs at the River of 
 the Dog — the strange beauty of that name ! It was 
 like the place-names of native Ulster — Athbo, the 
 Ford of Cows, Sraidcuacha, the Cuckoo's Lane — 
 one name sounded to the other like tuning-forks. 
 And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, 
 so that he could understand the irresistible charm of 
 Lebanon — the high clear note like a bird's song. 
 Here was the sun and the dreams of mighty things, 
 and the palpable proximity of God. Here was beauty 
 native, to be picked like a nugget, not to be mined 
 for in bitter hours of torment and distress 
 
 High, clear, sustained, the note held. Arose the 
 moon and the great stars like spangles. The slender 
 acacias murmured. The pines hush-hushed. The 
 brouhaha of the cafe's was like a considered counter- 
 point. Everywhere was harmony ; beauty. And 
 there would be no depression. It would last. There 
 would be no ghosts. They were exorcised. For now 
 there was Fenzile. How understandable everything 
 was ! It must have been under a moon like this, under 
 
 M
 
 162 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 these Syrian stars, to the hush-hush-hush of the pine 
 and the rustle of willow branches, that Solomon the 
 king sang his love-song. And it must have been to 
 one whose body was white as Fenzile's, to eyes as 
 emerald, to velvety lips, to slim hands with orange- 
 tinted finger nails that he sang. Surely the Shulamite 
 was not fairer than Fenzile, daughter of Hamadj, 
 a Druse emir ! 
 
 How beautiful arc thy feet with shoes, prince's daughter ! 
 
 The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, 
 
 The work of the hands of a cunning workman. 
 
 Thy navel is like a round goblet, 
 
 Which wanteth not liquor : 
 
 Thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. 
 
 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. 
 
 Thy neck is like a tower of ivory : 
 
 Thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, 
 
 By the gate of Bath-rabbim : 
 
 Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward 
 
 Damascus. 
 Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, 
 And the hair upon thee is like purple, 
 The king is held in the galleries. 
 How fair and pleasant art thou, 
 
 love, for delights ! 
 
 This thy stature is like to a palm tree. 
 And thy breasts to clusters of grapes. 
 
 1 said, I will go up to the palm tree. 
 
 I will take hold of the boughs thereof : 
 
 Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, 
 
 And the smell of thy nose like apples ; 
 
 And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my 
 
 beloved, 
 That goeth down sweetly, 
 Causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 163 
 
 § 9 
 
 Where before he had made his mistake with 
 women was allowing them to become spiritually 
 important. His mother had been important ; he 
 had suffered from the sense of her lack of heart to 
 him. His wife had been important ; they had not 
 understood life together, had made no attempt to . . . 
 They were so young . . . And Claire-Anne had become 
 spiritually important to him. So that when she was 
 gone, it was hell. 
 
 If he had treated his mother causally, depending 
 on his uncles, it would have been all right. If he 
 had discerned — and he had discerned, though he knew 
 not how to act — that his wife and he would forever 
 be inharmonious, it would not have been a scar on 
 his youth. If he had gone for instance to Alan Donn 
 and said, " Uncle Alan, I'm afeared there's a mistake 
 been made. And what are we going to do about this 
 woman o' Louth ? " And Alan would have said : 
 " I ken't well you were a damned young fool. Ah, 
 well, gang off aboard your boatie, and I'll see to her." 
 Alan would have ditched her and her mother merci- 
 lessly. There would have been no scar on his 
 youth. . . . 
 
 And Claire-Anne, had he only taken her as he 
 should have taken her, as a light love, easily gotten, 
 to be taken easily, instead of tragedizing until his 
 fingers were scarlet. . . . God ! . . . Yes, where 
 before he had made his mistakes with women was 
 allowing them to become spiritually important. 
 
 Well, he wouldn't do that with Fenzile. He 
 knew better now. Keep the heart free. Let there
 
 164 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 be beauty and graciousness and kindliness, but keep 
 the heart free, and ask for no heart. All tragedies 
 were internal, all the outward deeds being only as 
 symbols. Keep the heart free. 
 
 There were so many aspects to her. She was like 
 a bird about the house, gaily coloured, of bright song. 
 He loved to see her move here and there, with move- 
 ments as of music. And she was like a child at times, 
 as she solemnly made sherbets — very like a child she 
 was, intense, simple. And she was like a young rela- 
 tive ; there was emptiness in the house when she went, 
 and when she came back it was like a bird singing. 
 
 And she was so beautiful about the place, with her 
 eyes green of the sea, her dusky velvet lips, her slim 
 cinnamon hands, with the dramatic orange tinting 
 on the nails. Always was some new beauty in her, a 
 tilt of the head, a sudden gracious pose. She was like 
 some piece of warm statuary. From any angle came 
 beauty, shining as the sun. 
 
 And in the dusk when his arms were about her, she 
 was no longer child, relative, or statue. She was 
 woman, vibrant woman. Tensed muscles and a little 
 stifled moan. And an emotional sob, maybe, or a 
 tear glistening on her cheek. Relaxation, and a 
 strange, easy dignity. With her arms about her 
 white knees, her little head upraised, thoughts seemed 
 to be going and coming from her like bees in and out 
 of their straw skep. And often he was tempted to 
 ask her what she was thinking of. But he stopped 
 himself in time. Of course she was thinking of 
 nothing at all, barring possibly a new sherbet to be 
 made, or whether, if they sold Fatima, the Abyssinian 
 cook, who was becoming garrulous, would Fatima
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 165 
 
 have a good home. Trifles ! What was the use of 
 asking her ? And here was another possibility. 
 She might — anything was possible — be in some deep 
 subtle thought, into which, if he asked, he might get 
 enmeshed, or be trapped emotionally. Better not 
 ask. He wanted to know nothing of her heart, and 
 to keep his. 
 
 He loved her in a happy, guarded way. And she 
 loved him. When he came back after a voyage she 
 looked at him with an amazed joy. " O Zan ! Zan, 
 dear ! Is it you ? Is it really you ? " She would 
 rush and hold him. What amazing strength her 
 little arms had ! And she would stand back and look 
 at him again. " Zan ! Zan ! " And she would 
 bury her perfumed head in his shoulder to hide the 
 glad tears. " O Zan ! " 
 
 " Do you know why I love you so much, Zan 
 dear ? " she once said. 
 
 " Why, Fenzile ? " 
 
 " Because you are so big, and yet you are so gentle. 
 And you wouldn't do a little thing, my Zan." 
 
 " Don't be foolish, Fenzile I '" 
 
 " I am not foolish." 
 
 Only once she asked him how he loved her. 
 
 " I wonder — how much do you love me, my Zan ? " 
 
 " Oh, lots, Fenzile. A terrible lot." And he 
 smiled. 
 
 " As much as you do your ship ? " 
 
 " Yes, as much as I do my ship." 
 
 " That is a lot, Zan . . . Zan, would you miss me 
 if I should die ? " 
 
 " I should miss you terribly."
 
 166 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 << 
 
 If you died, I should die, too." Her voice 
 quavered. 
 
 " Don't be silly. Of course you wouldn't." 
 ' Don't you think I would ? " And she laughed 
 with him, one of her rare, rare laughs. And that 
 was the way it all should end, in pretty laughter. 
 Let there be none of this horrible emotionalism, this 
 undignified welter of thought and feeling. Kindness 
 of eyes, and pleasantness of body, but keep the heart 
 away. Let them be— how ? There wasn't a word in 
 English, or in Gaidhlig to express it ; in French there 
 was — des amis, not des amants. Let them be that. 
 Let there be no involution of thought and mind about 
 it. Let there be this time no mistake. . . . Where 
 before he had made his mistake with women was 
 allowing them to become spiritually important. . . . 
 
 § io 
 Into this idyl of Beirut came now the wrestler from 
 Aleppo, Ahmet Ali, and the occurrence irritated 
 Campbell to a degree which he had not conceived 
 possible. There he passed the door with his dreamy 
 Syrian face, his red rose, his white burnoose, his 
 straggling followers. And Fenzile smiled her quiet, 
 aloof smile. 
 
 There might be amusement in it, a queer Eastern 
 comedy of the mountebank who raised his eyes to a 
 Druse princess, and wife of a Frank ship's master. 
 It might be amusing to Fenzile to see this conqueror 
 of men conquered by her presence, but it wasn't 
 dignified. By God ! it wasn't dignified. 
 
 But it wasn't dignified to talk about it. To show
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 167 
 
 Fenzile that it mattered a tinker's curse to him. So 
 he said nothing, and the wrestler went by every day. 
 It was becoming intolerable. It seemed to amuse 
 Fenzile, but it didn't amuse him. 
 
 And suddenly a chill smote him. What did he 
 know of these people of the East anyhow ? In six 
 years one could learn their language perfectly, know 
 their customs, know themselves, but know only as 
 much as they wanted to be known. The outer person, 
 which is hallucination, one might know, but what of 
 the inner, which is reality ? A strange country, 
 where the merchants spoke like princes and the 
 princes like cameleers, and the sakyeh, the water- 
 carrier, might quote some fancy of Hafiz, as the water 
 gurgled from the skin. The obedience, the resigna- 
 tion in the women's eyes might cover intrigue, and 
 what was behind the eyes of the men, soft as women's? 
 
 " Fenzile, you say you love me, because I am 
 kind. Don't you love me because I am strong ? " 
 
 " Anyway, anyhow, dear Zan." 
 
 " I am strong, you know. As strong as your 
 friend, Ahmet Ali." 
 
 " Of course, dear Zan." But somehow her tone 
 did not carry conviction. If she understood there 
 was nothing this wrestler had he did not have better, 
 it would have been all right. All attributes in the 
 world would have been for her in him. But she 
 thought the wrestler was strong. Damn women ! 
 Couldn't they understand the difference between 
 the muscles of a hunting leopard and the bulk of a 
 sea-cow ? It was silly, but it irritated him. 
 
 And then a thought came to him that he felt 
 degraded him, but of which he could not rid himself,
 
 168 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 try as he would. 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, doubt 
 rose blackly in him. And in the gay mornings, 
 when she was arranging her flowers in vases of Persian 
 blue, it made him silent as the grave. And in the 
 evening when she was doing her subtle Syrian 
 broideries, it aroused in him queer gusts of controlled 
 fury . . . Could it be possible ? A mountebank . . . 
 And the " Thousand and One Nights " began with 
 Shah Zamon's queen and her love for the blackamoor 
 slave . . . 
 
 If the wrestler would only go away, become tired 
 of parading, and Fenzile would tire of smiling . . . 
 And later on Campbell would laugh . . . 
 
 But the wrestler stayed, and many times Campbell 
 met him in the streets, and each time was exaggerated, 
 insulting courtesy from the Aleppo man, as he drew 
 aside to let the Frank pass. There was hostility and 
 contempt in his veiled eyes . . . There nonchalance 
 in his smelling of the rose . . . Campbell passed by 
 frigidly, as if the man weren't there, and all the time 
 his blood was boiling . . . But what was one to do ? 
 One could not make a scene before the riff-raff of
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 169 
 
 Syria. And besides, there was too much of a chance 
 of a knife in the back . . . Franks were cheap these 
 days, and it would be blamed on the war of the 
 Druses . . . 
 
 Argue with himself as much as he could, it was 
 intolerable. It was silly, but it was intolerable . . 
 To think of another caressing that perfumed hair, 
 of another kissing the palm of that slim hand, of 
 another seeing those sleek, sweet shoulders . . . 
 
 Was he jealous . . . ? No, irritated, just, he told 
 himself. Was he in love with her himself ? Of course 
 not. She wasn't close enough to him for that . . . 
 Then why . . . ? 
 
 Oh, damn it ! He didn't know why, but it was just 
 intolerable . . . 
 
 § 11 
 
 The bark was in the open roadstead, cargo all 
 ready, Levantine pilot on board. A reaching breeze 
 from the north and all favourable. And when he 
 would get home to Liverpool, he had a design to 
 spend a few weeks in Ulster . . . The roads would be 
 glistening with frost there, and the pleasant Ulster 
 moon at the full . . . The turf would be nearly black, 
 and bare as a board, and there would be coursing of 
 hares . . . November mists, and the trees red and brown 
 . . . Eh, hard Ulster, pleasant Ulster ! 
 
 He should have been happy, as he made his way 
 down the Beirut streets to go aboard, leaving the 
 land of his adoption for the land of his birth, leaving 
 pleasant Fenzile for the shrewd pleasantry of his 
 own folk ... A little while of Ulster and he would be 
 coming back again . . . One's heart should lift at the
 
 170 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 glory of the world, the bold line of Ulster and the 
 lavish colour of Syria ; the sincere, dour folk of Ulster 
 and the warmth of Fenzile ... He should have left 
 so warmly. " In a little while, dearest, I'll be back 
 and my heart will speak to your twin green eyes." 
 " Yes, Zan. I'll be here." But he had left dourly. 
 And Fenzile had watched him go with quivering lip 
 . . . Oh, damn himself for his suspicions, for his annoy- 
 ance, and damn the fatuous Arab fool for arousing 
 them . . . Christ, if only he had that fellow on board 
 ship ! And suddenly he met him, with his attendants 
 and hangers-on. The wrestler drew aside with his 
 insolent smile. Campbell's temper broke loose. 
 
 " Listen, certain person," he insulted the Aleppo 
 man, " there is a street in Beirut down which it does 
 not please me to see you go." 
 
 " Will the foreign gentleman tell me," the wrestler's 
 voice drawled, and he smelled his rose, " who will 
 stop a Moslem from going down a Moslem street ? " 
 
 " By God ! I would." The Syrians of Ahmet 
 Ali's escort gathered around, smiling. 
 
 " The foreign gentleman forgets that I am the 
 wrestler from Aleppo." 
 
 " Just so. I happen to be a bit of a wrestler my- 
 self." 
 
 " Some day perhaps the foreign gentleman will 
 condescend to try a fall with me." 
 
 Syrians, Egyptians, Turks, were pouring from all 
 quarters. Six French soldiers walking gapingly along 
 the bazaars, stopped wonderingly. 
 
 " Dites, les soldats," Shane called. " Vous ne 
 voulez pas voir quelque chose d'interessant ? " 
 
 " Mais, si, Monsieur ! "
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 171 
 
 " Eh bien, je vais hitter contre l'homme avec la 
 rose. C'est un lutteur arabe. Voulez-vous y assister? " 
 
 " Mais, pour bien sur, Monsieur." 
 
 " All right, then, by God ! " Shane looked square 
 at Ahmed Ali. " We'll wrestle right here and now." 
 
 " But the stones, the street," Ahmet Ali looked 
 surprised. " You might get hurt." 
 
 " We'll wrestle here and now." 
 
 " Oh, all right." The Arab lifted an expressive 
 shoulder. Carefully he removed the great white 
 robe and handed it to an attendant. To another he 
 gave the rose. Shane handed his coat and hat to a 
 saturnine French corporal. Ahmet Ali took his shirt 
 off. Kicked away his sandals. There was the 
 dramatic appearance of an immense bronze torso. 
 The Syrians smiled. The French soldiers looked 
 judicially grave. Ahmet Ali stood talking for an 
 instant with one of his men, a lean bilious-seeming 
 Turk. The Turk was urging something with eager- 
 ness. The wrestler's soft girl's face had concentrated 
 into a mask of distaste. He was shaking his head. 
 He didn't like something. 
 
 " How much longer are you going to keep me 
 waiting ? " 
 
 Ahmet turned. There was a smile on his face, as 
 of amused, embarrassed toleration. He was like a 
 great athlete about to box with a small boy. And the 
 boy in earnest. 
 
 " Ready ? " he asked. 
 
 " Any time," Shane snapped. 
 
 " All right." 
 
 Very easily he came forward over the cobbled 
 street. He was like some immense bronze come
 
 172 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 suddenly to life and shambling. Like the brazen 
 servant Thomas Aquinas made under the influence 
 of particular stars. His great brown shoulders, 
 his barrelled chest, his upper arms like a man's leg, 
 his packed forearms, his neck like a bull's, his shaven 
 head. All seemed superhuman, and then came his 
 shy embarrassed smile, his troubled eyes. One felt 
 he hated to do this . . . 
 
 He dropped suddenly, easily into his wrestler's 
 crouch. His shoulders swayed lightly. He pawed 
 like a bear. 
 
 Campbell stood easily, left foot forward, like a 
 boxer. His left arm shot out suddenly. The heel 
 of his hand stopped, jolted Ahmet on the chin. The 
 Syrian shook his head. Pawed again. Campbell 
 slapped him on the forearms, jolted him again on 
 the chin, broke away easily to the right. Ahmet's 
 brown forehead frowned. "Don't be childish," he 
 seemed to chide Campbell. The crowd pressed. The 
 French soldiers rapped them back with the scabbard 
 of their sidearms. En arriere, les puants, en arriere ! 
 " Back, sons of polecats, get back." The scabbards 
 clacked like slapsticks. 
 
 Ahmet Ali stood up straighter. He wanted to 
 get away from that annoying hand on his chin. 
 His forearms moved faster now, like brown pistons. 
 There was a slight frown on his face. He was be- 
 coming impatient. Shane broke again to the right. 
 Ahmet followed, his immense hands poised. Camp- 
 bell feinted for the chin again with his left hand. 
 The wrestler's smile flickered. His right arm went 
 out in guard. Campbell shifted, caught the brown 
 wrist in his right hand, his left hand shot forward
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 173 
 
 to the chin again. He brought forward all his forces 
 to twisting that gigantic arm. He held the Syrian 
 locked. The right arm began to give. If he could 
 only shift his feet, get some sort of leverage. But 
 how in God's name, how ? How could he get behind. 
 With an immense wrench of shoulders Ahmet got 
 free. He stood for an instant, nursing his numbed 
 wrist. He nodded and grinned. " That wasn't 
 bad," he seemed to say. The lean bilious Turk on 
 the edge of the crowd began talking viciously. The 
 saturnine French corporal turned and smacked him 
 terribly across the nose with the edge of the scabbard 
 of his bayonet. " Et ta sceur ! " He had the air of 
 a school master reproving a refractory pupil. But 
 his language was obscene and his blow broke the 
 man's nose ... He vouchsafed no further interest in 
 the Turk, but turned to watch the wrestling, twirling 
 an oiled mustache . . . 
 
 The Syrian closed his mouth, breathed heavily 
 through his nostrils. His brow corrugated. His 
 eyes became pinpoints. He was a workman out to 
 do a job. He began to weave in, his brown arms 
 describing slow arabesques. The crowd around be- 
 came oppressively silent. They breathed hissingly. 
 
 Shane feinted, dodged, broke away. Doggedly 
 Ahmet Ali followed. Faster than time, Shane's right 
 hand shot out and gripped the wrestler's wrist. His 
 right foot hooked around the Syrian's right ankle. 
 He pulled downward with sudden, vicious effort. Ali 
 crashed forward on his face, a great brown hulk like 
 an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down 
 for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full 
 Nelson. ... An instant too long of hesitation.
 
 174 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled 
 aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His 
 face was bloody, his right knee shook. With the 
 back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. 
 There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler 
 lumbered forward again. ... A little quake of fear 
 came into Campbell's being. There was an imper- 
 sonal doggedness about the wrestler from Aleppo's 
 eyes, a sense of inevitability. . . . Shane's eyes 
 shifted, right and left. . . . 
 
 Then suddenly, the wrestler had him. . . . 
 
 He felt a twirl to his shoulder, and then he was 
 pinioned by two immense brown arms. They caught 
 him above the elbows around the chest. First they 
 were like boys' arms, light. They became firm as 
 calipers. They settled, snugged. Then they 
 tightened slowly, with immense certainty. There 
 was something about it like the rise of the tide. A 
 gigantic cable around his chest. At his shoulder- 
 blades the Syrian's pectoral muscles pressed like 
 shollow knobs of steel. His arms began to hurt. 
 His breathing began to be hard with every output 
 of breath. The arms tightened. . . . All his vitality 
 was flying through his opened mouth. . . . He hit 
 futilely with his knuckles at the rope-like sinews of 
 the brown forearms. . . . His head throbbed like 
 drums. ... In an instant he would be like a bag 
 bound midways ... his ribs giving like saplings in 
 the wind. . . . Lights danced . . . 
 
 Stupidly he looked down at the clasped hands, and 
 a sudden fury of fighting came on him. . . . Some- 
 thing terrible, sinister, cold. His free hands caught 
 the Syrian's little finger, tugged, pulled, bent, tore.
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 175 
 
 ... He wanted to shred it from its hand. . . . Rip 
 it like silk. ... He felt the great arms about him 
 quiver, grow uncertain. . . . Tear, tear ! 
 
 With a little whine like a dog's, the wrestler let 
 go. . . . He nursed the finger for an instant like a 
 hurt child 
 
 Opening and shutting the hand. . . . Looking 
 worried. . . . Great waves of air came into Shane's 
 chest. . . . His knees were weak. . . . The Syrian 
 
 walked around an instant, thinking, worrying 
 
 He was serious now. . . . Suddenly he plunged. . . 
 
 But swifter than Ahmet's plunge was thought and 
 memory ... of a day at Nagasaki ... of a little 
 brown smiling Japanese and a burly square-head 
 sailorman. ... Of the Japanese's courteous ex- 
 planation in smiling Pidgin . . . With luck and 
 timing he could do it. . . . Fast, but not too fast, 
 and steady. . . . Handsomely, as the ship-word 
 was. . . . There ! 
 
 The hands trained to whipping lanyards caught 
 Ahmet's wrists as he plunged. Shane's right leg 
 went outward, foot sunk home. Backward he fell, 
 leg taut, hands pulling. Above him Ahmet's great 
 bulk soared, hurtled grotesquely. For an instant ; 
 a flash. . . . The squeals of startled Syrians, the 
 panic of feet. . . . Then a crash, an immense 
 crash. . . . 
 
 A long, shuddering, frightened eh from the crowd. 
 .... A French soldier mumbling ..." Crd nom 
 de nom de nom de nom de Jesus Chri ! " 
 
 He staggered to his feet, put his hand to his face. 
 .... It came away dripping. . . . His face was 
 like the leeward deck of a flying yacht . . . swimming
 
 176 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 ... A few feet away Syrians and French soldiers 
 were milling over . . . something. . . . The cor- 
 poral wrenched Shane's arms into his coat. Pushed 
 his hat into his hands. 
 
 " Courex done, le citoyen. . . . Come on, get away. 
 ... Get ... " 
 
 " Is he dead ? " 
 
 " No, not dead. . . . But get away. . . . He'll 
 never wrestle again. . . . Vite, alors ! " 
 
 He pushed him down the street. 
 
 " But *' 
 
 " Go on. We can take care of ourselves. . . ." 
 He shoved him roughly forward. . . . Shane 
 staggered, walked, ran a little. . . . Behind him a 
 few blocks away, an ominous hum. He ran on. . . . 
 Some one was shrieking . . . 
 
 " Mahala ya ma hala kobal en Nosara. . . . How 
 sweet, oh, how sweet, to kill the Christians. . . ." 
 The crack of a gun . . . Tumult . . . The long 
 Moslem war-song . . . Two rifles. " A nous, les 
 Francais . . . A nous, la Legion ! " 
 
 A nausea, a great weakness, an utter contempt for 
 himself, came over him in the boat pulling him toward 
 his ship . . . God ! He had fought with and nearly 
 killed — possibly killed — a man for personal hatred ! 
 From irritation, and in a public place ! A spectacle 
 for donkey-boys and riff-raff of French towns. . . . 
 He tottered on the ship's ladder. . . . The sailors 
 caught him. The mate ran up. 
 
 " Anything wrong, sir ? You look like a ghost." 
 
 "No. Nothing. All aboard? Everything ready? 
 Is she a-drawing ? Anchor a-peak ? All right. 
 Get her up. . . ."
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 177 
 
 § 12 
 
 " Arif Bey, where is my wife ? I come back to 
 Beirut. I find my house deserted. My servants 
 gone. Where is Fenzile ? Is she here ? " 
 
 " No, son." 
 
 " Is she dead ? " 
 
 " No, no, son. I wish she were ..." 
 
 " Then where is she gone ? With whom ? " 
 
 " Trebizond. Stamboul. Cairo. I don't know 
 where." 
 
 " With whom ? " 
 
 " With — oh, don't bother yourself, son. Forget 
 her." 
 
 " With whom ? I must know." 
 
 " With — do you remember that wrestler you 
 crippled, the wrestler from Aleppo ? " 
 
 " With Ahmet Ali ! Impossible ! I all but killed 
 him." 
 
 " She went, though ..." 
 
 " No, uncle, no. If he had been strong she might, 
 but " 
 
 The old Druse chief shook his head, smiled in his 
 beard, a little, bitter, wise smile. 
 
 " You were never sick with her, never poor." 
 
 " No, never sick, never poor." 
 
 " Well, he was sick and poor, so she went with 
 him." 
 
 '' Then she loved him all along." 
 
 " No, son Zan, she loved you — until you threw him. 
 She might have been amused at seeing him pass the 
 house, laugh a little, be flattered . . . Such a big 
 fool, and she a little woman . . . but she would never 
 
 H
 
 178 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 have left you. . . ." 
 
 " But she did." 
 
 " Well . . . after the fight, he had no friends . . . 
 the Christians despised him, the Moslems hated him. 
 .... There was no train to follow him ... he 
 went on crutches. ... He passed her door and 
 looked, and looked. . . . What could she do but 
 come out. ... It was her fault, after all. . . . And 
 she was very tender-hearted. . . " 
 
 " Tender-hearted ? " 
 
 " Didn't you know ? " 
 
 " No, I never knew." 
 
 " She used to cry when the leaves fell from the 
 trees. . . . You didn't know your wife well ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I did not." 
 
 " Well, she is gone, Zan. . . . Whither one doesn't 
 know. . . . What will become of her, one doesn't 
 know Destiny is like a blind camel. He doesn't 
 know against what he stumbles. We do not see him 
 come . . . only when the harm is done do we say : 
 We might have listened for the tinkle of his bell. . . . 
 Eh, one is young and does everything and sees nothing. 
 One is old and sees everything and does nothing. 
 There is no mystery . . . only ignorance ..." 
 
 " You say she was very tender-hearted, my uncle. 
 I didn't know ... I thought of her as something 
 else. . . ." 
 
 " Son Zan, you had better forget her in another 
 woman. Listen, son, I will give you Aziyede in 
 marriage, my own daughter. She is just as pretty, 
 and younger and not so foolish as Fenzile." 
 
 " Oh, no, sir. No ! " 
 
 " Well, I don't blame you,"
 
 THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO 179 
 
 " It isn't that, Arif Bey. It isn't that. I'm 
 very beholden to you ... for your kindness . . . 
 and your patience ... I didn't know . . . And I 
 thought I knew everything nearly, and am so ignorant. 
 . . . Why until now I didn't know even this— the 
 sun shone so brightly, and life was so pleasant, I 
 thought that was the way of life. . . . But I was 
 in love with Fenzile . . . and that was what made 
 everything so wonderful ... in love with the wife 
 you gave me . . . head over heels, sir . . . just 
 simply — head over heels. . . ."
 
 BOOK FIVE 
 THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 
 § I 
 
 TO him, for a long time now, the sea had been 
 only water. All the immense pelagic plain, 
 dotted with ships ; with bergs of ice, like cathedrals ; 
 with waves that curled or swept in huge rhythms ; 
 with currents denned in lines and whorls ; with gulls 
 that mewed and whales that blew like pretty foun- 
 tains ; with the little Portuguese men-of-war ; with 
 the cleaving of flying fish and the tumbling of dol- 
 phins, all this was water. All this joyous green, this 
 laughing white, the deep, reflective blue, the sombre, 
 exquisite gray, was water. An infinity of barrels of 
 water, immense vats of water, wet water. . . . 
 
 To him, for a long time now, a ship had been a 
 means of keeping afloat on water, of going from place 
 to place. All its brave strakes, its plunging bows, its 
 heeling beams, were wood, such as one makes a house 
 of, or a tinker's cart. All the miracle of sails ; the 
 steady foresail ; the sensitive jibs ; the press canvas 
 delicate as bubbles ; the reliable main ; the bluff 
 topsails ; top gallants like eager horses ; the im- 
 pertinent skysails ; the jaunty moonraker, were just 
 canvas stretched on poles. All the pyramidal wonder 
 of them, fore, main, and mizzen, were not like a good 
 rider's hands to a horse ; compelling, coaxing, curbing 
 the wind, they were utilities. The spinning wheel 
 was a mechanical device. Port was left, and star- 
 board only the right hand. The chiming of the ship's 
 bell was not an old sweet ceremony, but a fallible 
 
 183
 
 184 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 thing, not exact as the ticking of a cheap watch. 
 And " The lights are burning bright, sir," was not a 
 pa^an of comfort, but a mechanical artisans' 
 phrase. . . . 
 
 To him, for a long time now, they who went down 
 to the sea in ships were men only ; men such as sell 
 things in shops or scrub poorhouse floors, or dig 
 tracks for a railroad. The slovenly Achill man, who 
 would face death with a grin, the shambling High- 
 lander who on occasion could spring to the shrouds 
 like a cat ; the old bo'sun who had been for years a 
 castaway on Tierra del Fuego ; the wizened chantey- 
 man with his melodeon, who could put new vigour 
 into tired backs, with his long-drag chanteys, like 
 " Blow the Man Down," and " Dead Horse," and 
 " Whisky Johnnie," and short-drags like " Paddy 
 Doyle " and " Haul the Bowline," and capstans like 
 " Homeward Bound " and " Wide Missouri," and 
 pumping chanteys like " Storm Along " ; the keen 
 men at the wheel and the hawk-eyed look-out ; the 
 sailor swinging the lead in the bows, with a wrist and 
 forearm of steel — all these were only men following 
 the sea because they knew no better. And the mate 
 who would wade into a mob of twenty with swinging 
 fists, and the navigator who could calculate to a 
 hair's-breadth where they were by observing the 
 unimaginable stars — they were not of the craft of 
 Noah, they were men who knew their job . . . just 
 men . . . as a ticket-clerk on a railroad is a man. . . . 
 
 To him, for a long time now, ports were ports, — 
 only places whither one went to get or deliver cargo. 
 Baltimore, like some sweet old lady ; Para, heavy, 
 sinister with rain ; Rio, like some sparkling jewel ;
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 185 
 
 Belfast, dour, efficient, sincere ; Hamburg, dignified, 
 gemiitlich ; Libson, quiet as a cathedral — they were 
 not entities, they were just collections of houses 
 covering men and women. And men were either 
 fools or crooks, and women were either ugly bores or 
 pretty — bitches . . . Men and women, they were 
 born crudely, as a calf is born of a cow, they lived 
 foolishly or meanly, and they died . . . And they 
 were hustled out of the house quickly. . . . They 
 thought themselves so important, and they lacked 
 the faithfulness of the dog, the cleanliness of 
 wild animals, the strength of horses, the beauty of 
 tropic birds, the mathematical science of the spider, 
 the swiftness of fishes . . . And they grew old abomin- 
 ably, the women's breasts falling, the men getting 
 bald. How the devil had they ever arrogated 
 to themselves the lordship of created things ? 
 
 To him, for a long time now, the world had been, 
 was, one mean street . . . 
 
 § 2 
 Of all cities, none was better calculated to foster 
 this mood of his than the one to which his business 
 now brought him — Buenos Aires on the Plate. 
 Leaving Liverpool with steel and cotton, there was 
 an immensity of ocean to be traversed, until one 
 came to the river mouth. Then fifty leagues of 
 hard sailing to the abominable anchorage . . . 
 
 Here now was a city growing rich, ungracefully 
 — a city of arrogant Spanish colonists, of poverty- 
 stricken immigrants, of down-trodden lower classes 
 . . a city of riches ... a city of blood . . . Here mud, 
 here monev . . .
 
 186 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 Into a city half mud hovels, half marble-fronted 
 houses, gauchos drove herd upon herd of cattle, 
 baffled, afraid. Here Irish drove streams of gray 
 bleating sheep. Here ungreased bullock carts 
 screamed. From the blue-grass pampas they drove 
 them, where the birds sang, and water rippled, where 
 was the gentleness of summer rain, where was the 
 majesty of great storms, clouds magnificently black 
 and jagged lightning, where were great white moons 
 and life-giving suns, where was the serpent in the 
 grass, and the unique tree, where were swift horses 
 . . . Beeves that had once been red awkward calves, 
 and then sullen, stupid little bullocks, and then proud 
 young bulls, with graceful horns . . . Such as earnest 
 Christians believed had lowed at the manger of Christ 
 born in Bethlehem . . . And stupid, suspicious sheep, 
 that had once been white gamboling lambs, playful 
 as pups, and so ridiculously innocent looking ! — 
 didn't they call their Lord Agnus Dei, Lamb of God ? 
 — and gentle ewes and young truculent rams, like 
 red-headed schoolboys, eager for a fray, and shame- 
 faced wethers . . . And by their thousands and their 
 tens of thousands they drove them into Buenos 
 Aires, and slew them for their hides . . . 
 
 But this was sentimental, Shane said. Bullocks 
 and sheep must die, and the knife is merciful as any 
 death. But oughtn't these things be done by night, 
 privily as they should bury the dead ? Must they 
 drive down these infinities of creatures, and slaughter 
 them openly and callously, until the air was salt with 
 blood, until the carrion crows hovered over the city in 
 battalions ? Had they no feeling, had they no shame ? 
 Must the pitiful machinery of life be exposed so airily ?
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 187 
 
 Of course it must, he knew. These things had to 
 be done in bulk. Now weren't the Middle Ages when 
 one killed a cow because one had to eat : one killed 
 a sheep because the winter was coming when woollens 
 were needed. All Europe needed shoes, saddles, 
 combs, anti-macassars, afghans — what not ? And 
 Europe was a big place, so in bulk they must bellow 
 and bleat and die, and have their hides torn from their 
 pitiful bodies, salted, and chucked in the hold of a 
 ship. 
 
 Of course it must. That was civilization. 
 
 n 
 j 
 
 From long ago, from far away, came the chime of 
 old romance, but very thin, like the note of a warm 
 silver bell, that could not hold its own against this 
 blatancy. Came ancient immortal names — Magellan, 
 that hound of the world, whining fiercely, nosing for 
 openings that he might encircle the globe, he had been 
 up the silver river. Sebastian Cabot, too, the grim 
 marauder, seeking to plunder the slender Indians, 
 he had been here. It was he who had christened the 
 great stream — Rio de la Plata, the river where silver 
 is. And Pedro Gomez, who headed the greatest 
 expedition the Argentine ever saw, and founded and 
 named the city. And fighting Beresford, the British 
 general who took it from Spain, and Whitelock who 
 lost it again . . . Campbell could see his bluff grenadiers, 
 their faces blackened with powder, their backs to the 
 wall, a strange land, a strange enemy, and blessed 
 England so far away . . . And the last of the Spanish 
 viceroys, with a name like an organ peal, Baltazar
 
 188 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 Hidalgo de Cisneros y Latorre — a great gentleman, 
 he had been wounded fighting Nelson off Cape 
 Trafalgar. Campbell could almost see his .white 
 Spanish face, his pointed fingers, his pointed beard, 
 his pontifical walk . . . And of them nothing remained. 
 Nothing of Magellan, nothing of Cabot, nothing of 
 Gomez, nothing of staunch Beresford, or bluff John 
 Whitelock, or of the great hidalgo . . . Stat magni 
 nominis umbra ? . . . No, not even that. The shadows 
 of the great names had gone. The dim chime of a 
 silver bell drowned by the lowing of dying cattle, by 
 the screech of bullock-carts, by the haggling of 
 merchants over the price of hides . . . 
 
 But he could not remain on board ship in port. 
 Ships, he had enough of them ! There was nothing 
 to do but go ashore, landing at high tide at one of 
 the two lugubrious piers, and make his way toward 
 the squares . . . past the blazing water-front where 
 the prostitutes chanted like demented savages, past 
 the saloons where the sailors drank until they dropped 
 or were knifed, or robbed, or crimped. Down the 
 ill-lit streets, which must be trodden carefully, lest 
 one should stumble into a heap of refuse. Down to 
 the Plaza Victoria, with its dim arcades, or to the 25 
 de Mayo, with its cathedral, its stunted paradise 
 trees. And from the houses came shafts of light, 
 and the sound of voices, thump of guitars like little 
 drums, high arguments, shuffle of cards. . . . Dark 
 shadows and lonely immigrants, and the plea of some 
 light woman's bully — " cosa occulta ..." A dim 
 watery moon, the portico of the cathedral, a woman 
 exaggerating her walk. . . . Pah ! . . . immigrants
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 189 
 
 fearful of the coming snow ... A vigilante strutting 
 like a colonel . . . Mournful pampa winds . . . 
 
 The theatres ? Sugary Italian opera ; a stark 
 Spanish drama, too intense for any but Latins, 
 foreign ; debauched vaudeville, incredibly vulgar; 
 or at the concert-hall, sentimental Teutonic and 
 Anglo-Saxon songs, with an audience of grave un- 
 critical exiles — a little pathetic. No ! 
 
 The clubs ? Oh, damn the clubs ! A blaze of light 
 and raucous voices, ships' masters, ships' chandlers, 
 merchants, discussing the riddle of local politics, 
 and the simony of office ; or the price of hides, and 
 freight charges ; how a ship's master could turn a 
 pretty penny in bringing out shoddy clothes, or pianos 
 — " Jesus ! they were crazy for pianos here ! " Rattle 
 of glasses and striking of matches. Bluff, cere- 
 monious salutations. 
 
 " Well, captain, what kind of a trip did you make 
 out ? " 
 
 " Pretty fair, captain." 
 
 " Will you have a little snifter, captain ? " 
 
 " Well, captain, seeing that it's you " 
 
 " Paddy, a little of what ails him for the captain — " 
 
 And after a while the whisky would dissolve the 
 ceremony, and would come nauseating intimacies. 
 
 " We shipped a stewardess in Hull — " or " There 
 was an Irish girl in the steerage, a raving beauty, and 
 when I saw her, I said : Wait. So " 
 
 They were all the same. Give them whisky and 
 time and the talk would come around to easy money 
 and easy women. All were the same, bluff, senti- 
 mental, animal, all but the one or two hawk-eyed, 
 close-lipped men who came and went silently, who
 
 igo THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 drank little and drank by themselves. These men 
 made the really big money, but it wasn't easy ; they 
 took a chance with their lives, smuggling slaves from 
 Africa for the Argentine plantations, or silver from 
 Chile and Peru. But as for the rest, easy money, easy 
 women ! 
 
 Well, what was Campbell fussing about ? Wasn't 
 he too making easy money, bringing agricultural steel 
 and cotton goods here and taking away his tally of 
 hides ? 
 
 And as to easy women, wasn't there Hedda Hagen ? 
 
 § 4 
 
 A ship's master had introduced him to her at a 
 band concert in one of the public squares — a tall 
 Amazonian woman with her hair white as corn, and 
 eyes the strange light blue of ice. Her head was 
 uplifted — a brave woman. The introduction had a 
 smirking ceremony about it that denned Froken 
 Hagen's position as though in so many words. Her 
 bow was as distant to Shane as his salutation was curt 
 to her. Shane was suddenly annoyed. 
 
 The captain of the American boat talked incessantly 
 while the band blared on. Strolling Argentines 
 eyed the woman's blond beauty at a respectful dis- 
 tance. They trotted to and fro. They loped. They 
 postured. She paid no attention. To her they were 
 non-existent. To the American skipper's conversation 
 she replied only with a flicker of the eyelids, a fleeting 
 smile of her lips. Shane she seemed to ignore. She 
 was so clean, so cool, so damnably self-possessed. 
 
 " Froken Hagen," Campbell ventured, " aren't
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 191 
 
 you sick of all this ? Captain Lincoln says you have 
 been here for five years. Aren't you dead tired of 
 it? " 
 
 " No." Her voice was a strong soprano timbre. 
 
 " Don't you want to get back to the North again ? " 
 
 " Often." She had a quiet aloof smile. Some- 
 where was the impression of a gentlewoman. She did 
 not mean to be abrupt. She was just immensely 
 self-possessed. 
 
 It occurred to Shane suddenly that he liked this 
 woman. He liked her dignity, her grave composure. 
 He liked her coolness, her almost Viennese grace. 
 He liked her features ; but for the wideness of her 
 mouth, and the little prominence of chin, she would 
 have been immensely beautiful. Her corn-like hair, 
 massively braided, must be like a mane when down, 
 and beneath her Paris frock he could sense her deep 
 bosom, great marble limbs. Her voice had the cool 
 sweet beauty of Northern winds . . . Her eyes were 
 steady, her chin up-tilted. Somewhere, some time, 
 somehow she had mastered fate. 
 
 About, in the gas-lit square, escorted, guarded, 
 went other women, reputable women. Great raw- 
 boned women, daughters of Irish portenos, with the 
 coarseness of the Irish peasant in their faces, the 
 brogue of the Irish peasant on their Spanish, but 
 punctiliously Castilian as to manners ; gross Teutonic 
 women ; fluffy sentimental Englishwomen, bearing 
 exile bravely, but thinking long for the Surrey 
 downs ; gravid Italian women, clumsy in the body, 
 sweet and wistful in the face ; Argentines, clouded 
 with powder, liquid of eyes, on their lips a soft little 
 down that would in a few years be an abomination
 
 192 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 unto the Lord ; women of mixed breed, with the 
 kink of Africa in their hair, or the golden tint of the 
 Indian in their skin. Good women ! And yet . . . 
 for grace, for coolness, for cleanliness, the venal 
 Swedish girl outshone them all. . . . 
 
 ' Froken Hagen," Campbell said, " may I call on 
 you some time ? " 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " Does that mean you don't want me to come ? " 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 " Mr. Campbell," she laughed gently, " you know 
 very well what I am. If you don't call on me it won't 
 mean anything to me. If you do call I think I'll 
 be rather e;lad. Because on first appearances I 
 like you. But do whatever you like. I have no 
 wiles." 
 
 " Thank God for that ! " 
 
 Lincoln, master of the Katurah Knapp, listened 
 in with a silent chuckle. She was a queer one, 
 Hedda was. And Campbell, he was a queer one, too. 
 Two queer ones together. Hedda was all right, but 
 a man sickened of her quick. She wasn't what you 
 might call warm. No affection ; that's what a 
 man missed far from home, affection. Yes, affection. 
 Hedda had none. She was a fine woman, but she 
 had no affection. He liked to see men get stung. Jn 
 a few days Campbell would be down at the club with a 
 face as long as to-day and to-morrow. He would call 
 for a drink angrily. 
 
 " Well, captain, what's got into you ? You don't 
 look happy." 
 
 And Campbell, like the others, would grumble 
 something about a God damned big Swede.
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 193 
 
 " Hey, what's wrong ? Ain't Hedda treated you 
 right ? " 
 
 " Sure, she treated me right," he would say as 
 the others said, " but God damn! that woman's not 
 human. Take away that rot-gut and gi' me whisky. 
 I got a touch o' chill." 
 
 Lincoln had seen it all before. He liked to see it 
 all the time. He chuckled as Shane turned to him. 
 
 " Lincoln, are you seeing this lady home ? " 
 
 " Not if you want to." 
 
 " I don't want to break up any arrangements of 
 yours." 
 
 " Tell the truth," Lincoln said, " I've got a little 
 party to-night. A party as is a party — Spanish girls, 
 Spanish dancers ... I wish I could take you, but it 
 ain't my party ..." 
 
 " Then I'll see Miss Hagen home." 
 
 Dog-gone, Lincoln would have to go down to the 
 club and tell 'em how Campbell of the Maid of the 
 Isles got stuck with the human iceberg ! 
 
 § 5 
 Without, the west wind had increased suddenly, 
 a cold steady wind, coasting down the Argentine 
 pampas, bending the sparse trees and giant thistle, 
 ruffling the river, shallowing it, until to-morrow many 
 a poor sailorman would regret his optimistic anchorage 
 . . . Shane shivered . . . To-morrow October would be 
 making a din in the streets . . . And the poor skippers 
 fighting their way round the Horn, icy winds and 
 head seas and immense gray dirty-bearded waves . . . 
 To-morrow three men were to be shot in the 25 de 
 
 O
 
 194 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 Mayo for a political offence, and Shane could see 
 them in the bleak dawn, three frightened staunch 
 figures ; the soldiers would be blowing their fingers 
 in the cold air, and their triggers would be like ice to 
 the touch . . . the shoddy tragedy . . . 
 
 But within the room was warm, a little fire of coal 
 in the unusual grate, and the soft and mellow lights 
 of candles, and here and ihere gauchos' blankets on 
 the wall, and here a comfortable chair and there a 
 gleaming table, and brass things . . . clean and ascetic, 
 and yet something womanly about the place, the 
 grace and composition of things . . . And with her 
 coming into her house, Hedda Hagen's manner had 
 changed gently . . . She was no longer frigid, aloof . . . 
 She unbent into calm smiles, and the grace of a 
 hostess of the big world . . . the quiet masonic signal 
 of a certain caste . . . 
 
 " I wonder," he said ; " am I dreaming ? " 
 
 She paused suddenly. She had taken her hat off, 
 and was touching things on the tables with her large 
 fine hands. She turned her head towards him. 
 There was a half smile in her eyes. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " It doesn't seem right." 
 
 " That you never saw me before, that you are here 
 in this house after meeting me half-anhour ago, 
 and that you can stay here the night ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, it's true." 
 
 She was once more the hostess. It was as if some 
 one had sprung nimbly from a little height to the 
 ground.
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 195 
 
 " I can't give you any whisky. But I can make you 
 tea. Or have my maid brew you some coffee." 
 
 " Is that a Russian samovar ? " 
 
 *' Yes." 
 
 " Then I'll have tea." 
 
 So queer ! Without, the wind blustered and the 
 little din of it crept into the room somehow, and 
 within was warmth, and the stillness of still trees. 
 And grace. Beauty moved like an actress on the 
 stage. All her motions were harmonious, could have 
 gone to some music on the violin. Now it was the 
 easy dropping to her knees as she lit the quaint 
 Russian teapot, now an unconscious movement of her 
 hand to push back a braid of her hair, now the firm 
 certain motion of her strong white unringed fingers. 
 Now her large graceful body moved like some heroic 
 statue that had become quick with life. The thought 
 came into his head, somehow, that if he had had a 
 sister he would have liked her to have been like this 
 splendid blond woman. . . . 
 
 Yet into this house, where she had settled like 
 some strange bird in an alien land, came ships' 
 masters, reeking with drink, came merchants with 
 their minds full of buying and selling and all the petty 
 meannesses of trade, came dark Latins who hankered 
 for blond women. . . . 
 
 " God ! I can't understand." 
 
 She came toward him frankly. . . . 
 
 " Amigo mio, have you a right to understand ? " 
 
 1 m sorry. 
 ' No, but — see ! You and I have often met. I 
 mean : there is a plane of us, who must be loyal to 
 one another. You understand. And to you, to one
 
 iq6 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 of us, I don't want to lie. Only certain persons have 
 a right to ask. A father, a mother, a child, a sister 
 or brother or husband. But our destinies touch only, 
 hardly even that. Will never grip, bind. There is 
 no right you have, beyond what — you buy, and there 
 are things — I don't sell." 
 
 ' I'm sorry," Shane turned aside. " I was just 
 carried away. But I should go." 
 
 " Do you want to go ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then stay. Others stay." 
 
 " But " 
 
 ' Are you better than the others ? Think." 
 
 ' No," he thought. " Of course not. Worse 
 perhaps. I know better." 
 
 " You are nearly as honest as I am," she laughed. 
 She put her hand out in a great frank gesture. 
 
 "If I can smile, surely you can." Her fingers 
 beckoned. " Come, don't be silly." 
 
 He caught her hands and laughed with her. He 
 had been acting like a boy in his twenties, and he a 
 man of forty-two . . . 
 
 § 6 
 
 lie 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 
 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
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 197 
 
 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 colour. . . . They 
 had lasted but little and gone as a rainbow goes. . . . 
 With Hedda there was nothing ... it was just 
 abominably wrong . . . 
 
 Here he was, young — for his forty-two he was young 
 — supple, successful in his way, rich if you wanted to 
 put it in that word. And no heart for life ; listless. 
 It was wrong. . . . All he could think of doing was 
 to be intimate with an easy woman. No zest for 
 her great noble frame, her surge of flaxen hair. The 
 veneer of conventional good manners, conventional 
 good taste, only made the actuality of it more appal- 
 ling . . . she with the gifts of life and grace, he 
 with his, and all they could do was be physically 
 intimate. . . . And she took money with a little 
 smile, contemptuous of herself, contemptuous of 
 him . . . They both knew better, yet there you w r ere 
 . . . God ! Even animals had the excuse of nature's 
 indomitable will ! 
 
 Yes, this made him lace things he had been trying 
 to pass casually by. Forty-two, a touch of gray at 
 the temples, a body like a boy's, hooded eyes like a 
 hawk's, and a feeling in him somehow that an organ 
 
 -his heart maybe — was dead : not ailing — just 
 unalive. Once he had zest, and he didn't even have 
 despair now. If he could only have despair . . . 
 
 Despair was healthy. It meant revolt. \ man 
 might sob, gnash his teeth, batter walls with his bare 
 fists, but that only meant he was alive in every fibre, 
 lb: might curse the stars, but he was aware of their 
 brilliance. He might curse the earth that would
 
 198 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 one day take his lifeless body, but he must know its 
 immense fecundity. A man in revolt, in despair, 
 was a healthy man. 
 
 But despair was so futile. Ah, there it was ! 
 Life's futility. It was the sense of that which had 
 eaten him like a vile leprosy. Mental futility, 
 spiritual futility. Of physical he did not know. All 
 that was left him of his youth was a belief in God. 
 At sea he was too close to the immense mechanism 
 of the stars, on land too close to milling millions, not 
 to believe, not to accept him as an incontrovertible 
 fact. 
 
 But the God of degenerate peoples, the antagonistic 
 furious, implacable God — that was a ridiculous con- 
 ception. A cheap, a vain one. " As flies to wanton 
 boys, are we to the gods." Wasn't that how Shakes- 
 peare's blind king had uttered it ? " They kill us for 
 their sport." How strangely flattering — to believe 
 that the Immensity that had conceived and wrought 
 the unbelievable universe should deign to consider 
 man, so weak that a stone, a little slug of lead could 
 kill him, an enemy worth bothering about. Man 
 with his vanity, his broad fallibility, his poor natural 
 functions ! 
 
 And as to the God of the optimists, how ridiculous, 
 too. " The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." 
 So pathetic ! They never saw that they did want. 
 That for every well-filled body there were a hundred 
 haggard men. They thought of him as benevolent, 
 firm but benevolent, like Mr. Gladstone. To them he 
 was an infinitely superior vestryman with a tremend- 
 ous power for dispensing coal and food to the poor. 
 And the poor devils were so patient, so loyal. And
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 199 
 
 so stupid ; they thought that much flattery, much 
 fear, would move Him. Their conception never even 
 rose to considering God as a gentleman, despising 
 flattery and loathing fear. Poor, poor devils ! 
 
 To Shane He existed, though how to think of Him 
 was difficult. Why a man ? Why not some strange 
 thing of the air, as a cuttlefish is of the sea ? Some- 
 thing tenuous, of immense brain power, of immense 
 will. Something cold. But why even that ? Why 
 not, as the cabalists had it, a Figure, arithmetical or 
 geometrical, a Sound. ... A Formula of some 
 great undiscoverable indefinable Thought . . . He 
 was cold, He was efficient. He had so much 
 
 brains 
 
 It seemed to Shane that this optimism, this despair, 
 were strange mental drugs, going through the mental 
 system as a depressant or a stimulant would go 
 through the physical, creating illusions . . . illusions 
 . . . and the sane man was one who had no illusions, 
 not the meaning a man uses of the phrase when he 
 has been jilted by a woman or wronged out of money 
 by a friend, but actually, finitely, no illusions ... He 
 was sane, a few other men in the world must be sane, 
 but the rest were drugged for their hell or their 
 Fiddlers' Green . . . 
 
 Fiddlers' Green I Good God ! Fiddlers' Green ! 
 His mind flashed back a moment to the shining 
 isle, the green sward, the singing waves, the sunlight 
 on the green jalousies, but strangely his mind could 
 see nothing. He could no longer make a picture for 
 himself. Symbols were barren algebraic formulae. 
 Not enchanters' words. No light. No glamour. 
 Only strange sounds reverberating in the gray caverns
 
 200 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 of his head . . . Once in the dead past he could see 
 the Isle of Pipers — no more ! It wasn't his past that 
 was dead. The past lived. It was he was dead, he, 
 his present, his future. 
 
 Out of the gray caverns of his head came a thin 
 echo of a word he had known and he a boy. The 
 Valley of the Black Pig. A phrase from some old 
 folk-tale heard on a wintry Antrim coast. Some 
 prophecy of old wives that when the Boar without 
 Bristles would appear in the Valley of the Black Pig, 
 then the end of all things was nigh. ... He had a 
 faint memory that somewhere in Roscommon was the 
 Valley of the Black Pig . . . But that didn't matter ; 
 what mattered was the memory it evoked . . . Gray 
 gray, gray . . . Gray hills, gray boulders, gray, 
 barren trees, a gray mist sluggishly rising from the 
 ground, and a gray drizzle of rain, falling, so slowly 
 . . . And gray, rotting leaves beneath his feet . . . 
 A little wind that moaned among the boulders, and 
 the cawing of unseen, horrible birds . . . Neither was 
 there direction, nor time, nor space . . . Everything 
 gray like the grayness of old women's bodies. 
 . . . There was no sun, and the moon abhorred 
 the valley. In such a place as this wandered the 
 souls of women who had killed their children, of 
 monks who at dark of night had said the Black Mass 
 . . . Here were masters who had deserted tall, 
 gallant ships . . . Hither witches rode on the bleak 
 east wind, to be flogged by their masters and horribly 
 caressed . . . The Valley of the Black Pig . . . Here 
 were those who had read the frightful inscription on 
 the altar of the Unknown God . . . Gilles de Rais, 
 marshal of France, and Avicenna ; Nicolas Flamel
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 201 
 
 and his wife Petronella ; Lady Alice Kyteler of Kil- 
 kenny, and Gerald of Desmond, the Great Earl ; and 
 newer names, Dee and Edward Kelly . . . Degraded 
 majesty with soiled beards . . . Gray, gray . . . 
 And the faint ghosts in cerecloths, and the horrible 
 shapes of the mist . . . The drizzle of the rain, and 
 the rustle of the Feet of the Goat . . . The cawing of 
 strange birds and the wind among the boulders and 
 souls, weeping, weeping — unhoping, undespairing, 
 weeping, weeping . . . The Valley of the Black 
 Pig. . . . 
 
 What was it ? In God's name what was it that 
 had made him this way, his being suddenly lifeless, 
 like a cow that goes dry, or a field that is mysteriously 
 suddenly fallow . . . And weariness seemed immortal 
 . . . What had led him into this dreadful cemetery 
 of the mind ? Had he gone too far in thought and 
 emotion and come to a dreadful desert plane within 
 himself . . . ? Had he eaten of the tree of which 
 the cabalist wrote : 
 
 Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat ; 
 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, th 
 
 011 
 
 shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eatesl 
 thereof thou shalt surely die. 
 
 Had he blundered on it unwittingly, eaten ignor- 
 antly and surely died ... Or was he going mad ? 
 Good God ! Could that be it ? Was there some- 
 thing they hadn't told him — a strange taint in his 
 blood, or his mother's blood . . . ? Would he end 
 his days in a madhouse . . . ? What a fate, what a 
 dreadful fate ! A slavering, gray-headed man,
 
 202 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 wandering through the Valley of the Black Pig, for 
 ever and for ever ? 
 
 Better to end it now. 
 
 Yes, but would that end it ? The material envelope 
 of cells and fluids gone, might there not . . . ? 
 Christ ! Worse off yet, if anything were left . . . 
 There might be something left; there was the trouble 
 . . . One knew so little, so abominably little . . . 
 Only material wisdom was certain, and that said : 
 Don't chance it . . . 
 
 Drink ? He had his men to think of, his ship . . . 
 It might grip him. 
 
 But was he forever doomed to this mournful, 
 weeping place, place of rain, place of mists, gray 
 boulders, and moaning winds ? Must he abide in 
 the Valley of the Black Pig until the Boar without 
 Bristles came lumbering out of the red west, and 
 went grunting, eating ravenously, eating prey of 
 souls, until he lay down in obscene sleep, and the 
 stars one by one guttered like candles, and the sun 
 shot into a vast explosion, and the moon was a handful 
 of peat ashes, and the whole great universe snapped 
 like a gunshot and the debris of all created things fell 
 downward like a shattered wall, faster, faster, faster, 
 to where, where, where ? 
 
 § 7 
 In the streets now the June snow fell, not the soft 
 and flaky petals of the North, but a bitter steel-like 
 snow, that whirled. And the winds of the pampas 
 hurried like Furies through the sordid streets, and 
 stopped to snarl, as a dog snarls, and now moaned,
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 203 
 
 and now howled sharply, as a wolf howls. There was 
 something cold, malignant, about it all . . . Old 
 Irish writers said that hell was cold. An Ait Fuar, 
 they called it, the Cold Place. Ait gan chu, gan chat, 
 gan leanbh, ait gan ghean, gan ghaire, a place without a 
 dog, or cat, or child, a place without affection or 
 laughter . . . Had sainted Brendan come on Buenos 
 Aires in winter on his voyage to Hy Brazil, and 
 thought in his naivete - that here was hell . . . ? 
 And was he wrong ? 
 
 Cold of wolves ! It must have been like this in 
 undent Paris when Villon thieved and sang, and the 
 wolves came clamouring at the gates . . . and the 
 crusaders off to warm Palestine ... or in Russia — 
 Siberia, a cold name . . . Here it was hell, but in 
 Europe . . . oh, different there ! The heavy flakes, 
 so solid, so wonderful, the laden trees, the great stretch 
 of white. And in the houses the farmers blessing the 
 snow, that would keep the ground warm and fertile 
 for the coming year, that the blue flax might arise, and 
 the fields of corn, with the great pleasance of the 
 clover, and the golden-belted bees . . . and the turf 
 fires of Ulster and Christmas coming, and after that 
 Candlemas, and then March of the plowing, and 
 glossy crows busy in the fields . . . always something 
 to see ahead . . . Not in Ireland only, but England 
 the jingle of bells and the people of ruddy faces . . . 
 And in Germany too, the bluff important burghers 
 having their houses heated by quaint porcelain stoves, 
 huddling themselves in furs, and waddling obesely 
 . . . very pleasant. . . . And in France, too, in the 
 assommoirs, the tang of wine in the air and the blue 
 hue of smoke, excited Latin voices. " Encore un
 
 J04 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 hock ! T'cs saoill, mon vicux ! Flute ! Je suis 
 co»ime le Pont Neuf ! ' A raucous voice singing a 
 political skit : 
 
 Cordieu, Madame! Que faites-vous ici ? 
 Cordieu, Madame ! Que faites-vous ici ! 
 
 Je clause le polka avec tous mes amis ! 
 Je danse le polka avec tous mes amis ! 
 
 Buenos Aires, hell ! 
 
 And the worst was the strange inversion of time. 
 Here winter was, cold streets, steely snow, garbage 
 frozen to stone. . . . And in Europe was sane 
 June. Purple flower of the heather in Ulster, and 
 white flower of the bogs, and in the little bays of 
 Antrim, men spearing flounders from boats in the long 
 summer evenings. And the bairns hame from school 
 with a' their wee games, fishing for sticky-backs wi' 
 pins, and the cummers spinning. Eigh, Ulster ! 
 And in England, they punting on the Thames, among 
 the water-lilies. Soft Norman days, and in Germany 
 the young folks going to the woods ... in Buenos 
 Aires, hell ! 
 
 Within the house a cold that the little fire could 
 only gallantly fight against. Without, cold of wolves. 
 
 ' Hedda, you come from a cold country. Tell me, 
 is it like this in Sweden, any time ? " 
 
 She was sitting in the candle-light, doing the 
 needlework she took such quietness in. Her firm 
 white hands moving rythmically, her body steady, 
 her eyes a-dream. It was hard ever to think that 
 she was — what she was. It was hard for him to 
 think the word now, knowing her. She looked up 
 and smiled.
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 205 
 
 " No, Shane, not like this. It's cold, very cold. 
 But very beautiful. By day the countryside is quiet, 
 white, ascetic, like some young nun. And at night 
 there are lights and jollity. It is like a child's idea 
 of fairyland. One wishes one were further north, 
 where the reindeer are. One is not enemy to the cold, 
 as you are here. One accepts it. It has dignity. 
 Here it is naked, malevolent. That's the difference.'' 
 
 " Naked, with awful hands. ... A cold that 
 seizes ..." 
 
 ' Yes, Shane." She took up her work again. 
 ' Sometimes I think long until I get back to Sweden." 
 
 " You — you are going back ? " 
 
 " Of course, Shane." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " Five, six, seven years, unless I die, or am killed. 
 Certainly I shall go back." 
 
 " Yes, but in five, six — hum ! 
 
 " But what : Shane ? " 
 
 ' I once knew a woman, Hedda. She was — as you 
 are. Just having friends — And she was as hand- 
 some as you are, too, though she didn't have your head, 
 your poise. She liked beauty, as you do. But this 
 woman looked forward, as I don't think you do. She 
 saw herself always going down. She saw herself in 
 the end like the helmet-maker's daughter, in some 
 archway of the city, seeking a couple of pence . . . 
 And she was afraid, horribly afraid . . . 
 
 " She was a silly woman." 
 
 " How, Hedda? " 
 
 ' She didn't know two things. I I1.1t link changes ; 
 destinv is sometimes as kind as it is cruel. And also, 
 whm you are old, the money of the archway will briny
 
 S06 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 you as much joy, a drink, a bed, a meal for the morrow, 
 as do the diamonds of youth. The old don't need 
 much, Shane. They haven't far to go." 
 
 " But you, Hedda. Aren't you afraid of — the 
 archway, and the few pence " 
 
 " No, Shane, that will not be my way." The 
 broidery dropped to her lap. Her eyes, blue as winter, 
 looked away, away. " I shall survive it all, barring 
 death, of course, and in seven, eight, ten years, I 
 shall drop all this and go back, and be a lady in the 
 land of my birth, a quiet, soft-voiced woman in a 
 little house that has glinting brass in winter and 
 flowers around it in summer. And I shall be very 
 kind to the poor, Shane. . . . And all young things 
 that are baffled or hurt can come to me, and tell their 
 troubles, and I shall understand. And oftentimes, 
 sitting in the long Northern twilights, I shall think : 
 I3 this Froken Hagen, who is all the world's friend, 
 the girl who was once despised in Buenos Aires ? . . . 
 And I shall choke a little and think : ' God is good ! ' " 
 
 " You are very sure of yourself, Hedda." 
 
 " Yes, Shane. I know my own capabilities. I 
 know, too, my own limitations. I know I can always 
 be of service. But I know, too, that there will be no 
 love ever for me, nor any little children of my body, 
 nor any big man to protect me and my house ..." 
 
 " This other woman — I killed her to save her from 
 the archway — she dreaded so much ..." 
 
 " You were very silly, Shane," she snipped off a 
 thread with the scissors. " People outgrow fear, and 
 it may only have been a passing mood, that would 
 have gone with the moon or the season. You know 
 very little about women, Shane."
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 207 
 
 He laughed bitterly. " I have been married twice, 
 and once I loved a woman greatly." 
 
 " From what you tell me," her voice was calm, 
 " you have never been married. You made a mistake 
 as a boy. And once again you bought a woman, as 
 you might a fine dog, admired her, as you might 
 admire a fine dog, and gave her a little passion, which 
 comes and goes, knocks, passes on — but no trust. 
 And once you were infatuated with a hysterical 
 woman, and it all ended hysterically. No, Shane. 
 I don't think you know much about women." 
 
 ' You know so many things." He was irritated. 
 ' Perhaps you know what is wrong with me." 
 
 " Of course I do, Shane. Anybody would know. 
 You are so important to yourself. All the world 
 is in relation to you, not you in relation to the world. 
 And people are not very important, Shane ... I 
 know. . . . You look for things. You don't make 
 them. You want everything. You give nothing. 
 You haven't a wife, a house. Your father gave 
 poems. But you haven't a house, a child, a wife, a 
 book. You only have a trading-ship." 
 
 " But I trade. I do my share of the world's work." 
 
 " Any shopkeeper ! '" 
 
 " I handle my ship." 
 
 " Any mathematician ..." 
 
 " I brave all the perils of the sea." 
 
 " Are you afraid of death ? " 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Hedda, I handle men." 
 Any little braggadocio lieutenant ..."
 
 208 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 His anger rose in hot waves. " So I am not worth 
 anything in life, Hedda. How much are you ? " 
 
 " Shane," she stood up and looked at him seri- 
 ously, " my calling is the oldest in the world, they say, 
 but to me it's not the least honourable. It is sordid 
 or not, just as one makes it. I want you to think of 
 men going to sea, and weary of the voyage, and from 
 me somehow they get a glimpse of home. Are this 
 house and myself more evil than the dram-shop and 
 the gambling hell ? And aren't there women in 
 England and France who would rather have their 
 menfolk with me than leaning on some sodden counter? 
 They might hate the choice, but it's better . . . 
 Shane, if you knew how many weary men have talked 
 to me of families abroad, their hearts burdened. 
 They cannot talk to men . . . and sometimes I 
 exorcise devils, Shane, that young girls may walk 
 safely in the dark. . . . And sometimes a man is 
 athirst for a flash of beauty. . . . Think, Shane — 
 you are not small . . . Even yourself, Shane, I have 
 helped you. There were times this month when you 
 were close to the river, terribly, terribly close. ... I 
 said nothing,but I knew. And I held you. I willed. 
 I prayed even . . . Shane, Shane, amigo, when the 
 time came that I had to work I chose this with my 
 eyes open." 
 
 " I'm sorry," Campbell lowered his head. " I 
 can only say I'm sorry I said — hinted . . . But Hedda, 
 weren't there other things you could have done ? " 
 
 " A sempstress, maybe. But I think it's more 
 important to ease a man's mind than to cover his 
 back." 
 
 ' But children. You love children, Hedda. You
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 209 
 
 know so much. Couldn't you have been a governess 
 in some great house ? " 
 
 ' O Shane, Shane mio, when will you understand ? ' ' 
 Her calm voice had a note of distress in it. " None 
 can judge of another's life. None can tell 
 None direct. What do you know of what passed 
 before — I came to a mean house in a mean 
 town ? I once opened a door I shouldn't have, and 
 left the lighted room ... for a warm blue darkness . . . 
 And I closed the door behind me . . . And daylight 
 came. I am not of a breed that sues for mercy. 
 So I went ahead . . . through the world. And I 
 never look back, Shane. I am no Lot's wife, to 
 become a pillar of her own salt tears ..." 
 
 ' But Hedda, you are good. And this life — " 
 
 ' Of course I am good, Shane. There is no man 
 can say I did him wrong in mind or body, or heart, 
 either. And I am a comfort to many . . . All I have 
 done is to outrage a convention of property in which I 
 don't believe . . . Shane, do you know people cover 
 greed with sentimentality and call it virtue ? " 
 
 ' But, Hedda, the women don't see. They scorn 
 you-" 
 
 ' Do they ? Poor souls. Let them ! Amigo mio, 
 I have a life. I have to think, gage, act, concentrate. 
 And when I want time of my own, Shane, I have it. 
 The housewife with her frowsy duties, being kissed 
 perfunctorily on the mat, the man who wears a 
 stilted mask to the world, and before her — lets go . . . 
 Ugh ! And the mondaine with her boredom . . . 
 the hatred in wide houses . . . Oh, I know. Some- 
 times I think it's so wonderful, being free. . . . 
 
 ' O Shane, please don't be absurd, sentimental 
 P
 
 210 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 . . . please, I know my way, and find yours . . . 
 Tell me, do you know yet what day you sail ? " 
 
 §8 
 
 A sailor in a jersey and reefer caught his arm in 
 the Avenida de Mayo . . . 
 
 " All filled up," Campbell uttered brusquely. 
 
 " It was no' that." 
 
 Campbell put his hand in his pocket looking for 
 a coin. 
 
 " You'll be forgetting the Antrim glens, Shane 
 Campbell." Shane flushed. The coin in his fingers 
 burned him. 
 
 " How did I know you were fro' the Antrim glens? " 
 
 " You've seen me a few times, though you'd hardly 
 know me. Simon Fraser of Ballycastle. You would 
 no' recognize me, if you knew me, on account of my 
 hair being white. I was lost on the coast of Borneo 
 for four years. When I was lost my hair was black 
 — maybe a wee sprinkle o' gray — but what you might 
 call black ; and when I was picked up, and saw 
 myself in a looking-glass, it was white. They did 
 no' know me when I got back to Ballycastle." 
 
 " Would you care for a drink, Simon ? " 
 
 " I don't care much either way, Shane Campbell. 
 And if I wanted a drink bad, I always have the silver 
 for 't. I would no' have you think I stopped you for 
 to cadge a drink. I'm no' that kind of man. But I 
 was wi' your uncle Alan when he died. Or to be 
 exact, I saw him just before he died. I was visiting 
 in Cushendun. I have a half-brither there you might 
 know, Tamas McNeil, Red Tarn they ca' him. And
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 211 
 
 whiles I was there, I saw Alan Donn go down." 
 
 " My uncle Alan dead ! Why, man, you're crazy — " 
 
 " You uncle Alan's a dead man." 
 
 " You're mistaken, man. It's someone else." 
 
 " Your uncle Alan's a dead man. And what's 
 more : I have a word from him for ye." 
 
 " But I 'd have heard." 
 
 " I came out in steam. It went against the grain 
 a bit, but I cam' out in steam. From Belfast . . . 
 With a new boat out of Queen's Island . . . Alan Donn's 
 a dead man. That's why I stopped you. For to 
 tell you your uncle Alan's gone . . ." 
 
 ' Come in, here," Shane said dazedly. He pulled 
 the man into a bar, and sat down in a snug. " Tell 
 me. 
 
 ' It was about nine in the morning, and an awful 
 gray day it was, wi' a heavy sea running and a 
 nor'-easter, and this schooner was getting the timbers 
 pounded out o' her. Her upper gear was gone 
 entirely, and we could no' see how she was below, on 
 account of the high seaway. She was a Frenchman, 
 or a Portuguese. And she was gone. And we were 
 all on shore, wondering why she had no' put into 
 Greenock or Stranraer, or what kind of sailors they 
 were at all, at all. 
 
 ' Up comes your uncle Alan ; and he says : ' Has 
 anybody put out to give those poor bastards a hand ? ' 
 says he. 
 
 'There's no chance, Alan Donn,' says we. 
 
 " And he says : ' How the hell do you know ? ' 
 says he. 
 
 ' And we say : ' Can't you see for yourself Alan 
 Donn, wi' the sea that's in it, and the wind that's in
 
 212 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 it, and the currents, there's no chance to help them ? ' 
 
 " ' So you're not going,' says he." 
 ' Och, Alan Donn, have sense,' says we. 
 
 ' ' If you aren't, then by Jesus, I am.' 
 
 ' He turned to one of the men there, a fisherman 
 by the name of Rafferty, and he says : " Hnghic, 
 get ready that wee boat o' yours, wi' the spitfire 
 foresail, and the wee trisail.' 
 
 Then we said : You're not going, Alan Donn.' 
 Who's to stop me ? ' says he. All this time we 
 had to shout on account of the great wind was in it. 
 ' We think too much of you, Alan Donn, to let 
 you go.' 
 
 " ' If one o' you stinking badgers lays a finger on 
 me to stop me, I'll break his God damned neck.' 
 
 " Says Hughie Rafferty to us — you know Hughie 
 Rafferty, a silent man, a wise man — says he : ' He'll 
 get out fifty yards, a hundred yards from shore and 
 be stuck. And he'll say : " Well, I've done my best. 
 ' iood-bye and to hell with ye, and die like men ! 
 And he'll come back. And if the boat turns over,' 
 says Hughie Rafterty, ' he can swim like a rat, and 
 he'll be back among us cursing, like his ain kind sel', 
 within a wheen o' minutes.' 
 
 ' Says Hughie Rafferty, says he : 'I'll go wi' your 
 Honor's Lordship, Alan Donn.' 
 
 " ' You will like hell,' says Alan Donn. ' You'll 
 stay here wi' your childer and the mother o' your 
 childer.' 
 
 " Then a wee old man, that was a piper, speaks up. 
 He was bent in two over an ash plant was in his righi 
 hand, and his left hand held his back. 
 
 it's a foolish thing you are doing, Alan Donn,'
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 213 
 
 says he. ' How can you bring oft' the poor people ? ' " 
 
 " * I don't want to bring off the poor people, 
 Shamus-a-Feeba, James of the Pipes. But there's 
 not a rock, a wind, a current, a wave itself of Strath fia 
 Maoile that I don't know. I'm figuring on rigging up 
 some kind of sea-anchor,' says Alan Donn, says he, 
 ' and getting the ignorant foreigners to chop their 
 gear overboard, and riding the storm out. Don't 
 worry yourself, Shamus-a-Feeba.' 
 
 " That was the way of your uncle, Alan Donn 
 Campbell. Ho was very rough with the strong, but 
 he was ay considerate of the old and over-young. 
 He'd be rough with the king of England but he'd be 
 awfu' polite to an ould man." 
 
 " God, is Alan Donn dead ? ' Shane was near 
 tears. " Do people like Alan Donn die ? " 
 
 " Aye, they die, too," said Simon Fraser. " And 
 rogues live. It's queer. 
 
 "The boat was a'ready to be put into the sea, 
 when your uncle sees mysel' on the edge o' the 
 gathering. He comes straight to me. You mind 
 how Alan Donn used to go through a crowd. 
 
 " ' Are you the sailing man,' says he, ' wha's a 
 half-brithcr to Red Tarn McNeil of the Ten Acre ? ' 
 
 " ' I am, sir, Alan Donn.' 
 
 " ' Is it go wi' ye in the boat ? ' says I. ' I'll go.' 
 
 " ' No, no,' quo' he. ' It's no' that. So'thin' 
 different. You ken my blither's son, Shane Oge 
 < ampbell, wha's a master on the seas ? 
 
 " ' 1 've in< t him once or twice, and I've heard tell.' 
 
 " ' If you Bee him, gi'e him ;i message. I'm sure 
 you'll sec him. I'm sure,' says Alan Donn, 'this 
 morn I'm fey.'
 
 214 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " ' Tell him,' says Alan Donn, and he puts his 
 hand on my shoulder. ' Tell him this : I've been 
 intending to write him long this long time. There's 
 a thought in my head,' says he, ' that all's not well 
 with him.' 
 
 " ' Tell him this : I've been thinking and I've 
 thought : There's great virtue to the place you're 
 born in. Tell him he ought no' stay so long frae the 
 braes o' Ulster. Tell him : The sea's not good for 
 the head. A man's alone wi' himself too long, wi' his 
 ain heid. Tell him that's not good. 
 
 " ' Tell him,' says he, ' there's great virtue and 
 grand soothin' to the yellow whins and the purple 
 heather. That's a deep fey thing. Tell him to try.' 
 
 " ' Is that all, sir, Alan Donn,' says I ? 
 
 " ' You might tell him,' says he, ' aye, you might 
 tell him : Your uncle Alan was not a coward, and 
 he was a wise man.' 
 
 " At that I was puzzled — I tell you without offence 
 meant — it sounded like boasting. And it was no' 
 like Alan Donn to boast. 
 
 " ' Can I come along wi' you, sir, Alan Donn ? ' 
 says I. 
 
 " With that he gi'es me a look would knock you 
 down. ' Did na I tell you to do so'thin' for me ? ' 
 says he. 
 
 " Then I kent he was na coming back. 
 
 " ' Aye, aye, sir,' said I. 
 
 " He goes to the boat on the edge of the water. 
 You could hardly keep your footing with the wind, 
 not hear your neighbour with the sea. And Alan 
 Donn laughs : ' By Christ, 'tis myself that must be 
 fond o' boating,' says he. ' And to-day is the grand
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 215 
 
 day for it, surely. Hi horo, push her off,' says he. 
 ' Horo eile ! Horo, heroes, horo eile ! ' We pushed 
 with the water up to our waists. The keel ground. 
 The sand sucked. We pushed with the water up to 
 our shoulders. Then the trisail caught the wind. 
 And Alan Donn was off. 
 
 " And Hughie Rafferty was wrong : Not at fifty, 
 not at a hundred did he turn. Not at half-a-mile. 
 He must have had the arms of Finn McCool, Alan 
 Donn, and the hands of a woman. He'd take the 
 high waves like a hunter taking a wall. Then you 
 could nearly feel him easing her to the pitch. Apart 
 from the waves themselves you could see the wee 
 fountain of water when the bows slapped. Then he'd 
 come up again. The trisail would belly and again he'd 
 dive. 
 
 " And then he came to the ninth wave — tonn a' 
 bhaidhte, the drowning wave. Even away off you 
 could see it rise like a wall, and curl at the top. We 
 were watching. There was the crippled schooner, 
 and Alan Donn, and the great sea. And the wave 
 curled and broke. And then was only the schooner 
 and the great sea . . . 
 
 ' And we waited for a minute, although we knew 
 there was no call. 
 
 ' And after a while an ould one falls to her knees 
 and raises the keening cry : 
 
 ' Mavrone ! my sorrow I Mavrone dhu ! my 
 black sorrow ! Mo chead vrone dhu ! my hundred 
 black sorrows. 
 
 " ' Is it gone you are, Alan Donn ? Is it gone you 
 are in the cruel sea ? My black curse on it. It is 
 between you and the people of your heart, between
 
 2i6 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 \ on and the land of your desire. Och, sea, isn't it 
 cruel you are ? Ruined Ireland is this day. The star 
 of Ulster is out. And the little moon of Antrim shines 
 no more. Och, a'airrge ! My sorrow, O sea ! 
 
 " ' Who will be good to us, now, Alan Donn ? 
 You were good to the poor. God's gain and our loss. 
 Who will make the young maids flush, and the 
 young men throw back their shoulders, from pride 
 at your having talked to them ? Avourneen dheelish, 
 mum Alan Donn, our Alan ! Who will make the 
 men of the South stand back, and you not striding 
 through a gathering, ever, any more ? And the 
 dealing men of Scotland will miss you, you they could 
 never get the better of in any fair, night, noon or 
 morning. Peader agas Pol, Muire, Padraig agas 
 Brighid ! Peter and Paul, Mary, Patrick and St. 
 Bride, let you be coming quickly now, and take up 
 Alan Donn Campbell from the cold sea ! 
 
 " ' Your horse in the stable will miss you, Alan 
 Donn. Poor beastie, he'll miss you sore. Your 
 servant boys will miss you, they that would jump 
 if you but dropped your pipe. The green fairways 
 of Scotland will miss you when spring comes, and 
 you not hitting the ball against the champions of 
 the world. The lambs will miss you, wee lambs of 
 the fields, and the colts. They'll be missing you, 
 but 't will be nothing to our missing you. This 
 night your dogs will be crying, and we'll be crying 
 too. 
 
 " ' Young women, look back of you, and see if 
 the nine glens of Antrim are there. I wouldn't be 
 surprised if they were gone, now Alan Donn's in the 
 bitter sea.'
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 217 
 
 " Then up comes this woman, and she had a great 
 cloak on — *-" 
 
 " What woman, Simon Fraser ? " 
 
 " The woman there was talk of Alan Donn marrying. 
 The woman from over the sea." 
 
 ' ' Has anybody seen Mr. Campbell ? ' And we 
 don't understand. 
 
 " It's Alan Donn she means,' says Hughie Rafferty. 
 
 ' Then the ould one on her knees takes up her 
 keening. And this woman understands. Her face 
 goes white. She sees the schooner being battered 
 by the Moyle. 
 
 " ' Did he go out to that ? ' she asks. 
 
 " ' Yes, ma'am, your Ladyship's Honour.' 
 
 " ' He didn't get there ? ' 
 
 " ' The drowning wave caught Alan Donn,' says 
 Hughie Rafferty. 
 
 ' For a moment you'd think she hadn't heard. 
 Then — a strange thing — a wee smile came on her 
 face, and suddenly it changed to a queer twist, all 
 over the face of her. Then she stood up proudly 
 and looked out to sea. . . . and two tears came to the 
 eyes of her and she raised her head higher still . . . 
 The tears came in spite of her . . . and suddenly she 
 gave a wee gulp like a person who's sick . . . And she 
 turned and began to stumble away in the sand . . . 
 A couple of the young ones went as if to help her, but 
 she turned. 
 
 ' Please,' was all she said. And she went off on 
 her lee lone. 
 
 " And then says Hughie Rafferty : ' The tide will 
 bring him to Cushendall.' 
 
 ' And at Cushendall next day we found the corp.
 
 218 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 There wasn't a mark on him. Even the things of the 
 deep water had respect for Alan Donn." 
 
 " What was this woman like, Simon Fraser ? 
 This women there was talk of Alan Donn marrying ? " 
 
 " This woman was not a woman of Alan Donn's 
 age. An' she was not a young woman. Her face 
 was showing not the face of a girl but the face of 
 herself. She had a proud face and a brave face. 
 This woman would be around twenty-five. 
 
 " She was a brown woman : she had brown eyes 
 and brown hair. She was not an Irishwoman. She 
 was an Englishwoman. She had no Gaelic. And her 
 English was not our English. This woman could 
 ride a horse, though not too well. She would put a 
 horse at a jump, though she was af eared of it. 
 
 " This woman had money. She was a niece of 
 the admiral's, and she was on a long visit to the 
 admiral's house. 
 
 " I've heard tell a queer thing about this woman. 
 She would play at the piano for hours on a stretch, 
 reading from a book. For hours she would play, all 
 by herself. The people passing the road and the 
 servant girls of the house couldn't make head or tail 
 of her music. But our folk ken nothing of the piano. 
 The pipes, the melodeon, the fiddle, they know that — 
 and a few ould ones have heard the harp. They 
 couldn't tell whether it was good music or bad music 
 was in it. 
 
 " There's another queer thing about this woman. 
 When she walked you'd think she was dancing. Not 
 our reels or hornpipes, but queer ould dances you'd 
 be walking to, not stepping. She had wee feet, 
 though she was not a small woman.
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 219 
 
 " Your uncle Alan's dogs took to this woman, and 
 you ken how Alan's terriers had little liking for any 
 but his ain sel'. I was told also to tell you that 
 she had the dogs, and that they were comfortable, 
 and would be well looked after. So that you need 
 not be worritin' about your uncle Alan's dogs . . . 
 
 " I'm afeared I've given you a poor picture of this 
 woman, Shane Campbell : but it's a queer thing, 
 you'd feel this woman more nor you'd see her. In a 
 great deal of people, you wouldn't note her at all. 
 But were you coming along the road, and a fey feeling 
 come over you, and you say : Around the next corner 
 is something kindly, something brave, something 
 fine ; as you turned the corner you'd meet this 
 woman. 
 
 " Your uncle Alan liked this woman, liked her fine, 
 but this woman was sick with love for your Uncle 
 Alan. 
 
 ' You'll blame me sore, Shane Campbell, and rightly 
 too ; it was very careless of me, me who's got a careful 
 name — it didn't seem to matter, though ! The name 
 of this woman is not at me . . ." 
 
 All the tears in Shane's eyes, all the emptiness in 
 his heart was gone now. A sudden elation seized 
 him. He understood. Alan Donn had done a fine 
 brave thing ; Alan Donn had done the strong thing, 
 the right thing, as Alan always did. 
 
 He thought : Alan was in love with this woman 
 and this woman with Alan, and Alan had looked 
 ahead sanely, seen, decided. Many years difference 
 of age. 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
 
 220 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 mate. Youth spiritual is like a gosling of yellow 
 down, age spiritual is an eagle of great wings. ... Tf 
 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 ! " He had given her no 
 shattered marriage, no empty explanation that breeds 
 only bitterness and perhaps contempt. He had given 
 her a very gallant memory that would exalt her in 
 the coming days . . . The world, the flesh, and the 
 devil had played at cards with Alan Donn, and Alan 
 had won . . . 
 
 He thought : Were it I now, I should have drifted 
 into this, and come to ancient tortured days, and not 
 having strength maybe, should have ended, not 
 before as Alan Donn did, gallantly, but afterward 
 meanly, leaving bitterness and desolation ... Ah, 
 wise Alan. 
 
 And it occurred to him suddenly, wise Alan, fey 
 on the threshold of death, remembering him : There 
 is virtue in the yellow gorse of Ulster, in the purple 
 Ulster heather. Come back to where you were born, 
 and rest, and get strength . . . This is a deep thing . . . 
 Alan knew something. . . . The rain and the mist 
 and the wind among the rushes had taught him natural 
 secrets . . . maybe from the ground man drew 
 strength, and maybe strange ground was alien to 
 other than its own ... a motherland — why did they 
 call a place a motherland . . . ? Antaeus, the 
 Libyan wrestler, was invincible so long as his feet
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 221 
 
 were on mother earth, and Heracles had lifted him 
 into the air and the air had crushed him . . . What 
 did the Greek parable mean . . . ? It meant some- 
 thing . . . the purple hills . . . the purple heather 
 . . . The Moyle purple in the setting sun . . . 
 
 " I'll go back," he decided. Scots superstition 
 welled up in him. " A man seeing death sees more 
 than death. Sees life. The Keepers of the Door 
 maybe anoint his eyes, and if he looks back for an 
 instant, God knows what he sees . . . I'll go." 
 
 ' Can I give you a lift back to Ballycastle, Simon 
 Fraser ? Or a lift anywhere you want. It's the 
 least I can do and you coming this long way to tell 
 me news." 
 
 " I'm very thankful to you, Shane Campbell 
 very thankful indeed. It's just the way of you to 
 ask a poor sailor man does he want a lift half-way 
 across the world. But I'll never again see Ballycastle 
 with living eyes." 
 
 " And why not, man Simon ? 
 
 " It's this way, Shane Campbell. It's this way. 
 When I came back after six years — four years lost on 
 the coast of Borneo — my three fine sons were gone — 
 twenty and nineteen and seventeen they were. 
 Gone they were following the trade of the sea. And 
 herself the woman of the house was gone, too. I 
 didn't mind the childer, for 'tis the way of the young 
 to be roving. But herself went oil with another man. 
 A great gift of making a home she had, so thore was 
 many would have her in spite of her forty year. Into 
 1 he dim City of Glasgow she went, and there was no 
 word of her. And she might have waded, Shane 
 Campbell ; she might so. Four years lost on the
 
 222 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 coast of Borneo to come and find your childer scattered 
 and your wife putting shame on you. That's a hard 
 thing." 
 
 " You're a young man, Simon Fraser. You're as 
 young as I am, forty-two. 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 three braw bairns. And maybe I'll come across 
 one of them on the waterfront, and him needing me 
 most. . . . And maybe I'll sign articles wi' the one 
 aboard the same ship, and it's the grand cracks we'll 
 have in the horse latitudes ... Or maybe I'll find 
 one of them a young buck officer aboard a ship I'm 
 on ; and he'll come for'a'd and say : ' Lay aloft, old- 
 timer, with the rest and be pretty God damned quick 
 about it.' And I'll say : ' Aye, aye, sir.' And 
 thinks : Wait till you get ashore, and I'll tell you who 
 I am, and give you a tip about your seamanship, 
 too, my grand young fello' . . . Life has queerer 
 things nor that, Shane Oge, as may be you know . . .
 
 VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 223 
 
 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 nobody '11 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 mudd}' waves of the river. Around the 
 floating camelotes, 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
 
 224 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 yearn- 
 ing came on him to have it out of sight . . . definitely, 
 for ever. Once it was gone, he would know for a 
 certain thing, he was free. . . . Free from the Valley 
 of the Black Pig. . . . 
 
 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 cere- 
 cloth, binding all as chains bind . . . and that he 
 must remain with the weeping population, until the 
 Boar without Bristles came . . . for ever and for 
 ever and for ever. . . . 
 
 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 
 — Umbo and tipa and palo barracho.
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 225 
 
 He stood aft of the steersman, and suddenly raised 
 his head. 
 
 Mo mhallacht go deo leaf, a bhaile nan gcrann ! 
 'S mo shlan do gach baile raibh mi riamh ann. 
 
 ' My curse for ever 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 iomadh bealach flinch 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 damned wheel," Shane warned. " This 
 is a ship, not a poetry society. Look at the way you're 
 letting her come up, you Highland bastard. Keep 
 her off — and lam her ! " 
 
 ' Lam her it is, sir," the steersman grinned. . . .
 
 BOOK SIX 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 
 § I 
 
 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 grass 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 moun- 
 tain 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 
 
 229
 
 230 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 — God rest his soul ! — had puzzled 
 over the round towers of Ireland and written his 
 monograph on the Phoenician 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 worship 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 needle- 
 work of his mother, the precise, beautiful broidery 
 ... so like herself, minute, mathematical, not signi- 
 ficant . . . 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 shipyard, 
 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
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 231 
 
 duty was done . . . But there was something, some- 
 thing 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 sally 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 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, that 
 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 ! not enough ! 
 
 And so he came back to the peace and pleasure of 
 the glens, the purple heather, and the red berries, the 
 chink of pebbles on the strand. To the hunts on
 
 232 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 frosty mornings, to the salmon-fishing, 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 shiver of panic. Nothing ! 
 
 He had no right, no title 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. . . . 
 
 Because Shane had hated to see the fine boat drawn 
 up, he had put Righ nam Bradan, the Salmon King, 
 Alan Donn's great thirty-footer, into commission, and 
 raced her at Ballycastle and Kingstown, losing both 
 times. He had ascribed it to sailing luck, the dying 
 of a breeze, the setting of a tide, a lucky tack of an 
 opposing boat. But at Cowes he should have won. 
 Everything was with him. He came in fifth. 
 
 " I can't understand," he told one of Alan's old 
 crew. 
 
 " Man," the Antrim sailor told him bluntly, " ye 
 have na' the gift "
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 233 
 
 " But, Feardoracha, I'm a sailor." 
 ' Aye, Shane Campbell, you're that. For five 
 times seven years you've sailed the seven seas. But 
 for racing ye have na' the gift. Alan Donn had it. 
 And 't was Alan Donn had the gift for the golf, and 
 the gift for the horses. Just the gift. You must not 
 blame yourself, Shane na fairrge, there's few Alan 
 Donns." 
 
 And thinking to himself in the lamp-lit room, Shane 
 found what the old man meant. Beneath the 
 bronzed face, the roaring manner of Alan Donn, there 
 was a secret of alchemy. Rhythm, and concentration 
 like white fire. To the most acute tick of the stars 
 he could get a boat over the line with the gun. Some- 
 thing told him where breezes were. By will-power he 
 forced out the knowledge of a better tack. As to 
 horses, where was his equal at putting one over a 
 jump. At the exact hair's-breadth of time, he had 
 changed from human being to spirit. It was no 
 longer Alan Donn and his horse when he dropped his 
 hands on the neck. There was fusion. A centaur 
 sprang. ... On the links he remembered him, the 
 smiling mask, the stance, the waggle, the white ball. 
 The face set, the eyes gleamed . . . the terrific, exact 
 explosion. . . . Not a man and a stick and a piece of 
 guttapercha, but the mind and will performing a 
 miracle with matter. . . . And Alan Donn was dead 
 bix years . . . and yet he lived. . . . 
 
 He lived because he had been of great use. He 
 was a standard, a great ideal. Children who had seen 
 him would remember him for ever, and seek to 
 emulate the fire and strength of him, having him to 
 measure by as the mariner lias the star. ... In
 
 234 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 foreign countries they would tell tales of him : There 
 was once a great sportsman in the North of Ireland, 
 Alan Donn Campbell by name. . . . 
 
 His father, too, who had been dead so long — 
 mortality had not conquered him. Once in Bally- 
 castle Shane had seen a shawled girl look out to sea 
 with great staring eyes and a wry mouth, and, half 
 whispered, staccato, not quite sung, her fingers 
 twisting her shawl, came a song from her white 
 mouth : 
 
 Tiocfaidh an samhradh agas fasfaidh an fear ; 
 
 Agus tiocfaidh an duilleabhar glas do bharr nan gcraobh. 
 
 Tiocfaidh mo chead gradhalc banaghadh an lae, 
 
 Agas bvailfidh se port ciuin le cumhaidh 'mo dhiaidh. 
 
 The summer will come, and the little grass will grow ; 
 And there will come a green thickness to the tops of the 
 
 trees. 
 And my hundred loves will arise with the dawning of 
 
 the day, 
 And he will strike a soft tune out of loneliness after me. 
 
 A queer stitch came in Shane's heart — a song his 
 father made ! And following the stitch came a surge 
 of pride. Those songs of his father ! The light 
 minor he had heard, and the others — the surge of An 
 Oig-bhean Ruadh, the Pretty Red Maiden : 
 
 " Se do bheatha is antir seo. . . . A welcome before 
 you into this country, O sea-gull, more lovely than 
 the queen, than the woman of the West, whom Naesi, 
 son of Usnach, held in the harbour. I could destroy 
 all Ireland, as far as the Southern sea, but in the end 
 I would be destroyed myself, when my eyes would 
 alight on the white swan with the golden crown. . . .
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 235 
 
 Or the despairing cry of his poem, Ig Cathair nan g 
 Ceo : "In the City of Fogs " — he meant London — 
 
 " A athair nan gras tabhair spas on eag domh — O 
 Father of the Graces, give me a little respite from death. 
 Let the axe not yet strike my forehead, the way a 
 goat or a pig or a sheep is slain, until I make my 
 humility and my last repentance." 
 
 Shane wished to God he had known his father, that 
 the man had been spared a little until he could have 
 loved him. . . . He had only the picture of him 
 left. . . . Great throat and pale, liquor-harried face, 
 burning eyes, and black tossing hair. . . . The bald- 
 headed bankers might shake their heads and say : 
 He was no good ... he was a rake ... he drank 
 ... his relations with women were not reputable. . . . 
 And old maids purse their thin-blooded lips. . . . 
 But when the little money of the bankers was scattered 
 through the world, and even their little chapels had 
 forgotten them, and the stiff bones of old maids were 
 crumbling into an unnecessary dust, his father's songs 
 would be sung in Ireland, in Man, in the Scottish 
 Highlands, in the battered Hebrides. So long as 
 sweet Gaelic was spoken and men's hearts surged 
 with feeling, there would be a song of his father's to 
 translate the effervescence into words of cadenced 
 beauty ... he had an irreverent vision of God 
 smiling and talking comfortably to his father while 
 the bald-headed bankers cooled their fat heels and 
 glared at one another outside the picket-gates of 
 heaven. . . . The world had gained something with 
 the last Gaelic bard. . . . 
 
 And he had found out too, that his other uncle, 
 Robin More, had a great importance in a certain circle.
 
 236 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 In Dublin he met an old professor, a Jesuit priest, 
 who seemed intensely excited that a nephew of Robin 
 More Campbell's should be present. 
 
 " Do you know, by any chance, what your uncle 
 was working on when he died ? " 
 
 "I'm afraid I do not, sir." 
 
 " You know his manuscripts." 
 
 " Just casually, sentimentally." 
 
 " You don't know much about your uncle's work, 
 then ? " 
 
 " Not very much." 
 
 " Did you know," the old priest said — and his 
 urbanity disappeared ; there was pique in his tones — 
 " that your uncle was the man who definitely decided 
 for us that the Highlanders of Scotland migrated from 
 Ireland to Scotland ? Did you know that ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I did not." 
 
 " I don't suppose," the old man was sarcastic, 
 " that seems important to you." 
 
 " To confess, Dr. Hegan, it does not. Is it ? " 
 ' My child," the old priest smiled — it was so queer 
 to be called " my child " at forty-seven — " all know- 
 ledge is important. All details of knowledge. We 
 come we know not whence, and we go we hope we 
 know whither. Our history, our motives, our all, is 
 vague. All we have is faith, a great broad river, but 
 knowledge is the little piers. ..." 
 
 The\r had all been significant : Alan Donn, his 
 father, even Uncle Robin, whom he had thought only 
 a bookworm in the fading sunshine. The world was 
 better, more mature, for their having lived. . . . 
 
 And he had nothing. Here he was, drawing on to 
 fifty, close on forty-eight. And he had done, achieved
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 237 
 
 nothing. He had no wife, no child ; had achieved 
 no valorous, unselfish deed. Had not — not even — 
 not even a little song. . . . 
 
 § 3 
 
 And then he said to himself : " I am too sensitive. 
 I have always been too sensitive. The stature of 
 my family has dwarfed me in my own esteem. Have 
 not I got as much right as others to the quiet of 
 the glens ? ' And again he said : " I sit here and 
 I think. And my thoughts grow into a maze. 
 And I wander in it, as a man might wander through 
 some old gardener's fancy, having stumbled on it 
 inadvertently, and now being in it, now knowing 
 the secret of exit." But a maze was non-existent, 
 did a person regard it so, and if one were to walk on 
 nonchalantly a little turn would come, and he find 
 himself in the wide sunshine and smiling flowers. 
 And he said : " Damn the subtleties ! A person is 
 born, lives, dies. And what he does is a matter for 
 himself alone." But some inner antagonist said : 
 " You are wrong." 
 
 And he said : " Look at the people around me. 
 What more right have they than I to this quiet Ulster 
 dusk ? " And the antagonist smiled : " Well look." 
 
 First were the farmers and the fisherfolk. Well, 
 they didn't count. The} 7 were natural to the soil, 
 as grass was. They grew there, as the white bog 
 flower grew. An institution of God, like rain. And 
 then there were the summer visitors, honest folk from 
 the cities. Well, they had a right. They spent their 
 winters and autumns and springs in mills and count-
 
 238 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 ing-houses, clearing away the commercial garbage 
 of the world. And when the graciousness of summer 
 came, they emerged, blind as moles, peak-faced. 
 And before them stretched the Moyle, a blue miracle. 
 The crisp heather, the thick rushes, the yellow of the 
 buttercups, the black bog waters. And when clouds 
 came before the sun the mountains drew great purple 
 cloths over them. And in the twilight the cricket 
 chirruped. And at night the plover cried out against 
 the vast silence of the moon. And the hearts of the 
 selling people turned from thoughts of who owed 
 them money and who was harrying them for money. 
 And the tight souls opened, just a little perhaps, but 
 even that — Poor garbage men of the world, who 
 would begrudge them a little beauty ? 
 
 Then there were the country people, the landlords, 
 the owners of the soil. Red-faced, sportsmen, con- 
 noisseurs of cattle, a sort of super-farmer, they were 
 as natural to the soil as the fisher-folk or the tillers. 
 Their stock remained from ancient tides of battle, 
 centuries before. The founders of the families had 
 been Norman barons, Highland chiefs, English squires; 
 but the blood had adapted itself, as a plant adapts 
 itself in a strange country. And now they were Ulster 
 squires. Smiling, shy, independent. They had a 
 great feeling for a horse, and a powerful sense of fair 
 play. They were very honest folk. A station had 
 been set them and they lived in it, honestly, uncom- 
 plainingly, quite happily. But a meadow was a 
 piece of land to them and a river a place where trout 
 could be caught, and snow was a good thing, because 
 it kept the ground warm. They were a folk whom
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 239 
 
 Shane respected a great deal, and who respected him 
 — but they weren't his folk. 
 
 Above all these of his neighbours towered three 
 figures, and the first of these was the admiral. 
 
 He had a name. He had a title, too — Baron 
 Fraser of Onabega. But to everybody he was the 
 admiral, and in speech plain " sir." A purple-faced 
 and terrible old man, with bushy white eyebrows and 
 eagle's eyes. Very tall, four inches over six feet, 
 very erect for all his ninety years, with his presence 
 there thundered the guns of Drake, there came to 
 the mind the slash of old Benbow ... He had been a 
 midshipman with Nelson at Cape Trafalgar. 
 
 Silent and fierce, about his head clouds of majesty, 
 all his life had been spent with pursed lips and 
 hooded eyes, keeping watch for England . . . And 
 never a great battle where he could prove himself 
 the peer of Benbow and Drake and Nelson . . . Never 
 a dawn when the fleet rolled down to battle with 
 polished guns and whipping flags . . . And a day came 
 when he was too old . . . So here he was in the Antrim 
 glens . . . 
 
 A great life, his, a great and serviceable life, 
 frustrated of glory . . . And well he deserved the quiet 
 of Ulster, where he sat and wrote his long letters to 
 archaeological papers, proving, he thought, that the 
 Irish were a lost tribe of Israel and that the Ark of the 
 Covenant was buried on Tara Hill . . . And there were 
 none to laugh at him ... All spirit he was ; watchful, 
 dogged, indomitable spirit with a little husk of body 
 . . . Soon, as he had directed, his old bearded sailormen 
 would take his flag-covered casket out to sea in the
 
 2 4 o THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 night, and the guns would thunder : A British admiral 
 sails by . . . 
 
 And there was Simon Fowler in his little cottage, 
 who was dying by inches from some tropical malady 
 ... A small chunky man with white hair and wide 
 blue eyes ... He had been a missionary in Africa, 
 in China, in India — not the missionary of sentimental 
 books, but a prophet whose calm voice, whose in- 
 trepid eyes, had gained him a hearing everywhere . . . 
 " Put fear away," he had preached in Africa ; " let 
 darkness flee. I come to tell of the light of the world 
 . . . After me will come the sellers of gin and of guns. 
 But I shall give you a great magic against them . . . 
 Little children, love one another ..." In China his 
 fire had shamed philosophers : "I know your alms- 
 giving. I know your benevolence. It is selfishness. 
 Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
 though I deliver my body to be burned, and have not 
 charity, it profiteth me nothing. Unless ye become 
 as little children ..." And in the sensuous Indian 
 lands, his voice rose in a great shout : " Subtle 
 Greece is dead," he proclaimed, " and razed are the 
 fanes of Ephesus. And the Unknown God slinks only 
 through the midnight streets ... ' Blessed are the 
 pure in heart ' ..." He had gone like a flame through 
 the pagan places of the world, and here he was dying 
 in the Antrim glens, with the quiet of Christ about 
 him, the droning of God's little bees, and the lowing 
 of the cattle of Bethlehem ... He was a great man. 
 He had only one contempt : for hired clergymen. 
 
 There were three folk of heroic stature around him : 
 the admiral, and Simon Fowler, and the woman of 
 Tusa hErin.
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 241 
 
 § 4 
 
 A very small townland is Tusa hErin, the smallest 
 in Ireland, it is said. And a very strange name on it : 
 Tusa hErin, the beginning of Ireland. Why it is so 
 called, none know. Possibly because some High- 
 landers named it this on landing there. Probably be- 
 cause it was a division between the Scottish and Irish 
 clans. So it was called when the Bruce fled to Ire- 
 land. So it is called to this day. 
 
 Twenty acres or so are in it — a wind and sea lashed 
 little estate, a great gray house and a garden of yew- 
 trees. For ten years it had been untenanted, until 
 a Miss O'Malley had bought it, and opened the great 
 oak doors, and let the sea-air blow through the 
 windows of it, and clipped the garden of the yews. 
 The country people knew little of her, except that she 
 had a great reserve. To the glensmen she was Bean 
 Tusig Erin, the woman of Tusa hErin. 
 
 " What kind of a person is she ? " Shane asked. 
 
 " A strange woman is in it, your Honour ; a strange 
 and dark woman." 
 
 " An old lady ? " 
 
 " If she was one of us, she would be an old woman, 
 your Honour, what with the bitter work and the 
 hard ways. But being what she is, she is a young 
 woman, your Honour. I heard tell she said she was 
 thirty-four." 
 
 " Is she good-looking ? " 
 
 " Well, now, your Honour, that would surely be a 
 hard thing to say. A great dark face she has on her, 
 and her head high, the like of a grand horse. Barring 
 her eyes, you might call her a fine woman." 
 
 R
 
 242 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " What's wrong with her eyes ? " 
 
 " Hard eyes she has, your Honour, hating eyes. 
 She's always looking at you to see if it is an enemy 
 is in it. A queer woman, your Honour ; the like of 
 her was never known." 
 
 " But how ? " 
 
 " The talk that's at her, your Honour. The great 
 hatred she bes having of England, and the talk of old 
 Irish times." 
 
 " And she a lady ? " 
 
 " You'd think it was a queen was in it, with the 
 high head of her, and the proud step of a racing horse. 
 You would, your Honour, you would so." 
 
 He asked the admiral about her. 
 
 " Do you know this Miss O'Malley, sir, of Tusa 
 hErin ? " 
 
 " I had the honour to meet her twice, Campbell. 
 A very great woman. A great loss, Campbell, a great 
 loss." 
 
 " Who is she, sir ? " 
 
 " Good God ! Do you mean to tell me you don't 
 know who Miss Grace O'Malley is ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I don't." 
 
 " One of the greatest Shakespearian actresses the 
 English stage ever knew — and you never heard of her. 
 Good God ! How abominably ignorant you merchant 
 marine men are ! " 
 
 " Abominably so, sir. . . . But please tell me, sir 
 why does she hate England so much ? " 
 
 " Oh, these geniuses, Campbell ! They must hate 
 something, or love something, to excess. . . . Depths 
 of feeling, I suppose . . . Campbell, do you know 
 anything about Ogham writing ? "
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 243 
 
 " Only that it's straight lines on the corners of 
 stones, sir ! " 
 
 " Well, now, I think I've discovered something 
 important, most terribly important . . . You may 
 have heard of the Babylonian cuneiform script ..." 
 And the old gentleman was off full gallop on his 
 hobby. . . . 
 
 From Simon Fowler he extracted a little more in- 
 formation. 
 
 " Fowler, do you know Miss O'Malley of Tusa 
 hErin ? " 
 
 " I do, poor lady." 
 
 " Why poor lady ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't you call anyone poor lady who had 
 just been widowed, then lost her two children ? 
 Poor lady, I wish I could say something to comfort 
 her." 
 
 " You ! Fowler ! You couldn't say anything ? ' 
 
 " The wisdom of God, Shane, is sometimes very 
 hard to see. Our physical eyes can only see a little 
 horizon, and yet the whole world is behind it. Miss 
 O'Malley is not a case for any of the ministers of God 
 .... but for Himself. . . ." 
 
 " You exaggerate, Fowler. Surely you are wrong. 
 .... They say she is young and proud and beauti- 
 ful." 
 
 ' I don't know. I never noticed. . . . She may 
 be young and proud and beautiful ... I only thought 
 of the dark harassed thing — inside all the youth and 
 pride and beauty. . . ."
 
 244 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 § 5 
 
 He met her for the first time at a neighbouring 
 fair . . . 
 
 Eleven on a hot June morning, and the little town 
 was crowded, like some old-time immigrant ship. 
 Women in plaid shawls and frilled caps, men in sombre 
 black as befitted a monthly occasion. Squawking of 
 ducks and hens, trudging of donkeys, creaking of carts, 
 unbelievably stubborn bullocks and heifers being 
 whacked with ash-plants, colts frisking. Girls with 
 baskets of eggs and butter ; great carts of hay and 
 straw. Apple women with bonnets of cabbage- 
 leaves against the sun. Herring men bawling like 
 auctioneers. Squealing of young pigs. An old 
 clothes dealer hoarse with effort. A ballad singer 
 split the air with an English translation of Bean an 
 Fhir Ruaidh, " The Red-haired Man's Wife." 
 
 Ye Muses Nine, 
 
 Combine, and lend me your aid, 
 Until I raise 
 
 the praise of a beautiful maid — 
 
 The crash of a drover driving home a bargain : 
 " Hold out your hand now, by God ! till I be after 
 making you an offer. Seven pounds ten, now. Hell 
 to my soul if I give you another ha'penny. Wait 
 now. I'll make it seven pound fifteen." 
 
 "Is it insulting the fine decent beast you are ? ' 
 " Eight pounds five and ten shillings back for a 
 luck-penny ? " 
 
 " Is it crazy you've gone all of a sudden, dealing 
 man. If the gentle creature was in Dublin town, 
 sure they'd be hanging blue ribbons around her neck 
 until she wilted with the weight of them."
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 245 
 
 " It's hanging their hats on the bones of her they'd 
 be, and them sticking out the like of branches from 
 a bush." 
 
 " Yerra Jasus ! Do you hear the man, and her 
 round as a bottle from the fine filling feeding. You 
 could walk your shin-bones off to the knee, and you'd 
 not find a cow as has had the treatment of this cow. 
 Let you be on our way now." 
 
 " Look, honest man. Put out your hand, and wait 
 till I spit on my fist " 
 
 Through the doors of Michael Uoyle's public house 
 a young farmer walked uncertainly. He gently swung 
 a woman's woollen stocking in his right hand, and in 
 the foot of the stocking was a large round stone : 
 
 ' I am young Packy McGee of Ballymoyle," he 
 announced, " the son of old Packy McGee of Bally- 
 moyle, a great man in his day, but never the equal of 
 young Packy McGee. I have gone through Scotland 
 and Ireland, Wales, the harvest fields of England, and 
 I have never yet found the equal for murder and riot 
 of young Packy McGee. I am young Packy McGee. 
 I am young Packy McGee of Ballymoyle, and I don't 
 care who knows it. Is there any decent man in this 
 fair that considers himself the equal of young Packy 
 McGee ? " And he walked through the fair, chanting 
 his litany and gently swinging the woman's woollen 
 stocking with the large round stone in the foot of 
 it . . . 
 
 The penny poet changed from the high grace notes 
 of " The Red-haired Man's Wife " to the surge of a
 
 246 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 come-all-ye. There was the undercurrent of a pipe 
 drone to his voice : 
 
 Fare-you-well, Enniskillen, fare-you-well for a while, 
 All round the borders of Erin's green isle 
 And when the war's over return I shall soon, 
 And your arms will be o-o-open for your Enniskillen 
 Dragoon. 
 
 In the intervals between verses a black-bearded 
 man with blue spectacles announced solemnly that 
 he was Professor Handley direct from English and 
 German universities, empowered by the Rosicrucian 
 order to distribute a remarkable panacea at the 
 nominal sum of sixpence a bottle . . . 
 
 Forests of cows' horns and drovers' sticks, clamour 
 of frightened cattle, emphatic slapping of palms. 
 Clouds of dust where the horse fair was carried on. 
 Stands of fruit and cakes. Stalls of religious orna- 
 ments, prayer-books, and rosary beads ... A shooting 
 gallery ... A three-card trickster, white and pimpled 
 of face ... A trick-of-the-loop man, with soap-box 
 and greasy string ... A man who sold a gold watch, 
 a sovereign, and some silver for the sum of fifteen 
 shillings . . . An old man with the Irish bagpipes, 
 bellows strapped to arm, playing " The Birds Among 
 the Trees," " The Swallow-tail Coat," " The Green 
 Fields of America "... small boys regarding him 
 curiously . . . later young farmers and girls would be 
 dancing sets to his piping ... At the end of the street 
 a ballad-monger declaiming, not singing — his head 
 thrown back, his voice issuing in a measured chant 
 . . " The Lament for the Earl of Lucan " :
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 247 
 
 Patrick Sarsfield, Ireland's wonder ! 
 Fought in the field like bolts of thunder ! 
 One of Ireland's best commanders I 
 Now is food for the crows of Flanders ! 
 Och ! Ochone ! 
 
 A knot of older people had gathered around him, 
 white-headed farmers, bent turf-cutters of the glens, 
 a girl-child with eyes like saucers. A priest stopped 
 to listen . . . The crude English of the ballad faded 
 out, until there was nothing but disheveled agony 
 . . . rhythm ... a wail . . . Somewhere a leaping 
 current of feeling . . . There was a woman on the edge 
 of the crowd, a lady . . . She came nearer, as though 
 hypnotized . . . 
 
 The country bard stopped suddenly, exalted, 
 and swung dramatically into Gaelic . . . Dropping 
 the alien tongue he seemed to have dropped fetters 
 . . . His voice rose to a paean ... he took on stature 
 he looked straight in the eye of the sun . . . And for 
 Shane the clamour of the drovers ceased . . . And there 
 was the plucked note of harpers . . . And fires of ancient 
 oak . . . and wolf-dogs sleeping on skins of elk . . . 
 And there was a wasted place in the twilight, and 
 grass through a split hearthstone . . . And a warrior- 
 poet, beaten, thinking bitter under the stars . . . 
 
 Do threasgar an saoghal agas do thainic an gaoth mar smal — 
 Alastrom, Ccesar, 's an mead do bhi da bpairt ; 
 Ta an Tcamhair na fear agas f each an Traoi mar la ! 
 'S na Saaanaigh fein, do b' fheidir go bhfaigMdis has I 
 
 A voice spoke excitedly, imperiously to Shane : 
 ' What is he saying ? Do you know Gaelic ?
 
 248 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " I'm afraid I've forgotten my Gaelic, but I know 
 this song." 
 
 " Then what is it ? Please tell me. I must know." 
 " He says : 
 
 " The world conquers them all. The wind whirls like 
 
 dust. 
 Alexander, Caesar, and the companies whom they led. 
 Tara is grass, and see how Troy is now ! 
 And the English themselves, even they may die." 
 
 " How great ! " she said. " How very great ! ' 
 She turned to Shane, and as he saw the dark, im- 
 perious face, he knew intuitively he was speaking to 
 the Woman of Tusa hErin. She seemed puzzled for 
 an instant. Something in Shane's clothes, his car- 
 riage. . . . 
 
 " You don't look as if you understood Gaelic ? 
 How is it you can translate this poem ? " 
 
 " I knew it as a boy. My father was a Gaelic 
 poet ? " 
 
 " Then you are Shane Campbell." 
 
 " And you are the woman of Tusa hErin ! ' 
 
 " You know Tusa hErin ? " 
 
 " I know every blade of grass in the glens." 
 
 " If you are ever near Tusa hErin, come and see 
 me." 
 
 " I should like to." 
 
 " Will you really ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She left him as abruptly as she spoke to him, going 
 over to the ballad-monger. She left him a little 
 dazed. ... He was aware of vitality. ... He was 
 like a man on a wintry day who experiences a sudden
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 249 
 
 shaft of warm sun, or somebody in quiet darkness 
 whose eye is caught by the rising of the moon. 
 
 § 6 
 As in a story from some old unsubtle book, in 
 passing the gates of Tusa hErin, he had gone into 
 another world, a grave and courteous world, not 
 antique — that was not the word, but just older. . . . 
 A change of tempo. ... A change of atmosphere. 
 .... The Bois Dormant, the Sleeping Wood of the 
 French fairy-tale ? . . . Not that, for the Sleeping 
 Wood should be a gray wood, a wood of twilight, with 
 the birds a-drowse in their nests. . . . And here 
 were clipped rich yew-trees, and turf firm as a putting- 
 green's, and rows of dignified flowers, like pretty 
 gracious ladies ; and a little lake where a swan 
 moved, as to music ; and the sunshine was rich as 
 wine here ... all golden and green. . . . But the 
 atmosphere ? He thought of the cave of Gearod 
 Oge, the Wizard Earl in the Rath of Mullaghmast, 
 and the story of it. . . . A farmer man had noticed 
 a light from the old fort, and creeping in he had seen 
 men in armour sleeping with their horses beside them. 
 .... And he examined the armour and the saddlery 
 and cautiously half drew a sword from its sheath . . .. 
 And the soldier's head rose and : " Bhfuil an trath 
 ann ? " his voice cried. ... " Has the time come ? " 
 " It has not, your Honour," the farmer said in terror, 
 and shoved the sword back and fled. ... An old 
 man said for a surety that had the farmer drawn the 
 blade from the scabbard, the Wizard Earl would have 
 awakened, and Ireland been free. . . . There was
 
 250 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 great beauty and great Irishness to that story, but 
 there was terror to it, and there was no terror on this 
 sweet place. . . . 
 
 He said : It is a trick of my head, an illusion that 
 this is different. Some shading that comes from the 
 yews, some phenomenon of cliff and water. . . . But 
 even that did not quite explain the rich grave look of 
 grounds and house. A song from " The Tempest " 
 came to him : 
 
 Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Those are pearls that were his eyes : 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange . . . 
 
 That was it, something rich and strange, like some 
 old cloister into which one might turn from an inquiet 
 and hubbubby street. ... A knock at an oaken 
 wicket ; a peering shy brother, and one was on green 
 lawns and the shadows of a gabled monastery. 
 Cowled, meditative friars, and the quiet of Christ 
 like spread wings. . . . But there was a reason for 
 the cloister's glamour : cool thoughts and the rhythm 
 of quiet praying, and the ringing of the little bell of 
 mass, and the cadenced sacramental. All these were 
 sympathetic magic. . . . But whence came the 
 glamour of Tusa hErin ? 
 
 § 7 
 And she said : "I am glad you came. I knew 
 somehow you would." 
 
 " I am glad, too. I knew Tusa hErin as a boy.
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 251 
 
 It was then a weird old place. The yew trees were 
 undipped, the turf riotous, the little lake ungravelled. 
 .... It had an eeriness. But now — it is very 
 different." 
 
 " Any place is different for being loved, tended." 
 
 " I suppose so. One loves but one gets careless 
 toward ... I know Antrim has always had an 
 immense attraction for me. ..." 
 
 " Antrim — alone ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course, Antrim." 
 
 " Not all Ireland, then ? " 
 
 " I never thought of Ireland as all Ireland." 
 
 " O Shane Campbell, you've sailed so much and seen 
 so much — China, they tell me, and South America, 
 and the Levant. And in the North, Archangel. I'll 
 warrant you don't know Ireland." 
 
 " I never saw much, though, in any place outside 
 Antrim." 
 
 " You never saw much in the little towns of the 
 Pale, or gray Dublin, with the Parliament where 
 Grattan spoke now a money-changer's business house, 
 and the bulk of Trinity of Goldsmith and Burke — or 
 the great wide streets where four-in-hands used to 
 go. And Three-Rock Mountain. And Bray. And 
 the beauty of the Boyne Valley. And the little safe 
 harbours of the South. And the mountains of Kerry. 
 And all the kingdom of Connacht. And the great 
 winds of Donegal." 
 
 " But it's so eery, deserted, a dead country. All 
 like Tusa hErin was before you took it." 
 
 ' If one could take it all, and do to it as I've done 
 to Tusa hErin. By the way," she asked suddenly, 
 " is Tusa hErin haunted ?
 
 252 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " No, I never heard. Did you see anything ? ' 
 
 " I think I heard something a few times. A piper 
 piping when the storms rose. A queer little tune — 
 like that thing about McCrimmon." 
 
 " Cha till, cha till, cha till McCrimmon." 
 
 " Are there words to it ? " 
 
 " Le cogadh mo sidhe cha till McCrimmon." 
 
 Never, never, never, will return McCrimmon. 
 
 With war or peace never will come McCrimmon. 
 
 For money or spoil never will return McCrimmon. 
 
 He will come no more till the day of the Gathering." 
 
 " A lamenting tune like that, I heard." 
 
 " The drone was just the grinding of the waves, 
 
 the air the wind among the yews." 
 
 " That's possible. But isn't a phantom piper 
 
 possible, too, in a land of ghosts ? " 
 
 § 8 
 " A land of ghosts " ; the phrase remained with 
 him. And the lighted lamp and the burning peat 
 fire seemed to invoke like some necromantic ritual. 
 How often, and he a young boy, had the names 
 trumpeted through his being. Brian Boru at Clon- 
 tarf , and the routed red Danes. And with the routing 
 of the Danes, Ireland had come to peaceful days, and 
 gentle white-clothed saints arose and monasteries 
 with tolling bells, and great Celtic crosses . . . And 
 gone were the Druids, their cursing stones, their 
 Ogham script . . . Gone old Celtic divinities, Angus 
 of the Boyne, and Manannan, son of Lir, god of the 
 sea . . . and the peace of Galilee came over the joyous
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 253 
 
 hunting land . . . The little people of the hills, with 
 their pygmy horses, their pygmy pipes, cowered, 
 went into exile, under the thunder of Rome . . . 
 And the land was meek that it might inherit the 
 kingdom of heaven . . . And the English came . . . 
 The Earls of Ulster fled into Spain . . . And only here 
 and there was a memory of old-time heroes, of 
 Cuchulain of the Red Branch ; of Maeve, queen of 
 Connacht, in her fighting chariot, her great red cloak ; 
 of Dermot, who abducted Grania from the king of 
 Ireland's camp, and knew nine ways of throwing 
 the spear . . . The O'Neils remembered Shane, who 
 brought Queen Elizabeth to her knees with love and 
 terror . . . And Owen Roe, the Red . . . And the 
 younger Hugh O'Neil, with his hard-bitten Ulstermen 
 at Benburb. . . . They had to bring the greatest 
 general of Europe, Cromwell, the lord protector, to sub- 
 due the Ulster clans. . . Sullen peace, and the Stuarts 
 came back, and again Ireland was lulled with their 
 suave manners, the scent of the white rose . . . The 
 crash of the Boyne Water, the King James running 
 for his life . . . And Limerick's siege, and the Treaty, 
 and Patrick Sarsfield and the Wild Geese setting wing 
 for France . . . France knew them, Germany, Sweden, 
 even Russia . . . Ramillies and the Spaniard knew 
 Lord Clare's Dragoons. . . . And Fontenoy and the 
 thunder of the Irish Brigade . . . And Patrick Sarsfield, 
 Earl of Lucan, dead at the end of the day . . . Even 
 to-day Europe knew them : O'Donnel, Duke of 
 Tetuan and grandee of Spain ; and Patrice McMahon, 
 Duke of Magenta, who had been made president of 
 the Republic of France — they were of the strain of 
 Lucan's wild Geese . . .
 
 254 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 And again a sullen peace, and Ulster rang to the 
 trumpet of American freedom, and the United Irish- 
 men arose in Belfast . . . And Napper Tandy at 
 Napoleon's court, and Hoche with his ships in Bantry 
 Bay. . . . Wolfe Tone's mangled throat, and Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald murdered by his captors. . . . 
 
 What had made these men, sane men — Ulstermen 
 mostly — risk life and face death so gallantly ? What 
 brought out the men of '48 and the men of '67 ? 
 What was making little Bigger fight so savagely in 
 Parliament, blocking the legislation of the empire ? 
 What had got under their skins, into their blood ? 
 Surely not for a gray half-deserted city ? Surely not 
 for little bays and purple mountains ? Surely not for 
 an illiterate peasantry, half crazed by the fear of 
 hell? 
 
 He tried to see Ireland as a personality, as one 
 sees England, like the great Britannia on a copper 
 penny, helmeted, full-breasted, great-hipped, with 
 sword and shield, a bourgeois concept of majesty, a 
 ponderous, self-conscious personality : 
 
 When Britain first, at Heaven's command 
 Arose from out the azure main, — 
 
 Just like that ! 
 
 And Scotland he could see as a young woman, in 
 kilt and plaid and Glengarry cap, a shrewd young 
 woman though, with a very decisive personality, 
 clinching a bargain as the best of dealers might, a 
 little forward. He could think of her as the young 
 girl whose hand Charles the Young Pretender kissed, 
 and who had said to him directly : "I'd liefer hae 
 a buss for my mou'." " I'd rather have a kiss on my
 
 THF BOLD FENIAN MEN 255 
 
 mouth." Scotland knew what she wanted and got 
 it, a pert, a solid, a likable girl. 
 
 But Ireland, Ireland of the gray mists, the gray 
 towns. How to see her ? The country ballad came 
 to him. The " Shan Van Vocht," the poor old woman 
 gray, shawled, pitiable, whom her children were 
 seeking to reinstate in her home of many fields : 
 
 And where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 And where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 In the Curragh of Kildare. 
 
 The boys will all be there, 
 With their pikes in good repair, 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 To the Curragh of Kildare 
 The boys they will repair, 
 And Lord Edward will be there, 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 No ! Not enough. One might work, sacrifice 
 money, for the Shan Van Vocht— but life, no ! 
 He thought again. Poor Mangan's poem flashed 
 into his mind and heart . . 
 
 O my Dark Rosaleen, 
 
 Do not sigh, do not weep ! 
 The priests are on the ocean green 
 
 They march along the deep. 
 There's wine from the royal pope 
 
 Upon the ocean green. 
 And Spanish ale shall give you hope, 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, 
 Shall give you health, and help, and hope, 
 My dark Rosaleen !
 
 256 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 Ah, that was it ! Not pity, but gallant, fiery love. 
 Modern ideals and ancient chivalry. ... A young 
 dark woman with a quivering mouth, with eyes bright 
 in tears . . . There was an old favourite print that 
 portrayed her, a slim wistful figure resting a pale hand 
 on a mute harp, a great elk-hound at her feet on 
 guard, and back of her the rising sun shone on the 
 antique round tower. ... A pretty picture, but was it 
 enough ? He tried to envisage her close, concentrated. 
 . . . There the dog, there the harp, there the slim form 
 . . . But the face ... It seemed to elude him. And 
 suddenly it flashed at him with abrupt dark beauty 
 . . . the face of the woman of Tusa hErin . . . 
 
 § 9 
 The long Ulster twilight had set in, the twilight 
 of bats, gray-blue, utterly peaceful . . . the little 
 chiming of the sea. . . . Even the wind was still. . . . 
 All things drowsed, like a dog before the fire, relaxed 
 but not asleep. . . . Beneath the feet the turf was 
 firm . . . beneath that the husheen-husho of the 
 purple Moyle . . . Soon there would be a moon and 
 her servants would saddle Shane's horse for him and 
 he would ride home in the Antrim moonlight, eleven 
 miles of firm road with the friendly moon above him, 
 and the singing Moyle on his left hand, and on his 
 right the purple glens . . . And the shadows . . . the 
 delicate tracery of the ash-tree, and the tall rowans, 
 and the massive blue shadows of the cliffs ... a golden 
 and silver land ... A very sweet silence had fallen 
 between them, as if music had ceased and become 
 restful colour. . . . They watched the quiet swan. . . .
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 257 
 
 " I am a little afraid to leave Tusa hErin," she 
 said suddenly and softly, as though thinking aloud. 
 . . ."I am like a nun who has been in a convent . . . 
 She is lost in the open world. . . . Will I ever again 
 find a place like Tusa hErin ? " 
 
 " Granya, are you selling Tusa hErin ? " 
 
 " I have sold it, Shane." 
 
 ' I am sorry," was all he could say. A little 
 silence, and he could feel her smiling through the 
 dusk. 
 
 1 You never ask any questions, Shane ? " 
 
 " It never occurs to me to ask them, Granya. If 
 any one wants to tell me a thing, I know they will, 
 and if they don't why should I intrude ? " 
 
 ' I should like to tell you why I sold Tusa hErin. 
 But I cannot. It is not my own secret." 
 
 He nodded in the dusk : " I understand." 
 
 She turned to him slowly. Her sweet dark head 
 was like some fragrant shrub . . . Her low soft voice 
 had so much life to it . . . 
 
 ' I wonder if you know what a friend you are, 
 Shane ? If you understand how peaceful it is to have 
 you here ? You are such a sweet fact, Shane, like the 
 moon." 
 
 " I am a friend, Granya ..." 
 You are, yes . . . And you know so little about 
 me, Shane. And I know all about you ... I know 
 the adventures of your youth . . . And of the hard girl 
 of Louth, and the poor harassed woman of Marseilles. 
 . . . And of the little Syrian wife whom you didn't 
 know you loved until you lost her . . . and the gray 
 voyages to the cruel country. ... At times I see you 
 like a little \><>y hunting the leprechawn. . . . And
 
 258 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 then I see your face, your eyes, and understand how 
 you commanded men in ships. . . . You are like 
 some beautiful play, Shane. ... I wonder what is the 
 ending ? " 
 
 " It is already ended, Granya." 
 
 " No, Shane. I know, the end hasn't come. . . 
 I know you, Shane," she asked abruptly ; " what 
 do you know about me ? 
 
 " Nothing much, Granya, except that you are you. 
 I heard you were a great actress . . . and that you had 
 two babies . . . who died . . . '" 
 
 " Not a great actress, Shane, a very good one, 
 perhaps. I might have been great one day . . . 
 and again, I mightn't. I shall never know . . . And 
 I had two babies. . . . They were very nice little 
 people, Shane. I was very fond of them. . . . But a 
 physical life is a little thing, I have come to believe ; 
 and there is another life, a life of thought and emotion. 
 And that one is so long ... It seems ages since I was 
 an actress and had two pretty babies. It seems in 
 another life . . . Shane, I don't think I was alive until 
 my babies died. ..." 
 
 " I don't understand, Granya." 
 
 " I mean this, Shane, that things were so casual 
 to me. They came and they went, and I was what 
 I was, and that was all. . . . When you were a boy, 
 Shane, you had what I never had — wonder. I was 
 the child of actors, Shane, brought up to a mechanical 
 tradition, knowing the business thoroughly — a part 
 was words and directions, and a salary. . . . That 
 things were mimic meant nothing ... do you see ? 
 That there was a life that was unreal, and another 
 life that was real, and then a further life, too subtle,
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 259 
 
 too profound for the value of words . . . one sees 
 glimpses . . . one feels . . . and when you try to fix it, 
 it eludes you. Do you understand ? Like your 
 mirage, a little . . . That is only a symbol. . . . Am I 
 talking nonsense, Shane ? Anyway, I took things, well, 
 just casually. . . . 
 
 " See the moon rising, Shane ? " she paused. She 
 turned again. 
 
 " I got married, just got married ; he was a good 
 man, Shane. But I didn't love him. I loved nobody. 
 I got married because he was suitable, and every one 
 got married. And just the same way I accepted 
 marriage . . . And when he died, I was very sorry, but 
 impersonally sorry ... as if something nice in the world 
 had been gone ... a swan shot . . . 
 
 " And my little people, Shane, they were very 
 nice little people ... I was fond of them, but as I 
 might be fond of some terrier dogs ... I was good to 
 them. . . . Often I sit here and wonder : Was I good 
 enough ? And, Shane, God is my witness and this 
 garden, and the moon above, there is nothing I could 
 give them I held back . . . 
 
 " You know how they died, Shane ? ... I was 
 playing and my house went on fire, and the servants 
 fled . . . When I came back from the theatre a police- 
 man said : ' We got everything all right, Miss 
 O'Malley. Your dogs, your piano.' . . . Where did 
 you put the babies ? ' I asked . . . They said : ' What 
 babies ? 
 
 " Shane, I knew after a little while that I cried 
 too easily ... a little sweet rain of affection 
 .... April. ... I didn't forget them. ... I 
 wouldn't let myself . . . . And then I thought : God!
 
 260 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 if I had loved my husband my heart would have been 
 like a cracked cup when he died. . . . And when my 
 babies died, I could not have lived. . . . And all 
 I shed of tears was a little shower of April. ... O 
 Shane, one isn't like that when one is hurt. . . . Do 
 you remember David, Shane, when he went up to the 
 chamber over the gate . . . and as he went thus he 
 said, ' O my son Absalom, my son Absalom ! Would 
 God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! ' 
 .... And he was only a man, Shane. . . . 
 
 " Am I bothering you, Shane ? No ? I am just 
 thinking aloud, with you there. ... I never thought 
 I could, with any human being. . . . 
 
 " And then I knew, Shane. . . . Part of me was 
 not alive. . . . That was terrible to know, like 
 finding out a horrible deformity, or knowing you are 
 insane. . . . And I began to watch people. ... I 
 could say : There is a woman who knows she is loved, 
 Shane. . . . There is a radiance in her face, an in- 
 describable something. . . . You remember the 
 Bible word ' Shekinah,' the Glory of the Lord ! . . . 
 And there were women with children . . . that had 
 lost themselves in the joy of giving . . . would always 
 have that joy of giving. . . . And it made me feel 
 strange, shameful ... as though I had no breasts. . . . 
 
 " I must have been a little insane then, Shane. I 
 would go along the streets, looking at people, and 
 saying : ' That person looks as if they would under- 
 stand,' and thinking of stopping them with : ' Please 
 a moment, there is something wrong with me ! ' But 
 I knew they wouldn't understand . . . wouldn't 
 believe it real. . . . Even if they were kind, all they 
 would say was : ' It's all imagination . . .' as if
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 261 
 
 imagination were not the most terrible thing in the 
 world. . . . All that is wrong with the poor mad 
 people is imagination. . . . Shane, I was like some 
 poor cripple holding out his deformity to the passers- 
 by, asking for help. . . . All he would want was 
 money, but I wanted . . . oh, I don't know what I 
 wanted. . . . 
 
 ' And then, Shane, I would go into a church, and 
 pray, and wait, kneeling there, for something to 
 happen. ... It never happened. . . . Then I 
 would laugh. People used to turn and look at me. 
 .... I began to hate them. I grew proud. I 
 hated them more and more. . . . 
 
 " I said I'd get back to work, and forget it all. . . . 
 I was made as I was made. . . . Accept it. . . . I 
 thought I could. ... I was to play Lady Macbeth 
 in Nottingham. 
 
 You know hows he enters, Shane. She comes in 
 reading a letter. She is alone on the stage, in Mac- 
 beth's castle of Inverness : ' " They met me in the 
 day of success," ' she reads — Macbeth is writing of 
 the witches in the desert place : ' "and I have learned 
 by the perfectest report, they have more in them 
 than mortal knowledge." ' I came on as I always 
 came on. . . . And the moment I left the wings, 
 Shane, saw the audience, a strange thing happened. 
 . . . . Illusion died; not died . . . but was dead. 
 .... And there I was supposed to be reading a 
 letter that had never been written by people who had 
 never possibly an existence, before an audience who 
 had paid a little money to be amused. ... I 
 couldn't read it. I just couldn't. . . . 
 
 ' Behind me in the wings they were prompting,
 
 262 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 whispering fiercely. . . . But I couldn't. ... I 
 stood there. . . . Then I said : I'll go off the stage. 
 But I couldn't do that even. . . . My feet were 
 shackled to the ground. ... I seemed to have been 
 charmed. . . . My hand fell to my side. . . . And 
 then a panic came. My knees hit one another. My 
 teeth chattered . . . awful, awful. . . . 
 
 " There was such a silence. The audience stirred, 
 whispered. . . . Then some laughed. . . . Never 
 laugh, Shane, suddenly, with me. ... I crumpled 
 up. They rang the curtain down. ... I stole away 
 to Ireland. . . . Whenever I am not hating — enough, 
 the thought of that laugh comes to me. ..." She 
 shivered on her seat. 
 
 " That was only nervousness, Granya. Somebody 
 got nervous and laughed." 
 
 " No, Shane, no." 
 
 " They talk of people laughing in the face of death. 
 It's just a nervous action, Granya." 
 
 " I tell you, no, Shane." She grew vehement. 
 " It's a cruel country, England. And, Shane, they 
 hate us Irish. As long as we are pleasant, witty, as 
 long as we are buffoons . . . but let us be human 
 beings, Shane, and they hate us." 
 
 " Don't be silly, Granya ! ' 
 
 "I'm not silly, Shane. I know. They hate us 
 because we have something they have not. The 
 starved Irish peasant is higher than the English peer. 
 He has a song in his heart, a gay song or a sad song, 
 and his eyes see wonders. ..." 
 
 " But, Granya, we are only a little people, and they 
 all but rule the world. . . You are wrong. They 
 don't hate us."
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 263 
 
 " Do you remember Haman, Shane ; Haman who 
 had everything : 
 
 " ' And Haman told them of . . . all the things 
 wherein the king had promoted him; and he said: 'Yet 
 all this availeth me nothing so long as I see Mordecai 
 the Jew sitting in the king's gate.' " 
 
 " Shane, do you remember how Haman died ? " 
 
 '* Granya ! " 
 
 She rose. Her hands stretched out to the Irish 
 hills. Her voice took on the throbbing of drums : 
 
 "Oh ! the Erne shall run red 
 With redundance of blood, 
 The earth shall rock beneath our tread, 
 
 And flames warp hill and wood, 
 And gun-peal and slogan-cry 
 Wake many a glen serene, 
 Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 My own Rosaleen ! " 
 
 " Poor Granya ! " he said. He caught and kissed 
 her hand. 
 
 She let her other fall on his shoulder for an instant. 
 
 ' Good-night, Shane ! " she said abruptly. She 
 moved swiftly toward the house through the yew-trees. 
 In her pale dress against the moonlit turf, between the 
 dark trees, she was like some old, heart-wringing 
 ghost. . . 
 
 § 10 
 He brought back from Tusa hErin that night a 
 sense of dread. What in God's name had Granya 
 done ? To what committed herself ? There were
 
 264 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 rumours abroad that the men of '6j were not dead 
 yet. ... In America, in the hills of Kerry, in Gal- 
 way, there was plotting . . . not glorious, but 
 sinister plotting. . . . God ! had they enmeshed 
 her ? 
 
 He had three times heard her sing the old Ulster 
 ballad of General Munro : 
 
 Up came Munro 's sister, she was well dressed in green, 
 And his sword by her side that was once bright and keen 
 And she said to the brave men who with her did go, 
 " Come, we'll have revenge for my brother Munro ! " 
 
 He had looked on that as only a queer romantic 
 gesture, but with what she said last night, it occurred 
 to him that there was a deeper motif to it all. . . . 
 She was often in Dublin these days. . . . Did they ? 
 Had they ? . . . 
 
 If it had been the Jacobite times, or '98 or even '48, 
 he would not have minded. The Irish might call 
 these Irish rebellions, but in reality they were world 
 affairs. James and the Prince of Orange were the 
 clash of the ideal of courtliness and tradition worn to 
 a thin blade and of the stubborn progress of pulsing 
 thought. And '98 was the echo of the surge for 
 liberty — the frenzy of France and the stubborn 
 Yankee steel. . . . And '48 was another breathing 
 of the world. . . . Even '67 he would not have 
 minded. Sixty-seven was a gallant romantic rally, a 
 dream of pikes amid green banners, and men drilling 
 by moonlit rivers. . . . 
 
 But to-day was different. . . . Revenge was in 
 the air, and revenge was no wild justice, as an old 
 writer had said. Revenge was an evil possession. . . .
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 265 
 
 An exhausting, sinister mood. . . . The men who 
 would fight this modern battle, if battle there was 
 to be one, were dark, scowling men. . . . The ameni- 
 ties of battle, the gallantry of flags meant nothing to 
 them. They would shoot from behind ditches in the 
 dark. ... In America was talk of dynamite — an 
 idealist using a burglar's trick. . . . There was no 
 gallantry that way. . . . 
 
 And besides, it wasn't an Irish war. It was a 
 matter of agriculture. ... A war of peasants 
 against careless landlords, Irish themselves in the main, 
 who had fled to England to avoid the suicidal mono- 
 tony of Irish country life, and lost their money in the 
 pot-houses and gambling-dens of London, and turned 
 to their tenants for more forgetting in the glamour of 
 London the poverty ot the Irish bogs. ... It was 
 contemptible to squeeze the peasants as a money- 
 lender squeezes his victims, but the peasants' redress, 
 the furtive musket and horrible dynamite, that was 
 terrible. God, what a mess . . . And had Granya 
 been caught into that evil problem, a kingfisher 
 among cormorants ? 
 
 And it she had, what was he going to do about it ? 
 
 What could he do ? What right had he to meddle 
 with her destiny ? Friendly they had become, close 
 sweet friends — the thought of her was like the thought 
 of the hills purple with heather — but friendship and 
 destiny are a sweet curling wave and a gaunt cliff. 
 They were two different people, independent. Shane 
 Campbell and the Woman of Tusa hErin.
 
 266 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 § ii 
 She had been distraught all the evening. Merry, 
 feverishly merry at times, and again silent, her eyes 
 far off, her mouth set. She rose suddenly from the 
 piano she was playing, and looked at him. Standing, 
 above the light of the candles, her face and head were 
 like some dark, soft flower. 
 
 " Shane, you are a very true friend of mine, aren't 
 you ? " 
 
 " Yes, Granya." 
 
 " If I wanted a very great favour, would you 
 consider it ? " 
 
 " Not consider, but do it." 
 
 " Yes, but the risk," she faltered. " I hardly 
 dare " 
 
 " What risk ? What are you talking about, 
 Granya ? " A thought struck him. " Is it money ? 
 Don't be silly and talk about risk ! Anything I can 
 give you is yours, and welcome ! " 
 
 " It's not money, Shane. And thank you ! It's 
 —it's this " 
 
 " Yes, Granya." 
 
 " It's this, Shane. Would you— would you bring 
 a ship for me from St. Petersburg to Lough Foyle, 
 very quietly ? " 
 
 " What kind of ship ? " 
 
 " A ship, just a ship, a sailing-ship." 
 
 " What's in the ship ? " 
 
 She paused. " Guns, Shane." 
 
 " No, Granya, I won't." 
 
 " Oh, well," she sat down, " I shouldn't have 
 asked."
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 267 
 
 ' Granya," he walked over and caught her shoulder, 
 " don't be foolish." 
 
 " I'm not foolish, Shane. If I am, it's done now." 
 She smiled. . . . The air crashed out beneath her 
 fingers. Her voice rang : 
 
 In came the captain's daughter — the captain of the Yeos — 
 Saying, " Brave United Irishmen, we'll ne'er again be foes. 
 One thousand pounds I'll give to you, and go across the 
 
 sea ; 
 And dress myself in man's attire and fight for liberty ' " 
 
 ' You'll not move one foot from Tusa hErin ! ' 
 
 ' O Shane, Tusa hErin's no longer mine, and I've 
 got to go." 
 
 " Because the ship and the guns are mine, Shane," 
 she smiled quietly ; " my present." 
 
 With a terrific smash of the fist he broke in the 
 top of the piano. The wires jangled in pandemonium. 
 The candles fell to the floor. 
 
 ' Hell's fire and God's damnation ! " He swore at 
 her. " You fool ! " 
 
 She rose, her breasts heaving. Her eyes flashed. 
 
 1 You've no right to speak to me like that, Shane 
 Campbell." 
 
 ' Oh, yes, I have. Every damned right ! Do you 
 think I'd let any woman go cruising around the North 
 Seas, with a crew of foreigners, and a shipmaster she 
 doesn't know . . . I'll bring the damned boat in . . . " 
 
 § 12 
 They left the city of strange ugly women, with 
 great spirit in their faces, and great bearing to the
 
 268 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 body of them, and of slim cat-like men, who had 
 great power in their eyes ... A very beautiful city 
 of churches and hammered brass ... a place of high 
 rarefied thinking and savage animal passion. . . . 
 They left it on a July morning with the sun high. . . . 
 And they sailed west, sou'-west down the Gulf of 
 Finland, until Dago Island was on their port 
 quarter. . . . 
 
 And they rolled down the Baltic Sea, sailing sou'- 
 sou'-west, until they passed Gotland, and, they edged 
 west again, leaving Bornholm to port. . . . And they 
 sailed past MalmS into the Sound, heading north for 
 the Cattegat . . . They turned the Skaw and swung 
 her into the Skage-Rack. . . . And the wind held .... 
 
 And once out of there, they pointed her nose nor-' 
 west by nor' as though Iceland were only a buoy in 
 a yacht-race . . . And the wind held. . . . The summer 
 nights of the North were on them, the unearthly 
 beauty of the light. . . . There was no world. . . . 
 They were sailing on the Milky Way. . . . Only the 
 gurgle of the water at the bows, the whush of the 
 wake beneath the counter, held them as by a thin 
 umbilical cord to the world of men. . . . The whap- 
 whap-whap of the cordage. . . . The ting-ting-ting 
 of the helmsman's bell. . . . The cry for'a'd : " The 
 lights are burning bright, sir ! " . . . 
 
 § 13 
 
 The gaunt Shetlands were on their starboard beam 
 
 now, the dun Orkneys off the port bow. Sumburgh 
 
 Head dropped away, and they headed due west. . . . 
 
 The waves were laughing, the sun rose in a great
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 269 
 
 explosion abaft of them . . . The world was a very 
 small place . . . The universe so large. ... At dawn 
 the gulls chattered and whined, and screamed until 
 they felt immense, loneliness. . . . One seemed to be 
 intruding in a world of white feathers and cold inimical 
 eyes, and complaints in a language one could not 
 understand. ... So lonely ... so undefiled . . . the 
 home of the great whale . . . Here was the world as 
 God first made it . . . clean and beautiful and absolute. 
 . . . Up here steam engines seemed ridiculous toys. . . . 
 In winter the sleek seal and the great white bear. . . . 
 And the great crying of the gulls. . . . One thought of 
 Adelina Patti's great singing and wondered did it 
 matter a lot. 
 
 And they swung sou'west by sou' to leave the 
 Hebrides to port. They were on the last leg of the 
 voyage, and the wind still held. . . . 
 
 " O Shane, it's wonderful ..." She had come on 
 deck in her man's clothing. . . . She was so tall, so 
 slim, her legs so long, it seemed some pleasant feminine 
 fancy of hers, not a material adaptation to the life on 
 board ship. " The wind will hold until we get there." 
 
 " I don't like it," Shane grumbled. 
 
 " Why, Shane ? Why don't vou like it ? " 
 
 " We're too lucky." 
 
 " It isn't luck, Shane. It's the will of God." 
 
 " Hmm ! " 
 
 " Granva ! " 
 
 " Yes, Shane." 
 
 ' I've just been thinking. Why couldn't you 
 conspirators have chosen a better time of the year 
 than August for landing your arms ? There's only 
 about two hows of night."
 
 270 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " Because, Shane, the arms must be ready for 
 autumn, when the harvest is in. That's the best time 
 for a revolution. And the arms must be distributed. 
 And the men must drill a little. Now is our only 
 time." 
 
 " Hmm." 
 
 " O Shane, I wish you would be a little enthusiastic' 
 
 " Enthusiastic ? At forty-nine ! " 
 
 " Are you forty-nine, Shane ? You don't seem 
 thirty-nine. None could tell but for the little gray 
 in your hair. . . . And Shane ..." 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " I like your hair rumpled a little with the sea-air 
 . . . much better than when it is sleek in Antrim . . . 
 Shane, you don't know how well you look on board 
 ship." 
 
 " Och, be damned to that . . . Mr. Janssen, get 
 them to lay aft, and see if you can't get a little more 
 out of that mizzen ... A little more pocket in the 
 luff." . . . 
 
 § 14 
 
 They passed the Butt of Lewis, sailing due sou'west. 
 .... To port they left the Seven Hunters, changing 
 the course to sou'west by sou'. . . . The Hebrides 
 passed them like islands in a dream, purple, gleaming 
 strangely in the sunlight, now a black shower whipping 
 over them, now sunshine pouring in great floods. . . . 
 Lewis went by, and then Harris. . . . North Uist, 
 where the winds blow so hard, they have an old word : 
 Is traugh fear na droiche air mhachair Uistibh : 'Tis 
 a pity of the slut's husband on the plains of Uist.
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 271 
 
 You'll be needing buttons on your coat there. . . . 
 
 They passed Rona of the Seals, and Benbecula They 
 
 passed South Uist and Eriskay. . . . They passed 
 the Ponboy Isles. . . . The Islands of the Cat they 
 called them in Gaelic. . . . Faintly they saw the 
 mists of Hecla . . . heard the curlews. . . . They 
 saw fishing-boats with great brown sails. . . . 
 
 Honk-honk of wild ganders in the distance, and 
 occasionally the chugh of a diving bird. . . The 
 wind blew from the nor'west. . . . The foam 
 snarled beneath the bows. . . . 
 
 " I don't like it. . . . I don't like it. . . ." 
 
 " Shane, it is wonderful. . . . God is with us." 
 
 " Hunh. . . ." He saw the weather leaches flick. 
 .... " Don't let her come up," he roared at the 
 helmsman. " Steer her, you Swede bastard. . . . 
 Where the hell did you ever steer before ? On a 
 canal ? 
 
 " Shane ! " 
 
 " What is it, Granya ? " 
 
 " Your language, Shane ! " 
 
 " Listen, Granya . . . I'm not playing a comedy. 
 . . . I'm sailing a ship . . . that's on an errand I 
 don't like. ... If you don't like my language, get 
 below. ..." 
 
 " Sorry, Shane ! " she said with meek courtesy. 
 She stayed. . . . 
 
 They passed Skerryvore. . . . They passed Dhu 
 Heartach, Colonsay, Islay of McCrimmin. . . . Iririis- 
 trahull was on the weather beam. . . . They swung 
 eastward. . . . Innishowen Head showed off the port 
 bow. ... On an August afternoon, they slipped into 
 Lough Foylc. . . .
 
 272 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 § 15 
 
 The soft luminosity of a summer night was in it . . . 
 and a little moon, which Shane damned. . . . Before 
 them rose the. outline of Donegal. . . . On each beam 
 they could see faintly the outlines of the bay's arms. 
 .... The schooner moved under jibs and mizzen. 
 .... From the bow was the splash of the lead. . . . 
 
 " By the mark, five ! " 
 
 " Luff her a little, a little more . . . steady ! " 
 
 " Four fathoms, no bottom ! " 
 
 " Keep her off a point ! " 
 
 " By the deep, four ! " 
 
 " How's the bottom ? " 
 
 " Clean and sandy, sir ! " 
 
 " No bottom at three ! " 
 
 " Ready for'a'd to let go ? " 
 
 " All ready, sir ! " 
 
 " The mark three, no bottom ! " 
 
 " Lee— o ! . . . Hold her ! " 
 
 The long swish of oars, the rattle of oar-locks. . . . 
 A voice rapping out : 
 
 " Rest on the oars ! " And then : " Schooner 
 ahoy ! " 
 
 Shane's heart sank. He gave so answer. 
 
 " What ship is that ? " The voice rang over the 
 little bay . . . found a grotesque echo in some cliff. . . 
 
 " Who are you ? " 
 
 " Her Majesty's coastguards. Stand by. Coming 
 aboard. Lay on your oars, men ! " 
 
 And then . . . a long instant. . . . "Toss oars!" 
 
 " Bring her into the wind ! " Shane ordered. . . . 
 
 A scramble alongside, and some one was coming over
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 273 
 
 the waist rail. ... A firm step on deck. . Some 
 one was smiling. . . . 
 
 " My name's Flannagan, Lieutenant Flannagan. 
 
 . . . Sorry, Mr. Campbell, we can't let you land 
 . . . your cargo or your passenger. . . .' ' 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " Well, sir, we know what your cargo is, and my 
 orders are not to let you land. And I was to tell 
 you, sir, that you couldn't land anywhere." 
 
 " By God ! I knew it would end like this. 
 Are we under arrest ? " 
 
 " No, sir. . . . You are just not to land. I'm 
 sorry, sir, but. . . . Orders ! " 
 
 " Then what the blazes am I going to do ? " 
 
 " Jove, I don't know. Can't you bring the cargo 
 back where you got it ? " 
 
 " I suppose I'll have to do that. But my passenger. 
 
 . . I can put her ashore." 
 
 " I'm sorry, sir. But your passenger can't go 
 ashore, anywhere, any time, in Her Majesty's 
 dominions." 
 
 " Hmm ! " 
 
 He heard her quick step on the companionway. 
 
 " Shane." 
 
 " Shane, are you there ? " 
 
 ' Shane, Shane, what's wrong ? " She came into 
 the shrouded shrouded light of the binnacle. " Shane, 
 who — who is this ? 
 
 ' My name's Flannagan, Miss O'Malley — royal 
 navy — I'm sorry ; you can't land." 
 
 " What does it mean, Shane ? " 
 
 " You're beaten, Granya." 
 
 " Are we prisoners ? " 
 
 T
 
 274 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " No, Miss O'Malley, just you can't land. And 
 I'm very distressed to tell you. . . . You may 
 not land anywhere, any time, in Her Majesty's 
 dominions." 
 
 " That doesn't shut out Mr. Campbell, does it ? ' 
 
 " I've no orders against him, Miss O'Malley, barring 
 his landing his cargo or you. . . ." 
 
 She laid her hand on Shane's arm. . . . 
 
 " I'm sorry, Shane . . . I'm very sorry, my dear 
 — dear friend. . . . You were so good. . . . There 
 are few — would have sacrificed their time and pro- 
 fession, and everything — to help a woman on a wild- 
 goose ideal — like mine was. ... So please forgive 
 me ! " 
 
 " There's nothing to forgive, Granya. . . ." 
 
 " I want to do this ..." she leaned forward and 
 kissed him. . . . The lieutenant turned away. 
 " And now good-bye." 
 
 "Why good-bye? I'm not going ashore. I'll 
 stick." ' 
 
 " Dear Shane, you would." She caught his hand, 
 pressed, dropped it. Her voice rang out : " But I'm 
 going ashore. ..." She had swung over the taffrail 
 and dropped into the water with the soft splash of a 
 fish. . . . 
 
 " My God ... ! " Shane swore with rage. 
 " Wait. I'll get her. Will you stand by with 
 your boat ? " 
 
 " Right-o ! " Flannagan answered cheerily. 
 
 Shane kicked off his shoes, slipped out of his coat. 
 .... " This damned woman ! " he thought as he 
 dropped astern, came out, began to cast for direction 
 like an otter hound. ... He heard her soft, ryth-
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 275 
 
 mical strokes ahead. ... He tore after her . . . 
 caught up . . . reached her shoulder. . . . 
 
 " Come back, Granya ! " 
 
 " No, Shane." 
 
 He had decided, once he reached her, to turn her 
 back by force, but the strange, gentle voice restrained 
 him. All this matter of Ireland, all this expedition of 
 opera bouffe took on again a strange dimension when 
 she spoke. . . . All the time he had been foolish, he 
 knew, and, worse, looked like a fool, but some strange 
 magic of her voice made it seem natural . . . the 
 naive brave gestures. . . . One levitated above 
 common ground. . . . Even this moon-madness did 
 not seem trivial and a thing for laughter. ... A 
 dignity of ancient stories was on it. . . . The blue 
 Irish hills, soft as down, the little moon, and the tide 
 hurrying out of the lough to the great Atlantic. . . . 
 A wrench of the will and he gripped her shoulder : 
 
 " Shane, please don't ! " 
 
 " You're coming back, Granya." 
 
 ' I'm not, Shane, and please don't hold me. I'm 
 getting weak." 
 
 ' You'll never make it, Granya. And if you did, 
 where would you go on the Donegal hills ? " 
 
 ' I don't know, Shane. But please let me go, I 
 implore you. . . . Even if I do go down. . . . 
 l)'»n't you see ? There is nothing for me but this, or 
 death. . . . My life. ... O Shane, let me go ! ' 
 
 ' Quiet, Granya ! ' He caught her wrist. 
 
 ' Please, Shane. Please, I pray of you. ..." 
 She began to twist. ... " O Shane, you hurt." 
 
 " Quiet, Granya. Boat-o ! " 
 
 The lantern of the coastguards' cutter came nearer.
 
 276 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 .... The measured swish of the oars . . . the 
 creak. . . . She began to struggle fiercely. . . . 
 
 " Granya, if you don't keep quiet I'll have to hit 
 you. . . ." 
 
 " O Shane ! " she whimpered. . . . 
 
 " All right. Get her on board. Steady there. 
 Trim a little. Good ! " Flannagan and a great 
 bearded coastguard had her. . . . The silence was 
 broken with her little sobs. ... He helped her over 
 the waist of the schooner. . . . 
 
 " Go below, Granya, and get into some dry clothes. 
 
 . . . Mr. Flannagan, I'll take the boat back to St. 
 Petersburg. ... If Miss O'Malley doesn't land, 
 neither do I. May I send a letter ashore ? It's only 
 about business, and the place in the glens. ..." 
 
 " I'll take it and have it sent." 
 
 " Another thing ; we want to get some provisions 
 and water." 
 
 " Of course, sir. . . That's all right." 
 
 " Do you think one of the country girls could be 
 persuaded to come on board as Miss O'Malley's 
 maid ? " 
 
 ' I think so. We'll ask the local priest." 
 
 " Oh, yes, the priest. . . . Another thing : do 
 you think you could dig out a parson around here 
 somewhere and bring him on board ? " 
 
 " O Shane, what do you want that for ? " She 
 hadn't gone below, but waited in the companionway. 
 ' You don't think you're going wandering around 
 with me, casually, like this ? " 
 
 " But it's only to St. Petersburg, Shane ! " 
 
 " And then where do you go ? What do you do ? " 
 
 " I— I— I don't know."
 
 THE BOLD FENIAN MEN 277 
 
 " Better get the parson, Mr. Flannagan." 
 
 " Oh, but, Shane " she protested. 
 
 " Go below, Granya, and get those wet things off. 
 . . . . And get into women's clothes. 
 Granya ! " 
 
 " Yes, Shane. . . . Very well, Shane. . ."
 
 BOOK SEVEN 
 
 THE KINGDOM, THE POWER 
 AND THE GLORY
 
 § I 
 
 THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER AND THE GLORY 
 
 HE felt a little ashamed, a little shy, what with 
 his gray hairs, his paternity, that there should 
 still be a thrill in his heart, a sense of flight in him. 
 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 coining of the September dusk. 
 The quick-pacing people had given way to the clop- 
 clop-clop of hansom-cabs, and the tramcars 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 re- 
 laxingly. Soon the great lamps would flare, and the 
 crowds would be going to the playhouses : to Tony 
 Pastor's to see the new play, Dreams, or to Harrigan 
 and Hart's to see Investigation, or to Mr. Bartley 
 Campbell's latest, Separation, at the Grand Opera- 
 house. He would miss all this in Antrim, but Antrim 
 called him. . . . Ulster, our mother. . . . 
 
 And three months ago he had never thought this 
 possible. He had drilled himself into a mature 
 philosophy, saying : "It doesn't matter that I never 
 see Ireland again. I am happy here with Granya and 
 young Alan and Robin Beg, little Robin. All the 
 folks are kindly and the country is a great country, 
 and when my time comes to die there are sweet little 
 
 281
 
 282 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 places on Long Island where they can lay me within 
 sound of the sea, and the gentle snow will come and 
 cover me in winter, and in summer somewhere about 
 me the dogwood will blow, and the very green grass 
 come. And perhaps some young children will come 
 and play around my grave, and I shall hear their little 
 gurgling laughter, sweet as the voices of pigeons. . . . 
 And one day Granya will come. . . . Nothing is 
 more certain than that, that Granya will come. . . ." 
 
 But all the philosophy in the world could not shut 
 from his ears the little piping of Antrim. He would 
 say : " Tis little thought I gave to Antrim and I a 
 young man ! And what is a town or so to me, who 
 have seen all great cities ? " And again he said : 
 " Didn't you give up Antrim gladly when you got 
 Granya ? Wasn't she worth a hundred Antrims ? ' 
 And his heart and mind answered : " Yes, a thousand 
 Antrims ! " But a very queer thing, the little 
 haunting melody of the glens would not be stilled. 
 
 And it came to him thus : I am no longer a young 
 man. For all I look forty-five, as they tell me, yet I 
 am fifty-eight. The life of the body is over now. 
 That has passed, as a mood passes. And the mind 
 is fixed. In what remains of life to me, I must think, 
 divine, weigh. One prepares. . . . And thoughts 
 must not be disturbed. To grow old in a city that 
 is ever young, that is in its twenties itself, as it were — 
 makes an old man cold and afraid. Old buildings he 
 has known come down, old streets are obliterated. 
 It is a very terrible thing to be lonely when old, and 
 to feel everything passes, dies. ... All I have 
 loved is thrown away, is of no use. . . . Everything 
 old is in the way, and I am old. . . . The hawk-
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 283 
 
 eyed commercial men go about so that the streets 
 are filled with them. . . . And all the sweet things 
 that were said in Galilee seem only a casual all-but- 
 forgotten melody, and no revelation. . . . And then 
 comes a horrible memory of stark Ecclesiastes: " The 
 dead know not anything, neither have they any more 
 a reward ; for the memory of them is forgotten. 
 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, 
 is now perished ; neither have they any more a 
 portion for ever in any thing that is done under the 
 sun." And old men remember the sorrowful things 
 of their life, and how little happiness measured up 
 to the misery and toil of life, and they had hoped. . . . 
 But there were the words of the preacher : " Neither 
 have they any more a reward "... And secretly 
 and quietly old men weep. . . . 
 
 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 for ever. One can speak 
 to them. One can speak to ancient trees. And the 
 leaves rustle. . . . 
 
 And Granya had sensed it. . . . He might have 
 known she would. Conceal it as he might try, a 
 mysterious telepathy was between them. . . . She 
 knew. . . .
 
 284 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 It was she who had gone to the British Embassy 
 in Washington, telling Shane nothing. He had 
 heard of it afterwards. She hadn't pleaded or given 
 any promises. She had just flared into the startled 
 envoy. 
 
 " I wish to go back to Ireland." 
 
 " Unfortunately the Chief Secretary had the matter 
 of Miss O'Malley " 
 
 " I am not Miss O'Malley. I am Shane Campbell's 
 wife." 
 
 " But you are a dangerous enemy to the empire ! " 
 
 " Am I ? I had forgotten completely about the 
 empire." 
 
 " There was a little matter of a shipload of rifles 
 
 " And now it is a matter of a husband and two 
 children." 
 
 " Sure, Miss O'Malley ? " 
 
 " I am not Miss O'Malley. I am Shane Campbell's 
 wife. And I am absolutely sure." 
 
 It had been so easy after all. 
 
 And now, when it was true, it was hard to credit. 
 Within two weeks the ship would swing to port 
 around Donegal, and they would enter the bay they 
 had entered nine years ago, nine years and a 
 month ago, to be exact. He wondered whether it 
 would be a foggy morning, or a great golden after- 
 noon. It was a pity it had to be on board a steam- 
 ship, though. He would liefer have luffed in on 
 board a boat of his own, a great suit of snowy canvas 
 drawing joyously the Irish wind.
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 285 
 
 § 2 
 
 Upstairs he could hear and distinguish the feet 
 in the nursery. There was the patter of little Alan's 
 feet, and the stumble of Robin Beg's. There was the 
 shuffle of the nursemaid, and the firm, light tread of 
 Granya. Soon she would come down, after the children 
 were safely to bed, and little Alan's prayers were 
 heard. And they would go out to dinner in New 
 York for the last time. It was a little pang to leave 
 New York . . . Ah, but Antrim ! 
 
 He picked up his paper and read while waiting. . . . 
 It was queer how he could hardly focus his attention 
 on it, impatient for her as a schoolboy for his first 
 love. . . . Always when she entered a room came 
 beauty. . . . Well, she would come. . . . The type 
 took form beneath his eyes. . . . The races at 
 Sheepshead Bay ; Tom Martin had captured the 
 Twin City Handicap. ... In Ireland they would 
 go to the Curragh and Baldoyle to see the horses, and 
 the Dublin horse-show, and the hunts on a frosty 
 morning. . . . What was this ? Heavy bets laid 
 that Cleveland would be next President. The Irish 
 wouldn't like that. They were all for Blaine. It 
 was only the other night that Mrs. Delia Parnell, 
 Parnell's mother, had attended the great Irish rally in 
 the Academy of Music. . . . That was a mistake, 
 mixing up Irish politics with American statesmanship. 
 There would be folk to resent that, and rightly too. 
 . . . Too much talk of dynamite, and that horrible 
 thing in Phoenix Park. . . . What an involved, 
 emotional affair all this Irish matter was ! . . . To 
 understand Ireland one must understand Irishmen,
 
 286 THE WIND DLOWETH 
 
 that either hatred or love rule them. . . . Parnell, 
 though, looked hopeful. No emotion, all brains and 
 will. . . . He could not be side-tracked by prefer- 
 ment, or religion, or love for women. There was a 
 man whose head was firm on his shoulders ; he would 
 never be wrecked. . . Ah, here was something 
 Granya would be glad to hear : Margaret Mather got 
 a splendid reception in Pittsburg with her Lady 
 Macbeth. . . . Whew ! Cholera at Naples. That 
 was serious ! Not an over-clean people, the Italians. 
 ... Li Hung Chang degraded of his titles. Who 
 the blazes was Li Hung Chang anyway, and what 
 titles did he have ? . . . And Major Kitchener dis- 
 perses the Berber tribes. . . . How unimportant ! 
 Ah, here was something. Great gambling reported 
 on the City of Rome. Ah, there was what he always 
 contended, that steam would ruin everything. The 
 great sea a resort for gamblers ! In the old days, in 
 sail, when a captain was a captain, he'd have had 
 none of that on board clean timbers. ... He was a 
 little afraid the world was going to the dogs ! 
 
 Och ! Was that woman never coming down at all, 
 at all ? 
 
 He smiled to himself at how the Ulster speech came 
 back to him at the thought of Ulster. ... He turned 
 to the paper with an effort of will. . . . An Indian 
 outbreak feared in Western Montana. . . . Stanley 
 going to Egypt. . . . Policeman beaten up in 
 Brooklyn ; a tough place, Brooklyn ! . . . American 
 schooner arrested by Russian corvette for selling rum 
 to Bering Strait natives : a very strict modern people, 
 the Russians. . . . Picnics on Staten Island blamed 
 for ruin of young girls. . . . And Bismarck and the
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 287 
 
 Pope still sparring. Did that poor German think he 
 could ever get the better of the subtle Romans. . . ? 
 Och, what was keeping that woman ? 
 
 The light had become so dim that he could hardly 
 read. The tempo without quickened. People were 
 hurrying now, on their way to the restaurants for the 
 evening meal. From the restaurants to the theatre. 
 Home to sleep. And a new day with the old work 
 facing them. There was a fascination, a hypnosis to 
 New York. He felt a pang at leaving it. It had 
 been very friendly to him. And he would never see 
 it again. ... Ah, but he would remember it ! 
 
 § 3 
 It came to him with a sense of revelation that all 
 his life he had been looking forward : always the new 
 thing. And now he would be looking back. Always 
 before guessing. Looking back now, knowing, or 
 not quite knowing, but having before him material 
 from which to draw wisdom, truth. All his life it 
 seemed he had been gathering something. Now was 
 the time to sort it, weave it. . . . And then, what 
 was he to do with whatever he had made ? Toward 
 what end ? The paper he had in his hands dropped 
 to his knees. His eyes fixed on the windows where 
 the lights of the city began to shine, saw a haze, saw 
 nothing. His ears, listening to the clop-clop-clop of 
 the hansoms, heard only rhythm, then a faint har- 
 mony, then nothing. . . . Himself, within him, 
 seemed to see old scenes, to be in old scenes. The 
 little boy going down to the sea in ships, seeking an 
 1 land he had seen in a mirage . . . a mood of wonder.
 
 288 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 . . . There were feet, there was the world. Every 
 tree was an emerald miracle, every house a mystery, 
 all people were riddles. . . . Come, little boy, come 
 and look ! The instinct of the salmon for the sea. 
 The river where he was spawned hurries to the sea, 
 and his instinct is to go with it, not against it. . . . 
 It deepens and broadens, and ahead is always a 
 clearer pool, a more shadowy rock, a softer water-fern. 
 It is pleasant to swim under the sally branches, and 
 rapids, whip. . . . And there is the lull of an estuary 
 and the chush-chush of little waves, and he is in the 
 sea. . . . And now he must lay his own course. . . 
 The lure of the river has brought him so far. 
 
 And Shane thought : I was born a salmon in a 
 river. The stupid pretty trout remained in the river, 
 and the secretive eels. . . . And the perch and the 
 roach and the ponderous bream, and the pike that is 
 long of snout, they remained by the grassy waters. 
 . But those that are born salmon must go down 
 to the sea. . . . 
 
 A little shadow came into his face, and his breath 
 was caught sharp. He was remembering Moyra, 
 the wife he had, and he no older than a boy . . . Like 
 some strange fascinating, ugly dream that came to 
 him . . . And queerly enough, the picture of Moyra's 
 mother, the old wife of Louth, was clearer in his mind 
 than his wife. . . . Moyra was like some troubled cloud, 
 a thing that blotted out sunshine for a while, through 
 no fault of his own, but the mother was sinister. An 
 old woman keening, and the breath of whisky on her, 
 and her eyes sobering in a bitter greed. . . . Why should 
 Moyra have died ? Fate : the act of God : whatever 
 you care to call it. Why should he have been dragged
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 289 
 
 into it, Shane wondered. If he hadn't, what would 
 have happened ? He didn't know. But he knew this, 
 that in the marriage to Moyra he had been gripped 
 by the shoulder, and looked in the eyes, and a voice 
 had said : " Wait. All is not wonder and mystery. 
 Life is not a child's toy. You must learn." 
 
 Poor Moyra, he could hardly remember anything 
 but her pleading, half inimical eyes, her mouth that 
 twisted easily to anger, her shame that her arms and 
 legs were uncouth. And now she had loved him. 
 And now hated him. He remembered one May 
 evening when suddenly she had caught his hand and 
 kissed it, and pressed it to her heart. And later 
 that night she had cursed bitterly at him, saying black 
 was the day she had set eyes on him, and black the 
 day she married him, and her face was twisted into 
 agonized ugliness. And when he went to sea days 
 later he had found a symbol of her religion, an Agnus 
 Dei, sewed into his coat to protect him against the 
 terrors of the deep waters. 
 
 And she had died, poor tortured Moyra, suddenly. 
 Why ? Had What had fashioned her thought : 
 That's not rightly done ? No. That's poor. Wait. 
 I'll do it over . . . 
 
 Ah, well, God give her peace, wherever she wan- 
 dered ! How many years had it taken to get over, 
 not her death, but their being married ? A long time. 
 Seven bitter years. He might have turned into a 
 bitter, fierce old man, hating all things. The whole 
 thing had been like a cruelty to a happy wondering 
 child. And he had closed his heart, resentful, 
 afraid . . . And then had come Claire-Anne. 
 
 Once he had been a child with wondering gray eyes 
 
 U
 
 290 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 and life had made him blind as a mole, secretive as a 
 badger, timid of the world as the owl is timid of day- 
 light. The shock of Claire- Anne, and he was cogni- 
 zant of great enveloping currents of life. Wonders 
 he had known, and bitterness he had known, but the 
 immense forces that wind the stars as a clock is wound 
 he had not known. . . . And with Claire-Anne they had 
 burst about him like thunder. They had played 
 around him as the corposant flickers around the 
 mast-head of a ship. . . . Poor Claire-Anne ! The 
 miracle of her. She was like some flowering bush in 
 an arctic waste. . . . Her wonderful scared eyes, her 
 tortured self. ... It was a very strange thing that her 
 end did not bother him. ... A gesture of youth, that 
 sudden snap of the wrist with the poor dead prince's 
 dagger. . . . He had been very honest about it, and it 
 did not bother him, any more than it would have been 
 on his conscience to have shot a crippled horse. . . . 
 Once it had seemed to him unnecessarily histrionic, 
 but now he knew it was merciful. . . . Her spirit had 
 gone too far ever to return to normal life. . . . 
 
 But the little woman of the East, that did bother 
 him. In boyhood he had known the wonder of life 
 In youth he had known there existed sordid tragedy. 
 In young manhood passion had crashed like lightning 
 . . . And then he had thought he knew all. He had 
 considered himself the master of life and said : "I 
 will do such and such a thing and be happy. Enjoy 
 this, because I know how to enjoy it. To the wise 
 man, all is a pleasant hedonism." It struck him at 
 the time how terribly foolish and piteous great men 
 were. . . . Jesus dead on a crucifix ; Socrates and the 
 hemlock bowl ; the earnest Paul beheaded at Rome.
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 291 
 
 ... A little wisdom, a little callousness would have 
 avoided all this. . . . How satisfied he was, how damned 
 petty ! His little bourgeois life, his harem of one pretty 
 girl, his nice ship . . . smug as a shop-keeper . . . 
 and then life, fate, whatever you call it, had tripped 
 him up, abashed, bested him, through the medium of 
 mountebank wrestler whom he had conquered in a 
 a street brawl . . . 
 
 And afterwards, seven years of blackness and despair. 
 The long reach to Buenos Aires, and the querulous 
 sea-birds mocking him : On the land is desolation 
 and pettiness and disappointment. . . . And what is 
 there on the sea ? The great whale is dying ; the 
 monster who ranged the deep must go because men 
 must have oil to cast up their accounts by the light 
 of it, and women must have whalebone for stays. 
 . . . The sleek seal with brown gentle eyes must die 
 that harlots shall wear fur. . . . And there never was a 
 Neptune or a Mannanan mac Lir. . . . They were 
 only stories from a foolish old book. . . . The sun shines 
 for a moment on the green waters, and your heart 
 rises. . . . But remember the blackness of the typhoon, 
 and how the cold left-hand wind rages round the 
 Horn. . . . And the coral islands have great reefs like 
 knives, and the golden tropics lure to black lethal 
 snakes. . . . Fool ! Fool ! We have ranged the clouds, 
 and there is no good-willing God. . . . There is only 
 coldness and malignant things. ... So cried the 
 querulous sea voices, and they tempted him : " All 
 you have known is desolation and vanity. 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,
 
 292 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 problem 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 ! had died, and he had gone back to 
 Ireland, and met Granya, and been foolish as a boy 
 in his teens. A shipload of rifles to free Ireland ! 
 What a damned fool he had felt when they had simply 
 shooed him away ! 
 
 He thought to himself with a little smile that 
 out of the wisdom of his life had always come sorrow, 
 and out of his foolishness had come joy. . . . Granya, 
 and peace, and meaning to his life. ... A very foolish 
 thing it had been, that expedition. . . . But he wouldn't 
 have it laughed at, nor laugh at it himself. . . . Over 
 the mists of the past the thing took glamour. ... He 
 had been more moved than he had allowed himself to 
 believe then. And here in his New York drawing- 
 room, remembering the old heroic-comic gesture, and 
 remembering tragedies of material that were glorifica- 
 tion of spirit, he thought for an instant he had solved 
 the mystery of Ireland, . . . Ireland was a drug. . . . 
 Out of the gray weeping stones, and the bogs of red 
 moss and purple water, and from the proud brooding 
 mountains, and the fields green as a green banner, 
 there exhaled some subtle thing that made men lose 
 sense of worldly proportion. . . It was in their mother's 
 milk, a subtle poison. It crept into their veins, and 
 hough they might leave Ireland, yet for generations
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 293 
 
 would it persist. ... It gave them the gift of laughter, 
 and contempt for physical pain, and an egregious 
 sensitiveness. ... So that the world wondered. . . . 
 their wars were merry wars, and their poetry sobbed, 
 like a bereaved woman. . . . They threw their lives 
 away recklessly, and a phrase meant much to them. 
 . . . Perhaps they knew that action counted nothing, 
 and emotion all . . . Ah, there he was losing himself ! 
 
 At any rate, Ulster Scot though he was, he didn't 
 regret it — apart even from its bringing him Granya. 
 Perhaps at the news of it, some hard English official 
 might feel a twitch at his heart-strings, and remem- 
 bering that the Irish were as little children, be kind 
 to some reprobate Celt. . . . An action had so many 
 antennae. One never knew where it's effects stopped, 
 if ever. . . . 
 
 A foolish thing that had brought him joy where 
 wisdom brought him sorrow ! Strange. Until then 
 he had been existent, sentient, but never until then 
 alive. Wonder, disillusionment, passion, tragedy, 
 despair. In each of these moods he had had a glimpse 
 now and then, of an immense universal design, as a 
 bird may have it, and its throat quivering with song, 
 or as a salmon may have it, and he flinging himself 
 tremendously over a weir. He knew it, as a tree 
 knows when the gentle rains of April come. But 
 that he existed, as an entity apart from trees, from 
 salmon, and from birds, he had not known until 
 Granya, broken, had crept weeping into his arms. . . . 
 ' Give me strength, Shane, for God's sake. Give 
 me strength, or I die ! " 
 
 And somewhere, out of something, some esoteri- 
 where he had plucked strength and given it to her,
 
 294 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 and he knew it wasn't from his body, or from his mind, 
 or his spirit even, he had given it. He had, from some 
 tremendous storehouse, got life for her, got peace, so 
 that she fluttered like a pigeon and sighed and grew 
 calm. . . . And in that moment he knew he was alive. 
 
 He tried to figure it to himself in terms of concrete 
 things, and he said : " If I were on a racing-boat now, 
 I would decide how to make a certain buoy, and my 
 mind would figure how to get there, what tack to make, 
 the exact moment of breaking out the spinnaker round- 
 ing the mark. Perhaps my mind is nothing, some- 
 thing I use just now, as I use my body. For the 
 hand on the rudder is not I. It is something I 
 am using to hold that rudder. As I might lash it 
 with a rope, if I were so minded. And my eyes are 
 just something I use. They are just like the indica- 
 tors on the stays ; they and the indicators are one, to 
 tell me how the wind shifts. All that is not I. It is 
 something I use. Perhaps even my mind is something 
 I use, as I use my hands. But somewhere, somewhere 
 within me, is I." 
 
 And a great sense of exaltation and wonder and 
 dignity swept through every fiber of him at the 
 thought of this : new-born he was, clean as a trout, 
 naked as a knife, strong as the sea. He was one of 
 the lords of the kindly trees, masters of the pretty 
 flowers : the little animals of God were given him, 
 it being known he would not abuse the gift. . . . 
 And though lightning should strike him yet he woisld 
 not die, but put off his body like a rent garment. . . . 
 And though he were to meet the savage bear in the 
 forest and have no means of conquering it, yet were 
 he to become aware of this entity of life in him, he
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 295 
 
 would smile at the thought of physical danger, and the 
 great furry thing would recognize that dignity and be 
 abashed. . . . And there was no more wonder, or 
 mystery, or fear, only beauty. . . . The moon was not 
 any more a mystery, but a place to be trodden one 
 day, were his place to be there. . . . And the furthest 
 star was no further than the furthest island on terres- 
 trial seas ; one day he would reach that star, somehow, 
 as now he could the furthest island with head and 
 hand. . . . Though death should smite his body he 
 would not die. 
 
 § 4 
 
 A strange thing was this, that Granya had always 
 known this life. It was so certain to her that it was 
 no more a wonder than rain is, or sunshine, or the 
 rising of the moon. . . . 
 
 He had spoken of it to her one evening in the 
 dusk. She had smiled, her grave beautiful smile. 
 
 ' Of course I know, Shane. I always knew." 
 
 " But how did you know, Granya ? " 
 
 ' I think," she said, " I think all good women 
 know, Shane. Men are so complete, so welded. 
 Mind and body seem to be themselves ; the body and 
 mind function so that one doesn't see that there is 
 anything within that directs them. They are com- 
 pact. But a woman is diffuse, Shane. Her mind is 
 not a man's mind ; it is a thing she can use when she 
 wants to and then forget. . . . When women sit and 
 think, you know, they aren't thinking. They are 
 feeling, Shane. It comes like a little wind. There 
 may be a place by the sea-shore, sparse heather and
 
 296 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 sandy dunes, and the little waves come chiming, and 
 the curlew calls. And you sit. And a very strange 
 peace comes to you, so that in a low soft voice you 
 sing a verse of song. ... Or it may come on the cold 
 winds of winter, through the ascetic trees. . . . But 
 women are always cognizant of God. . . . Even bad 
 women, Shane, who mistake the Unknown God for 
 the true. . . . And a woman is very much apart from 
 her body. It is just a nuisance at times, or at times a 
 thing of beauty, or at times a thing one expresses 
 something with, something that is too deep for words, 
 as with a violin. And to some it is a curse. . . . 
 But a body is always apart from one, and a mind is, 
 too. . . . Shane, you have seen very beautiful old wo- 
 men. . . . 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. For they have minds, Shane, pursuits 
 — the amassing of money, the little light of fame, that 
 is only a vanity — not real. . . . But Shane, no matter 
 how hard a man has to work, a woman has more 
 terrible things. . . . There is no man on earth can 
 understand the bearing of children. . . . And there is 
 no man, were he to think of it, try to know, but 
 would rather die than submit to what he thinks that 
 terror. . . . And yet, Shane, it is not so much. . . .
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 297 
 
 After a little agony, when one goes into the dark, olive 
 valley, and strength seems to go from you in great 
 waves, until you are robbed of strength as a man may- 
 be robbed of blood. . . . Then one goes out of one's 
 self and gets it. . . . The beauty in the face of young 
 mothers, of brides. That is not body or mind, Shane, 
 that is their selves. This was the Eleusinian mystery, 
 Shane, that women know that God lives, and that 
 they cannot die. . . . 
 
 " See, Shane, the stars are out. The dew is falling. 
 And on the morrow you must be afoot early. Shall 
 we go in ? " 
 
 "Come " 
 
 Once, before Alan Oge was born, a wave of panic 
 swept over him, and he caught her hand and looked 
 at her : 
 
 " What is it, Shane ? " 
 
 " If — if you should die — " 
 
 ' I shall not die, Shane. I know. I shall not 
 die." 
 
 " But how do you know ? " 
 
 " I just know, Shane. That's all." 
 
 " O Granya, it seems very terrible, that one day 
 one of us should die." 
 
 " Dear Shane, it is not very terrible. If I should 
 die, my heart, I should know I would not have long 
 to wait. And I should be with you, Shane, even 
 dead, when I could. . . . And after days of trouble 
 -uddenly one morning you would know you had had 
 a good night's sleep, and that would be because I had 
 come to you in the night and had kissed you, and laid 
 a dim hand on you . . . And sometimes, in difficulties, 
 you would feel a sudden rush of strength, and that
 
 298 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 would be because I was beside you . . . dear heart, 
 dear Shane." 
 
 " I am so much older Granya. I shall be the 
 first to die." 
 
 " If you are the first to go, Shane, I shall be like 
 some wife of the Crusades, of an old time when a 
 dream meant more than a pocketful of money . . . 
 and men were glad to go, and women glad to send 
 them. I shall sit by my fire, and when you come I 
 shall talk to you in my heart . . . saying little foolish 
 sweet things. . . . And when I need you, I shall go out 
 into the soft night, and call, and you will hear my 
 voice in the Milky Way . . . and God will let you come 
 . . . my darling ..." 
 
 " Granya ! " 
 
 " And maybe — sweet, sweet thought — He will let 
 us go together. ..." 
 
 § 5 
 Here was a great fact, that he lived, but with the 
 fact came a problem : Why ? If within him there 
 existed this sentient, supple, strong thing, and it did 
 exist, for what end was it designed ? It was not 
 enough to have faith, to know one lived to save one's 
 soul. . . . That was selfish, and selfishness was an 
 unpardonable thing, the sin against the Holy Spirit, 
 which has ordained there should be one occult purpose. 
 
 .... No, everything had a reason The 
 
 sheltering trees, the ocean from whose womb came 
 the great clouds that nurtured the green grass : the 
 winds that were like gigantic brooms. The wise and 
 the good laboured, and never shirked. . . . Each 
 man must give according to his station, the strong
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 299 
 
 man of strength, the wise one of wisdom ; the one 
 who knew beauty must give it somehow, not huddle 
 it like a miser's hoard. . . All men must work ; that 
 was as natural an instinct as the law that men must 
 eat : and work did not mean grinding, but justifying 
 one's existence fully. . . . None may hold back, for 
 that is ignoble, and all that is ignoble dies, dies and 
 is used again. . . . The murderer's dead body may 
 nurture a green bay-tree, such beautiful economy 
 nature has. . . . And it seemed to him that the 
 souls of dark men were used too, but used as negations, 
 and that was death. . . . Perhaps they provided 
 the sinister thunderstorms, the terrible typhoon, the 
 cold polar breezes, the storms off the Horn. . . . 
 They might be the counterpoint of nature's harmony. 
 . . . But this was going past knowledge, and past 
 knowledge of heart and head one must not go. . . . 
 But of one thing he was certain ; all that is ignoble 
 dies. . . . 
 
 He had always known from the time he was a young 
 boy that man must do something. ... It was not 
 sufficient to make a little money and sit down and 
 spend it, as a dog finds a bone and gnaws it, or buries 
 it, in a solitary place. . . . For a long time he had 
 thought it sufficient to do the little commerce of the 
 world. . . . But that was not sufficient. ... In 
 Buenos Aires he had felt ridiculous, as a giant might 
 feel ridiculous carrying little stones for the making of 
 a grocer's house. . . . Ashamed, a little resentful ! 
 He was like a dumb paralytic with flaming words in 
 his heart and brain, and he could not write them, not 
 even speak them aloud. . . .
 
 joo THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 But all his life this had worried him, the getting of 
 work to do. And when he came to America with 
 Granya he had come with great plans. Ships and 
 ship-building were the only things he knew, and he 
 had thought with others that the great clipper days 
 might be revived. Iron steamships were grasping 
 the swift commerce of the world, but there were 
 errands great wooden ships under skysails might yet 
 be supreme in ; the grain trade of San Francisco, for 
 instance. And it might be possible, so he had 
 dreamed, that once more the great pre-war clippers 
 should be the pride of the new idealistic common- 
 wealth . . . and what had come from his hand ? A 
 half-dozen three-masted schooners, and not very 
 good schooners either, being too long in the hull for 
 strength. . . . And nobody seemed to care. . . . 
 From Belfast and the Clyde, iron boats swarmed like 
 flies. . . . And people were impatient. . . . They 
 did not care to wait if a ship were blown from her 
 course. . . . They wanted ships on time. . . . 
 People had laughed at him, calling him crazy, and 
 saying he was trying to stem progress. . . . And 
 then they had done worse. . . . They had smiled 
 and said it was a hobby of his. ... He knew it was 
 no use. He quit. . . . And Granya had been very 
 tender. 
 
 " You mustn't mind, Shane. It was very lovely 
 of you to dream and act. . . . But it is not in- 
 tended. Don't take it to heart, dearest." 
 
 " All my life, Granya, I have been trying to do 
 something, and I always fail." 
 
 " Dear Shane, you never fail. The success is in 
 yourself, not outside of yourself. That is all."
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 301 
 
 " Ah, yes, Granya, but that is not enough. That 
 seems so selfish. So many men have done so much 
 for the world, and I have done nothing. Even the 
 old charwoman on her knees scrubbing floors has 
 done more. She has given her best, and her best 
 has been useful." 
 
 " But Shane, you must wait. Have patience." 
 "lam old, Granya, and have done nothing." 
 " Wait, Shane, wait. I am going to dim the light, 
 and blur all these things around us, and tell you a 
 secret thought has been deep in my heart for years. 
 There will be we two just in the room — absolute. 
 And come nearer the fire, dear Shane, where I can 
 just see where your hand is, and put my hand on it 
 when the thought makes me feel like a child in a 
 great wood. . . . Shane. . . . 
 
 " You know your charts, the charts you use and 
 you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what 
 stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon 
 and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog-star, and 
 Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar 
 star. . . . And all the constellations, the Milky 
 Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the 
 Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass 
 the line, the Southern Cross . . . and the little stars 
 you have no names for, but mark them on your chart 
 with quaint Greek letters. . . . Our little world is 
 so little, so pathetically little in this immensity. . . 
 It is as though we were living on the smallest of 
 islands, like some of the islands you have known and 
 you on board ship following the moon down the West 
 — Saba, where the Dutch are in the Caribbean, or 
 Grenada, the very little island. . . . And on that
 
 302 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 ■ ■ -■ - ■ — ■ ■ ■ — ■ — --■ ._. . _ I M . I . II .... | . a 
 
 island they know only vaguely that such great lands 
 as Africa and Europe and Asia are. . . . They 
 don't know it from experience. . . . But Peking of 
 the bells exists, and stately Madrid, and Paris that 
 is a blaze of light, and London where the fog rolls 
 inland from the sea. . . . Heart of my heart, how 
 terrible it is that folk cannot, will not see, understand. 
 . . . And they say : Well, we don't see it. Here we 
 were born and here we die. . . . And they say : 
 Show us somebody who has been there. . . . They 
 forget how long is the journey and how a man may 
 have affairs in the crowning cities. . . . Dearest, I 
 am losing myself, but I know. 
 
 " And this is what I want to tell you, Shane, that 
 when you die — oh, such an ugly word that is, Shane, 
 for the bud bursting into flower — when it is your time 
 to leave here, Shane, there will be a place for you, not 
 idleness at all. . . . All the stars, Shane, the valleys 
 of the moon. . . . There is work, Shane dear. 
 Nothing is perfect, else there should be no reason for 
 life. There must be stars that are old, as Dublin is 
 old, and need vitality. . . . There must be stars 
 that are young and cruel, as this city is young and 
 cruel, and need sweet strength. . . . But I am very 
 presumptuous, Shane, to try and fathom the Great 
 Master's plan. ... It is so colourful — oh, there is 
 no word or symbol for it, Shane. . . . But there is a 
 Great Master and there is a Plan. . . . 
 
 " Heart, I tell you this, showing all my weakness 
 of thought. You know it is the truth, too. . . . But 
 I tell you I know, so that our two selves' knowing 
 may make it a little stronger in us. . . . 
 
 " O Shane, I have no logic, I know. . . . And all
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 303 
 
 the logicians in the world could not shame me to myself. 
 All the reason in the world could not shake me. It 
 would be artillery shot against the wind. ... 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 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. ... I know 
 there is a place in the coming days, and I know I shall 
 be with you, wherever you go. . . . 
 
 " Here in this dim room, Shane, I know these 
 things. Outside is the world, that is forgetting or 
 that doesn't care, or will not see. Here in this dim 
 room, with the red of the fire turning to a gentle 
 yellow, I know it better than the people in churches, 
 that kindly God lives, that I love you, Shane, and 
 that we shall not die. . . ." 
 
 § 6 
 It seemed to him that he must have been in reverie 
 for ages, so much had he thought sitting there, so 
 much felt. ... He had been like a gull poised on the 
 wing, and now he dropped gently to the calm waters. 
 .... New York to-day, and in two weeks Antrim, 
 and then a rest. . . . And then wider spaces than
 
 304 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 he had ever known, greater adventure. ... A day 
 would come when he would be called, as though some 
 one had said : Shane Campbell ! and then a gesture 
 that made a horse stumble, or a flaw of wind that 
 would turn over a boat. . . . Click ! . . . 
 
 And it seemed to him that it would be not only 
 sweeter, but wiser to die in Antrim. . . . New 
 York was no place for a man like him to die. For an 
 old man, weary with life's work, there would be gentle 
 hands, and soft caring, and guidance for tired eyes. 
 . . . But for a man young spiritually, strong, there 
 would be no coddling. . . . He would be expected 
 to jump forward at the call. . . . And to go through 
 the maze of smoke and dust, and the evil jungles of the 
 air one sensed in a great city would be — waste of time 
 and energy. ... In Antrim when the call would 
 come there would be the clear high air, the friendly 
 glens, the great encouraging mountains, and the 
 Moyle laughing in the moonlight : Don't be em- 
 barrassed ! Don't be afraid ! 
 
 Above, he heard a door shut. There was no 
 longer the patter of the boys' feet on the floor, nor 
 the drag of the maid's shoes, but Granya's firm, light 
 step he could sense somehow, and then came a little 
 sound to him, that he knew was her dropping to her 
 knees by Alan Beg's bed, while she recited for him, 
 taught him, the great prayer. . . . Shane bowed 
 his head in reverence. . . . He could see the dim 
 beauty of her face, her great trusting eyes, her sweet 
 hands. . . . Almost could he hear her voice, so 
 close was she in his heart. . . .
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 305 
 
 § 7 
 " Our Father, ..." 
 
 He could see the symbols that were in her mind, 
 because they were in his too, the gentle pictures that 
 translated the thought these words evoked . the great 
 majestic figure with the strong hands and gentle eyes, 
 the eyes that smiled when colts gambolled, or a. rabbit 
 flashed across the grass, that loved the beauty of the 
 garden when He walked in it at the close of day. One 
 felt Him now and then as He went through His 
 smallest world, perhaps in the evening when the 
 crickets sang, perhaps over the moonlit waters, or 
 with the little winds of dawn. . . . Such strength 
 and kindliness. And the majestic eyes were troubled 
 for, sympathetic toward the wayward, the bothered, 
 the weak. . . . They only hardened with the pro- 
 mise of terror for the hypocrite, the traitor, for those 
 who devoured widows' houses. . . . 
 " Which art in heaven ..." 
 He smiled to himself at the thought of heaven. 
 There was where one's fancy was free, to realise all 
 the sweet desires of what was good in one. ... To 
 those who deserved it God would not begrudge His 
 heaven. ... A quiet place, Shane thought, a 
 hushed place, a place of rest. . . . Whither one 
 might go to realise 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 tryst ing-
 
 306 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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 recogni- 
 tion. . . . All the great ships one had wondered at 
 would appear when called, their spread of snowy 
 canvas, their tapering spars. . . . All the dogs one 
 had had would be there . . . their yelps of joy, their 
 sweet brown eyes, their ears up, their tails wagging 
 ... all the dogs would be there ! 
 
 " Hallowed by thy Name ..." 
 
 The head must bow there. The name evoked a 
 thought, and the thought was ineffable, such glory 
 and sweetness and strength it had .... Names 
 brought pictures. When the word " Helen " was 
 uttered, one saw the burned towers of Troy. . . . 
 And " Venice," massive shadows and great moonlit 
 waters. . . . And Genghis Khan brought the riot 
 of galloping horses and the Tartar blades a-flash. . . . 
 Such power great words had, and this was the 
 greatest word, so great as to be terrible, and not to 
 be mentioned by petty men, who cheapen with their 
 grudging tongues. ... No picture there, but some 
 great anthem of the stars. . . . Not as yet could 
 our ears hear it. . . . Nor would they ever hear it, 
 if we had not reverence. 
 
 " Thy kingdom come ..." 
 
 Some immense plan existed, which human mind 
 could never see. No practical wisdom could ever 
 grasp. Were all the sum of practical wisdom gathered 
 in a little room, and infused with spirit until it burst 
 the four walls of the world, yet it might not grasp it. 
 .... Yet all things worked that this plan should 
 come to fruition. The stars rolled in their courses.
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 307 
 
 The great winds came. There fell the rain of April 
 and the soft December snow. . . . And the kingdom 
 was a good kingdom, for nothing evil conquered ever. 
 ... It died and was eliminated, and when it was all 
 as nothing then might the kingdom come ; no arbitrary 
 blowing of Gabriel's trumpet, but that foremost 
 sweetness that comes from the west wind. . . . 
 
 " Thy will be done on earth ..." 
 
 It was always done on earth, but the ignoble, the 
 inglorious, the small, put their petty obstacles in its 
 way, and delayed the coming of the kingdom. . . . 
 Men grew engrossed in their affairs, grew self-sufficient. 
 A little money in their pockets, and God was forgotten. 
 A little more and they despised their fellow-men, and 
 hatred arose. And evil wars came, and years were lost 
 . . . Cunning men put the emotions, the ideals, the 
 actions of glorious men up for barter. . . . And the 
 men took the land and the waters and the light, and 
 worked tortuously until they could sell them at a 
 price. . . . And the things God had made for his 
 people were the means to procure these dark folk wine 
 and mistresses and the state of kings. . . . Such was 
 not the doing of the Will. . . . But one day it would 
 be worked out by men how these things could not ever 
 again be. . . . The slow, certain coming of the 
 kingdom. . . . 
 
 " As it is in heaven ..." 
 
 From the green resting-place came all that was 
 sweet and harmonious, the shape of clouds, the high 
 spirit of horses, the loyalty of dogs, the graceful 
 movement swans have, and the song of the lesser 
 birds. From that green resting-place came the gold 
 of the gorse, and the sweet line of trees, and the purple
 
 308 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 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. Let not the 
 green tree wither, but send it rain. And give a little 
 softness to the hearts of callous men. And remind 
 us that widows live, and that there are fatherless. 
 Teach us how to heal sickly children, and be easy on 
 horses. And give us gentleness. And when roses 
 grow on the walls in June, put a bud in our hearts. . . . 
 " And forgive us our trespasses ..." 
 The picture that came into Shane's mind then was 
 not the picture of an abased man beating his breast, 
 but the thought of a mature man clanging through 
 the halls of heaven past every guard until he 
 came where wisdom and beauty was, and standing 
 and throwing back his head : " I have done wrong," 
 he would say, " rotten wrong, and I'm wretched about 
 it." And there would be an answer : " You did right 
 to come." 
 
 "As we forgive them that trespass against us . . . 
 Ah ! That was hard ! 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
 
 KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY 309 
 
 increase of the years, and with maturitj' 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 that Destiny, the strange veiled One, 
 balanced in His own wise time the evil done a man 
 with unexpected good. . . . One grew wiser even 
 yet with the years and knew that a great wrong was 
 outside one's personal jurisdiction. . . . One had 
 to leave that to the broad justice of the High God. . 
 One could appeal there, as with the old cri de havo of 
 Norman law. . . . Haro ! havo ! A I' aide, man 
 prince. On me fait tort ! Hither ! Hither ! Help 
 me, my king ; one dropped on one's knees in the 
 market-place : I am being injured overmuch ! And 
 it was the prince's duty to help feal men. ... To 
 forgive trespasses — only one understood in maturity, 
 one grew to it. . . . The strong and wise were the 
 meek, not the weaklings . . . the men who knew 
 that justice was absolute . . . the men with the calm 
 eyes and the grim smile, they were the terrible 
 meek. . . . 
 
 " And lead us not into temptation ..." 
 A little cry of humility that was a very human 
 reminder to the Only Perfect One that we in this very 
 small world were weak. Work we had to do, destinies 
 to fulfil, but under weakness, or from false strength, 
 one might wander from our appointed path. . . . 
 The power of office, let it not breed arrogance . . the 
 sense of money, let it not bring smug callousness. . . . 
 And the singers of the world be proud only of the 
 trust, but humble in themselves as the birds are 
 among the trees. . . . And let not strength have 
 contempt, but gentleness. . . .
 
 310 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 " But deliver us from ..." 
 
 There were dark places in the world, and one 
 needed guidance there, protection. . . . From Satan, 
 who is not a spirit, but a horrible miasma, that floats 
 in little vapours here and there, when the clean winds 
 are resting . . . from the warm inviting and evil 
 jungle where one might seek relief in distress, or having 
 been overlong in the high air . . . from the twisted 
 souls of dark men and women who seek to sully as 
 with writhing, piteous hands . . . from deep sinister 
 pools we know are thick with horror, but feel charmed 
 toward, as one feels like plunging to death from the 
 summit of some building terribly high. . . . From 
 these, Lord God, deliver us ! 
 
 " For thine is the kingdom, The power, And the 
 glory. 
 
 " For ever and ever." 
 
 America, 1920-1922.
 
 NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
 Published by the House of 
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 By DONN BYRNE 
 
 Author of " Messer Marco Polo" 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper by C. E. Brock. 
 
 Price 6s. net 
 
 CarlyLB thunders at us through the damnatory rhythm of the Bible. 
 Mr. Donn Byrne seeks melody from the same book. Through all the 
 intimacy which dialect creates, his imagery and repetitions of some happy 
 phrase like "the moons were born and died" — decorative and deliberate 
 as is its use — ring true. 
 
 Mr. Byrne is a writer of quite exceptional power, of singular facility 
 and skill. He achieves his effects with but few words. So admirably 
 adroit is their choice that it is difficult to imagine his story as presented 
 in any other phraseology. The pluck and terse weight of them force 
 their way through all those complications which ordinarily hamper young 
 writers. These see visions and dream dreams, but the inability to portray 
 them is proverbial. "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait." 
 
 His "style," the verbal mystery of individuality, is excellent. 
 
 THE PRESS ON DONN BYRNE'S FIRST WO RK 
 
 "The essential thing about this book is that it is prodigal in the transforming 
 magic which— heaven knows in how few books — quite incommunicahly lends 
 romantic beauty to this or that not necessarily unusual or fertile thcnie, some- 
 what as sunset tinges the wooded and barren mountains with equal glamour. 
 It does not surprise the reader to hear that this book made its writer's reputa- 
 tion in America. This reviewer has so much enjoyed it — wept and laughed 
 and taken to tie irt the beauty of it — that she hopes others will have the une 
 joy. In (act the book is one that you read and turn back to read again, till 
 you know much of it by heart." — Bookman. 
 
 Irish Independent says of Dons l'.yrne: "One of the most racy and 
 
 tones it has been our lot to read for a considerable time. The 
 author is Irish, the book has a thorough Irish atmosphere, and the dialogue 
 
 ristically Irish bias that I refreshing, fascinating, and pies ing, 
 
 I book sure of SUCCeSS and popularity, and we hope to have many otliei , 
 of the same kind from Mr. Byrne.' 
 
 *
 
 SAMPSON LOW'S LIST OF NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
 CARNISS AND COMPANY 
 
 By HENRY ST. JOHN COOPER 
 
 Author of "Sunny Ducrow," "The Imaginary Marriage," etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper. 6s. net 
 
 This new book by Henry St. John Cooper, will appeal not only to the 
 novel reading public by reason of the well-told story, but also to the many 
 who interest themselves in bric-a-brac and the hundred and one odd things 
 found by the discerning in old curiosity marts. 
 
 Camiss and Company, like Quinneys, has for its setting the shops of 
 dealers in old furniture, pictures, and such things. It is an unusual book 
 containing much queer information, all told in the guise of readable fiction, 
 through which a delicate and romantic love story runs. 
 
 The book is charmingly dedicated to the author's sister, Miss Gladys 
 Cooper, whose rendering of the part of Paula Tanqueray has put the crown 
 upon her reputation as one of the half-dozen leading actresses of our day. 
 
 WHERE THE ROADS CROSS 
 
 By SILAS K. HOCKING 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Picture Wrapper 
 
 T RIBUTES OF THE PRE SS 
 
 Sir William Robertson Nicoll once said that the average popularity of 
 an author was not more than seven years. Mr. Hocking has been writing for 
 more than thirty years, and it is a great tribute to record that none of his books 
 is out of print. This is singularly exceptional popularity, for Mr. Hocking 
 has been writing five times seven years. 
 
 Very few authors have had so wide an experience as preacher, lecturer, 
 journalist, politician, social reformer, and traveller. Mr. Hocking has 
 mixed with all sorts and conditions of men, and in many parts of the world. 
 Hence he writes from close observation and an intimate acquaintance with his 
 subject. 
 
 A well-known contributor to the Academy says : — 
 
 " Mi. Silas Hocking is probably the most popular of living novelists. He 
 was born to the craft. I am convinced that he never courted popularity. He 
 has the single eye. His work is the work of a man with a moral ideal. To 
 win admiration at the smallest cost of insincerity would be repugnant to him. 
 He writes obviously to please one person, and that in pleasing one person he 
 pleases a thousand thousand is due to the fate which combined in him the 
 common vision with the vocal gift. Such success as his is not the reward of 
 contrivances or artificiality or even of long striving. It is not achieved ; it 
 comes. ' The wind bloweth where it listeth.' " 
 
 " Mr. Silas Hocking enjoys the enviable reputation of being the most popular 
 of living story writers." — Daily Mail,
 
 SAMPSON LOW'S LIST OF NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
 DEEDLES 
 
 By SIDNEY H. WEBB 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper by Alfred Leete. 
 
 6s. net 
 
 THE STORY 
 
 Something fresh in novels. Romance and humour are ingeniously inter- 
 twined in this lively, laughter-compelling story. Deedles is the name of 
 the damsel in distress. A disaster to a sinster-looking idol which has 
 been entrusted to her father's care is the cause of Deedles' distress, and 
 "Deedles not Wordles" being her motto, she enlists the services of a 
 couple of unknown knights — one from Hammersmith, the other from 
 Mayfair. Beginning with an innocent little deception on the part of 
 Deedles, the story plunges into a series of laughable and dramatic 
 situations. There is a tonic quality in the irrepressible good humour and 
 high spirits of Freddie Pain, the young man from Hammersmith, while for 
 those who love a mystery there is the secret that lies hidden behind the 
 distinguished melancholy of the elegant stranger from Mayfair. 
 
 BROTHERS IN LOVE 
 
 By JOAN COWDROY 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper. 6s. net 
 
 THE STORY 
 
 Christopher Rivers, a delicate and deformed lad, is brought up by an 
 indulgent elder brother to whom he is passionately devoted. Raymond's 
 marriage interrupts their life together, and with a sort of prophetic fore- 
 boding he avoids meeting his new sister-in-law till chance brings them face 
 to face, and he reads in her eyes the horror she feels at the sight of him. 
 After staying as long as possible with his sister in London, he is compelled 
 to return to his brother's country home where Ethel and he are deter- 
 mined at any cost to hide from the man I hey both love the secret of her 
 revulsion from Kit's physical deformity ; Ethel from shame at the dis- 
 covery of such an instinct in her happy nature, Kit because he knows 
 that Raymond's happiness would be shattered by the knowledge. He and 
 Ethel, aided and upheld by the man whose peace she has ruined, succeed 
 in preserving their secret, but only at the price of the elder man's loving 
 in Kit himself, and the destruction of the one perfect human relation- 
 ship life has granted him. His deliberate, unrecognised sacrifice made, he 
 is driven from home to begin life afresh alone.
 
 SAMPSON LOWS LIST OF NEW ROOKS, 1922 
 
 THE HOUSE IN MOUNT STREET 
 
 By JOHN BE COURCY 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper. 6s. net 
 
 THE STO RY 
 
 Lady Gwendoline, travelling abroad, reads the announcement of Lady 
 Delahide's death in the paper. Lord Delahide had earlier paid her marked 
 attention but afterwards married an actress. The marriage had turned out 
 unhappily. On seeing the announcement, Lady Gwendoline promptly 
 makes up her mind to many him, and lays her plans accordingly. She 
 returns to London when on the verge of accepting Sir Gerald Fortescue. 
 Meets Lord Delahide. He proposes to her in due course and is accepted. 
 The situation becomes critical. Lady Gwendoline, in an impetuous 
 moment, writes a letter to Lord Delahide asking him to release her from 
 her engagement. Leaves it forgotten in her blotter. Makes up her mind 
 to marry Sir Gerald, the latter consenting against his better judgment. 
 Lord Delahide seeks to gain her consent to their immediate marriage. 
 John Monckton, an old admirer, appears on the scene. Lady Gwendoline 
 goes back to London. Finds Sir Gerald Fortescue disinclined to carry 
 out his compact. Decides to marry Lord Delahide. Lady Fawcttt, 
 meanwhile, discovers letter in blotter and gives it to Lord Delahide. 
 The annulment of the engagement is announced in the papers. John 
 Monckton finds the frame suits the picture. 
 
 THE BRAGANZA NECKLACE 
 
 By Dr. HERBERT HARRISON 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper. 6s. net 
 
 TH E STORY 
 
 John Swayne, a Kentish man, and a Doctor of Medicine of the University 
 of Leyden, lands on Deal beach, in the fifth year of the reign of George 
 the Second, at the end of his sea wanderings. He journeys by stage coach 
 to Canterbury on his way to Selling to visit his step-mother and sister and 
 to see again the sweetheart of his boyhood before turning his face to 
 London and the hope of Fortune. 
 
 He arrives at Canterbury to learn that his step-mother is dead ; that his 
 sister is fan-painting at the Sign of the Silver Thimble in Bell Yard by 
 Ludgate Hill ; that his sweetheart's father — the former parson of Selling — 
 has died of starvation and misery on the debtor's side of the West Gate jail 
 in that Cathedral City ; and that she, herself, has been forced by utter 
 poverty to work at service in the house of one Sir Giles Barling, a miserly 
 ruined gamester of a most questionable reputation. 
 
 The times are unsettled. The old Pretender is " Over the Water," and 
 the new Hanoverian Dynasty is robbing the Kingdom over which it 
 has been called to reign. 
 
 And of a former bare-faced robbery by a German Courtezan, the 
 notorious Schulemlmrg, created Duchess of Kendal, of Royal valuables, 
 come death and subtle deceit, scheming and roguery ; and to honest folk, 
 perplexities, dire perils, and love triumphant.
 
 SAMPSON LOW'S LIST OF NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
 PEREGRINE'S PROGRESS 
 
 By JEFFERY FARNOL 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. Illustrated Wrapper by C. E. Brock. 
 
 7s. 6d. net 
 
 ANTE-SCRIPTUM 
 
 This is the tale of Diana, the Gipsy, the Goddess, the Woman, one 
 in all and all in one, and that one so wonderful, so elusive, so utterly 
 feminine that I, being but a man and no great student in the Sex, may, in 
 striving to set her before you in cold words, distort this dear image out 
 of all semblance and true proportion. 
 
 Here and now I would begin this book by telling of Diana as I 
 remember her, a young dryad vivid with life, treading the leafy ways, 
 grey eyes a-dream, kissed by sun and wind, filling the woodland with the 
 glory of her singing, out-carolling the birds. 
 
 I would fain show her to you in her swift angers and ineffable tender- 
 ness, in her lofty pride and sweet humility, passionate with life, yet 
 boldly virginal, fronting evil scornful and undismayed, with eyes glittering 
 bright as her "little ckiiri," yet yielding herself a willing sacrifice and 
 meekly enduring for Friendship's sake. 
 
 With her should this book properly commence ; but because I doubt my 
 pen (more especially at this so early stage) I will begin not with Diana but 
 with my Aunt Julia, my Uncle Jervas, my Uncle George, and my 
 painfully conscious self, trusting that, as this narrative progresses, my 
 halting pen may grow more assured and my lack of art be atoned for by 
 sincerity. For, if any writer or historian were sincere, then most truly 
 that am I. 
 
 Therefore I set forth upon this relation humbly aware of my failings, 
 yet trusting those who read will not fall asleep over my first ineffectual 
 chapter nor throw the book aside after my second, but with kind and 
 tolerant patience will bear with me and read bravely on until, being more 
 a' my ease, I venture to tell of Diana's wonderful self. 
 
 And when they shall come to the find chapter of this history (if the) 
 1 do) may they l»- merciful in their judgmenl of their humble author, 
 thai is to say, thi , iame poor, ineffectual, unheroical person who now 
 subscribes himself 
 
 PEREGRINE VEREKER.
 
 SAMPSON LOW'S LIST OF NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
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 Featuring- Thomas Meighan in his greatest r61e since "The 
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 TRUANT YOUTH 
 
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 THE IMAGINARY MARRIAGE 
 
 By HENRY ST. JOHN COOPER. Second Impression. 
 
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 " He here serves up one of the best tales that can be found on the bookstalls 
 to-day." — Scots Pictorial. 
 
 DIANA STEPS DOWN 
 
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 6s. net 
 
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 readers." — Sussex Daily News. 
 
 MESSER MARCO POLO 
 
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 SAMPSON LOW'S LIST Of NEW BOOKS, 1922 
 
 MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE 
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