The Curse of the Wise Woman Page 4

  And though he turned his face towards me, he never called home that look. “Ah, she knows,” he said, and would say no more.

  CHAPTER IV

  I only shot two more snipe in the afternoon: we were coming back and were not right with the wind, and I was hurrying to get to the place at which I was to wait for the geese. Probably I was hurrying unduly. If they went by our watches I might not have let my impatience run away with me; but coming, as they do, with a certain phase of the light, which we cannot predict so accurately as they can, it seemed better to allow half an hour, so as to be on the safe side, and I stretched the allowance till it was over fifty minutes. There swept by me a dozen golden plover, busy with some great journey, too high for a shot; I remember their arrow-like flight as I saw it then, and the formation in which they flew, like the point of a broad-barbed arrow, and the sound of their golden voices; one note only; were it more they would have outshone the fame of the nightingale. I remember too, that day, the cry of the curlew, as one rose suddenly some way off, from the bog. And ever since that day it is by this voice that I most remember my home. The lion, heard at night, is not more the voice of Africa, nor the nightingale the voice of romance, than the cry of the curlew seems to me to be the voice of Ireland. It utters a message so far and free from the shallowness of all phrases, that I like to think of it living, as surely it will, and nesting still in the heather, after all the follies of man. And the message? I do not know. But the messages that can never be put into words seem to me to be always the deepest, and those that words can at once express are seldom of any help; so that we seem to be sadly without guidance.

  I wondered what Marlin would say of it. So I said to him: “That’s a strange cry.”

  “Aye,” he said. “My mother says that sometimes it means nothing.”

  “And at other times?” I said.

  “At other times it’s a warning.”

  I looked at him, rather than question him further, to see if any warning was troubling him then, but he was walking on towards the dry land in the distance, not heeding the curlew. And I was glad of this, for it was not only that the bog grew ominous towards evening, but there was something increasingly oppressing me when Marlin spoke of his mother that made me have vague forebodings as her cottage came into sight without ever knowing what I feared. Far off we saw the brown thatch, sagging in the middle, and black where it sagged; and its column of smoke going up into the air, whenever the north wind let it, from its low square chimney of wood.

  Looking back on that journey all those years ago, as I approached the Marlins’ cottage coming out of the bog, I seem to remember more things learned that day than I ever learned in a month from the wisest books; and, strangely, I seemed to be learning things in pairs, now something this side of the horizon, now something barely within the borders of Earth. I learned what is more important than how to shoot snipe; how to mark them. For if you cannot pick them up it is far worse than useless to shoot them. I had brought no dog, for I had been too much away at school for our retrievers to work for me as they worked for Murphy, so I was dependant for my fourteen snipe on the keen eye of Marlin, and on what I learned from him of the art of marking birds. And this art depends in the first place on never blinking after one has dropped one’s bird, and never for a moment shifting one’s gaze, until one comes to the spot where the bird is down. One instant’s change of one’s gaze from the tuft of rush one is watching and twenty tufts that are like it greet one’s returning eye, which fast grow to a hundred. The snipe may fall easily eighty yards away, and one must find one’s way to the spot in safety over the bog: that is the art. If one can do that one can put one’s handkerchief down within five yards of the snipe. And then there is the cross-line. If two men, some yards apart, both mark a snipe, where they meet as they walk towards it should be within one yard of the bird. And a mark should be thrown down at once as soon as one reaches the spot, for any landmark one takes is soon imitated by the bog again and again over an area wider and wider. If a man alone on a bog gets a right and left at snipe it is almost impossible to pick up both. His only chance is to throw a handkerchief down on the spot where he fired his shots, and then to pick up the second, relying on memory for the line of the first when he goes back to the handkerchief. When there are two men, as we were that day, the one that is not shooting must mark the first bird of the two, as the man with the gun has to take his eye off it, probably before it hits the ground, and he has to pick up the second bird. But it was a year or two yet before I was able to get right-and-lefts at snipe.

  Never shall I forget how as we neared the cottage for the second time that day, the brightness now all gone out of the sky and the threat of night lowering, Marlin came nearer to me, and nearer still, clearly full of an intention to speak, and for some while not speaking; but when we were close to the cottage he reached out a sudden hand and touched my elbow to stop me, and said to me words that will never convey to the reader what they conveyed to me. For most of what he said was in his earnest warning voice and in his look, and I also knew the meaning of the strange words that he used. “It’s the way it is,” he said, “that my mother’s a Wise Woman.”

  The accent was equally on the word Wise and on the first syllable of Woman. It was not that he said that the woman was clever. It was nothing less than a warning that his mother was a practising witch.

  CHAPTER V

  As we entered the cottage she was standing at her hearth, prodding the fire with an ash sapling under a large iron pot that hung on a chain from the darkness. When the son saw what she was at, he said: “Will you give Master Char-les some fresh tea, Mother?”

  “I will that,” she said. “But there’s dreams in this one,” pointing to the pot.

  And at that there reached me a straying whiff from the pot, disturbed by the wind that had followed us through the door, and I knew she was stewing tea.

  “What is there in the dreams?” I asked. For a guest cannot ignore his hostess’s topics.

  “All the truth that is not in the world,” she said.

  And then she turned all her thought to hospitality, no less observed at the edge of an Irish bog than in the salons of Paris. She spread a table-cloth and brought out cups and plates that had the air of being rarely used, and made a pot of fresh tea. Had I drunk that other tea, that had probably been stewing there all day, and had I spent a few weeks in a cottage like that at the edge of the bog, watching the ground mist rising as twilight was coming on, and hearing the curlews calling, there is no saying that I might not have seen such things as Marlin saw, or even known something of the lore of his mother: a few more days might have done it. It’s hard to say, and I cannot work it out; I knew the bog, and roughly where it went to—that is to say, I believed in the maps; but Marlin and his mother had some other belief and some other knowledge, and their geography seemed to run so close to mine that I have often feared that almost at any moment theirs might float this way and mine drift out of sight, as easily as mist and clear air may change their places; and if that occurred I knew that one’s chance of salvation was over. And if I did not entirely know this then, I already suspected it, and knew it only a little later that day, when Marlin told me upon what land his hopes were fastened.

  As I drank the tea she was watching me from the darker end of the room, beyond the glow of the candles that she had put for me on the table. And I think she was prophesying, but she said nothing.

  Had she spoken then, and had I written it down, I might have had more to tell you of my life than this tale sets forth. Would it have been the same story? I cannot tell. But probably, like my memories, there would have been gaps and vivid intensities, crowded hours and empty years, like butterflies flashing on empty levels of air. And as for truth, which lies in the meaning of all our acts, can I see that clearer looking back than she seemed to see it looking forward? I do not know, but there was an intensity in her look more vivid than any that ever comes to me nowadays, and I would trust her to have seen the
truth.

  As the room grew dimmer beyond the light of the candles, a new uneasiness was overtaking me and ousting the apprehensions that seemed a part of the room, an uneasiness that I might arrive too late at the spot at which I was to wait for the geese, and that they might be there before me. But dark though it was in the room, it was light enough outside, except that the brilliance had gone out of the sky, and small birds were filling the hedgerows with their voices. And then I feared that the geese might not come at all. And at this thought I turned to that strange woman who seemed to know more than Marlin knew, though he knew so much of the ways of the bog and all that dwelt in the heather, and I asked her if the geese would come that night.

  “Aye, they’ll come,” she said.

  And in my eagerness to be sure of it I asked her how she knew. And at that she broke out strangely.

  “Haven’t I seen the north wind?” she said. “Aye, face to face. And few the secrets he hides from me. He that whispers to the smoke of my chimney now, an hour ago was shouting to the geese. Aye, they’ll come.”

  Marlin quietly nodded to me.

  “Aye, that’s the will of the north wind,” she added.

  And I asked her some question as to how I should get a goose, but no more would she tell me, saying: “The secrets of the north wind are not for that, nor the thoughts that the hills are brooding.”

  And I saw that I had tried to evoke her wisdom for too trivial a thing, and I changed my boots and stockings then and got my heavier shot, and set out with Marlin.

  We had not far to go: a stream ran through the bog and past the Marlins’ cottage, and about its banks there ran for some way into the heather a level space of rushes and moss and grass on which the geese used to alight, to eat the roots of a marshy relative of the buttercup, that Marlin called briskauns, that grew there. When we got there I could see by old marks that this was where they came when they came at all. I chose, with the help of Marlin’s advice, a tuft of rushes in which I lay down, and he gathered a few more rushes and threw them over me and then concealed himself in another tuft near by. I shall always remember that evening; partly because of the twilight fading over the bog and night coming slowly on with stillness and voices, and partly because of the things that Marlin told me; for he talked till the hour came that he felt might bring the geese, and we waited for them then in a hush while the earliest stars appeared. Shall I tell of what Marlin said, or of what I saw myself as the western sky glowed with layers of gold and vermilion, and faded away till all the bog was dark, and wandering pinions began to whisper and sing? Rather, I think, what Marlin said to me; for I saw but the beauty of one evening hallowing the moss and the heather, but evening after evening with all their enchantments, shining in those wild waters, gleaming on moss and on heather, had been sinking year after year into Marlin’s spirit, until whatever was strange in that land, whatever was lovely, dwelt in him as a very essence, of which this one evening was but a particle.

  The bog-rail croaked his shrill croak a hundred times, small singing birds passed over on their way home; the rooks went by; a dead hush followed the sound of the last of their wings, and then Marlin spoke.

  “They’ll not come yet,” he said.

  And I saw that he wanted to talk to me; and, knowing that all he cared for was in that waste of peat, that the bog was his country and his patriotism limited to it, I spoke to him of the bog. I was also eager for knowledge of that strange land, over which the edge of night was already hovering. “Do will-o’-the-wisps come here?” I said.

  “They do that,” said he.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Jack-o’-lanterns,” he answered.

  I asked him: “What are jack-o’-lanterns?” And I saw I had somehow troubled him. For he was silent a long time, and said: “God help them, they are men like me.”

  “Men like you!” I exclaimed.

  “Aye,” he said, “spirits of men.”

  “But what kind of spirits?” I persisted.

  “The damned,” he said.

  “Oh, Marlin,” I exclaimed. “You are not damned.”

  “Keep your head down,” he said, “in case the geese come. I’m surely damned.”

  “But why?” I asked him, not heeding what he had said about letting the geese see me.

  “A sin that I sinned,” said Marlin.

  “But you can confess it,” I insisted.

  “It is a reserved sin,” said he.

  And the meaning of that (for such as have not the true faith) is that he had done something for which no parish priest could give absolution.

  “You can go to the bishop,” I said.

  “I’d have to go to Rome itself,” he answered, “and how can I get there?”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “I fell to dreaming about the bog,” he said, “and to wondering where it went, and to looking at the sun on it a long way off where it goes silver and golden; and, begob, what chance had I with that upbringing; and, God help me, I turned my thoughts to Tir-nan-Og.”

  “Tir-nan-Og!” I said. For the place, if it be a place, or the fancy that made it, and all who dwell there, if they dwell there indeed, and the very songs about it, are all purely heathen. “But can’t you forget it?”

  “Forget Tir-nan-Og?” he exclaimed. “Forget Tir-nan-Og! With the young men walking with the gold low light on their limbs, and the young girls with radiance in their faces, and the young blossom bursting along the apple-boughs, and all that is young there glorying in the morning, and it morning for ever over all the land of youth. Forget Tir-nan-Og! Not the angels in Heaven could forget it, nor all the blessed saints. And I saw them once in a dream, that was sent, maybe, to warn me, but it came too late. I saw the angels in a dream, all talking among themselves, more than you ever saw of ducks over any water, a multitude of them looking north and south and east, but with all their backs to the west or turning their heads away from it. And I prayed to them, and it was the last time I prayed, but they must have seen in my face that I had looked towards Tir-nan-Og, for they rejected my prayer, and I knew that my soul was lost.”

  “But, Marlin,” I said, “how could you know that?”

  “I was praying to them,” he answered. “And they went on talking among themselves.”

  For a while I was too horrified by the finality of that vision to find any words to say; and something in his voice or his face had convinced me that it was in reality one of those experiences of the spirit that can sometimes come to men.

  And then I said lamely: “But you had done no sin.”

  “God help me,” he said, “I had preferred Tir-nan-Og to Heaven.”

  And I looked in his eyes in the twilight and I could see that it was as he had said. For him there would never be anything but that most heathen land. And I tried, still lamely enough, to point out some flaw in the certainty that he had of the loss of his soul.

  “But if the will-o’-the-wisps are here,” I said, “what have they to do with Tir-nan-Og?”

  “They come over the sea on the west wind from Tir-nan-Og to the bog, and back again before cock-crow to Tir-nan-Og, but to Heaven never,” he said.

  “I’d pray,” I said, “till I forgot Tir-nan-Og.”

  “Hist,” he said. For there was a soft note in the air now, growing louder and fading, and then growing louder again. The duck were flighting. So I rolled back among my rushes, for once the duck came there was no telling when those wayfarers that I watched for might not arrive. And I lay still thinking of poor Marlin’s soul. Was there such a place as Tir-nan-Og? If not, could Heaven be jealous? And if there were, logic said that Marlin had made his choice, and should be content with it. But logic is little use to us. There are many things that men deliberately choose instead of Heaven, and yet are ill content. And just as I was reasoning out these things, as I never clearly reasoned them again, I heard a voice far off utter two syllables.

  In the silence that followed I did not of course forget about Marlin�
�s soul, just to think about geese. But what is the use of writing my memories down if I depart from them to write things that, however laudable as expressions, are entirely untrue? I forgot Marlin and all his perils utterly. I thought of nothing in the world but those two notes, wondering if really they came from the geese, wondering if I would hear them again. And they came again, a sudden burst of voices. An acclamation, partly like hounds hunting, and partly like a distant people cheering. It was the grey lags.

  CHAPTER VI

  The bog had gone very dark when I heard the grey lags, but the sky was like enamel, no longer giving light but full of it; and against the sky I saw them. They were coming straight for me. Soon they were a black mass, very black, with enormous waving wings, and the whole night rang with their outcry. And how I wish, vain although wishing be, yet how I wish there were anything that could stir me now as the coming of those geese stirred me. What is there now for which I would wait in the damp an hour, lying in a tuft of rushes? Nothing ever happens here to interest me but the arrival of Monsieur Alphonse to discuss certain relations between his country and the Irish Free State, and I wait for him sitting in a comfortable chair, and nothing ever comes of our discussions. But then! Then the incredible seemed on the verge of fulfilment, for I had never believed that the geese would really come within shot of me. The night seemed too big for that. One might as well hope to touch a star. And here they were.

  Marlin never said a word. I remembered the advice of the man that came to shoot my father. Do not aim too far in front of a goose, he had said. But that was at the beginning of its flight; yet these geese seemed to be slowing before alighting, so I aimed as he had advised. I saw two together in one black mass quite close, and I fired at them. One dropped. With an immense commotion they all came over me then, and with a great outcry of voices, and I missed with my left barrel, and they went away as though dancing upon the air.