AFTER FOURTEEN YEARS

Nicholas Coleman arrived in B——— on a fair
day. The narrow streets were crowded with
cattle that lurched and lounged dangerously as
the drovers goaded them out of the way of passing
cars. The air was charged with smells and dust and
noise. Jobbers swung their sticks and shouted
at one another across the street; shop-keepers
displayed their wares and haggled with
customers on the high pavements; shrill-voiced
women sold apples, cigarettes and lemonade
about the statue of the Maid of Erin in the
market-place, and jovial burly farmers with
shrewd ascetic faces under their Spanish hats
jostled him as they passed.

He was glad when he succeeded in getting his
business done and could leave the town for a
while. It unnerved him. Above the roofs one
could see always the clear grey-green of a hill
that rose sharply above them and seemed as if at
any moment it might fall and crush them. The
sea road was better. There were carts on that
too, and creels passed full of squealing animals;
but at least one had the great bay with its many
islands and its zone of violet hills through which
sunlight and shadow circulated ceaselessly,
without effort, like the flowing of water. The surface
of the bay was very calm, and it seemed as if a
rain of sunlight were pelting upon a bright flagstone
and being tossed back again in a faint
glittering spray, so that when one looked at it.
for long it dazzled the eye. Three or four fishing
smacks and a little railway steamer with a bright
red funnel were all that the bay held.

He had his dinner over an old shop in the
market-place, but he was so nervous that he ate
little. The farmers and jobbers tried to press him
into conversation, but he had nothing to say;
they talked of prices and crops, the Government
and the County Council, about all of which he
knew next to nothing. Eventually they let him
be, much to his relief.

After dinner he climbed the hill that led out
of town. The traffic had grown less: he climbed,
and as the town sank back against the growing
circle of the bay it seemed a quiet place enough,
too quiet perhaps. He felt something like awe as
he went up the trim gravel path to the convent.
‘At seven,’ he thought, ‘the train will take me
back to the city. At ten I shall be walking
through Patrick Street on my way home. Tomorrow
I shall be back at my old stool in the
office. I shall never see this place again, never!’

But in spite of this, and partly because of it, his
heart beat faster when the lay sister showed him
into the bare parlour, with its crucifix, its polished
floor, its wide-open windows that let in a current
of cool air.

And at last _she_ came; a slim figure in black
with starched white facings. He scarcely looked
at her, but took her hand, smiling, embarrassed
and silent. She too was ill at ease.

They sat together on a garden seat from which
he saw again the town and the bay, even more
quiet now. He heard nothing of its noise but the
desolate screech of a train as it entered the
station. Her eyes took it all in dispassionately,
and now and again he glanced shyly up at her
fine profile. That had not changed, and he
wondered whether he had altered as little as she.
Perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps for her at least he
was still the same as he had always been. Yet——
there was a change in her! Her face had lost
something; perhaps it was intensity; it no longer
suggested the wildness and tenderness that he
knew was in her. She looked happier and
stronger.

‘And Kate?’ she asked after they had talked
for a little while. ‘How is she?’

‘Oh, Kate is very well. They have a nice house
in Passage—you know Tom has a school there.
It’s just over the river—the house, I mean;
sometimes I go down to them on a Sunday
evening for tea.... They have five children now;
the eldest is sixteen.’

‘Yes, of course—Marie. Why, she was called
after me! She’s my godchild.’

‘Yes, yes, fancy I’d forgotten! You were
always with Kate in those days.’

‘I’d love to see Marie. She has written to me
for my feastday ever since she was nine.’

‘Has she? I didn’t know. They don’t talk to
me about it.’

A faint flush mounted her cheek; for a
moment she was silent, and if he had looked at
her he would have seen a sudden look of doubt
and pain in her eyes. But he did not look up,
and she continued.

‘Kate writes to me off and on too—but you
know Kate! It was from her I heard of your
mother’s death. That must have been a terrible
blow to you.’

‘Yes, it was very sudden. I was the only one
with her when it came.’

‘We had Mass for her here. How did she die?
Was she———?’

‘She died hard. She didn’t want to leave me.’

‘Oh!’

Her lips moved silently for a little.

‘I’ve never forgotten her. She was so gentle,
so—so unobtrusive, and Fair Hill used to be
such a happy place then, before Kate married,
when there were only the three of ourselves....
Do you remember, I used to go without my
dinner to come up after school?... And so the
house is gone?’

‘Yes, the house is gone.’

‘And Jennifer? The parrot?’

‘Jennifer died long ago. She choked herself
with an apple.’

‘And Jasper?’

‘Jasper too. An Alsatian killed him. I have
another now, a sheepdog, a great lazy fellow.
He’s made friends with the Kerry Blue next door
and the Kerry Blue comes with us and catches
rabbits for him. He’s fond of rabbits, but he’s
so big, so big and lazy!’

‘You’re in lodgings. Why didn’t you go to
live with Kate and Tom? You know they’d have
been glad to have you.’

‘Why should I? They were married; they had
children at the time; they needed the house for
themselves.... Besides, you know what I am.
I’m a simple fellow, I’m not a bit clever, I don’t
read books or papers. At dinner the cattle-jobbers
were trying to get me talking politics,
and honest, I didn’t know what they were at!
What would Tom and his friends from the
University have thought of a stupid creature
like me?’

‘No', you spent all your time in the country. I
remember you getting up at five and going out
with the dogs, around White’s Cross and back
through Ballyvolane. Do you still do that?’

‘Yes, every fine morning and most Sundays.
But I had to give up the birds when mother
died.’

‘Ah, the birds! What a pity! I remember them
too, and how beautifully they sang.’ She laughed
happily, without constraint. ‘The other girls
envied me so much because you were always
giving me birds’ eggs, and I swapped them for
other things, and I came back to you crying,
pretending I’d lost them.... I don’t think you
ever guessed what a cheat I was.... Ah, well!
And you’re still in the factory.’

‘Still in the factory!... You were right, you
see. Do you remember you said I’d stick there
until I grew grey hairs. You used to be angry
with me then, and that worried me, and I’d give
a spurt or two—No, no, I never had any
ambition—not much anyhow—and as well be there
as any place else.... And now I’m so used to it
that I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. I live so
quietly that even coming here has been too much
of an adventure for me. All the time I’ve been
saying “To—morrow I shall be back at work, tomorrow
I shall be back at work.” I’ll be glad to
get home.’

‘Yes, I can understand that.’

‘Can you? You used to be different.’

‘Yes, but things _are_ different here. One works.
One doesn’t think. One, doesn’t want to think. I
used to lie abed until ten at one time, now I’m
up at half—past five every morning and I’m not
a bit more tired. I’m kept busy all day. I sleep
sound. I don’t dream. And I hate anything that
comes to disturb the routine.’

‘Like me?’

‘No, not like you. I hate being ill, lying in bed
listening to the others and not working myself.’

‘And you don’t get into panics any longer?

‘No, no more panics.’ 

‘You don’t weep? You’re not ambitious any
longer?———that’s so strange!... Yes, it _is_ good
to have one’s life settled, to fear nothing and
hope for nothing.’

She cast a quick, puzzled look at him.

‘Do you still go to early Mass?’ she asked.

‘Yes, just as before.’

They fell into silence again. A little mist was
rising from the town; one side of the bay was
flanked with a wall of gold; a cool wind from the
sea blew up to them, stirring the thick foliage
and tossing her light, black veil. A bell rang out
suddenly and she rose.

‘What are your lodgings like?’ she asked, her
cheeks reddening. ‘I hope you look after yourself
and that they feed you properly. You used
to be so careless.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. They’re very decent. And you
—how do you find the place agreeing With you?
Better than the city?’

‘Oh, of course,’ she said wearily, ‘it is milder
here.’

They went silently up the path towards the
convent and parted as they had met, awkwardly,
almost without looking at one another.

‘No,’ he thought, as he passed through the
convent gate, ‘that’s over!’ But he knew that
for days, perhaps for months, birds and dogs,
flowers, his early—morning walks through the
country, the trees in summer, all those things
that had given him pleasure would give him
nothing but pain. The farmers coming from the
fair, shouting to one another forward and back
from their lumbering carts brought to mind his
dreams of yesterday, and he grieved that God had
created men without the innocence of natural
things, had created them subtle and capricious,
with memories in which the past existed like
a statue, perfect and unapproachable.

And as the train carried him back to the city the
clangour of its wheels that said ‘ruthutta
ruthutta ruthutta’ dissolved into a bright mist
of conversation through which he distinctly heard
a woman’s voice, but the voice said nothing; it
was like memory, perfect and unapproachable; and
his mind was weighed down by an infinite
melancholy that merged with the melancholy of the
dark countryside through which he passed ——a
countryside of lonely, steelbright pools that
were islanded among the silhouettes of hills and
trees. Ironically he heard himself say again,
‘Yes, it _is_ good to have one’s life settled,
to fear nothing and hope for nothing.’

And the train took him ever farther and
farther away and replied with its petulant
metallic voice—

‘Ruthutta ruthutta ruthutta!’