In clay and in bronze; a study in personality

Book I I

T HE gloom of the March evening was beginning to creep in over the land as Martin Duignan unyoked his horses from the plough and, coming out through a narrow gap where the mud slushed up about his boots, entered the long boreen which led to his mother’s house. He walked with head downcast like the horses who pounded along doggedly, the dirty hair of their fetlocks falling down over their clay-encrusted hoofs. The two horses and the man were beating a broken retreat before the forces of the Earth. This was the life of the horses and the life of him who had to work like a horse — their sudden, brave effort of the morning, the long furrows and the sun in their faces and the rise of the hill. Then the ending — to stumble home like this when the night was falling down and creeping in over Glannanea.

Yet upon this very evening it might be that there was some kind of a dream shining in the mind of Martin Duignan. There seemed to be something in him that the clay had not yet subdued and it came thus to life when the labour of the fields was done. As he took his way so quietly now by the old churchyard of Glannanea a little shudder passed through his frame. He could never forget when as a boy he had passed there after the great storm of 1903 and seen where even the graves of the dead had been broken, for the fallen trees had uprooted the yellow skulls of some long dead kinsmen, and that near by a frightened ewe had died in giving birth to her two lambs. . . The place had always looked so lonely in the fading light. He was past the age when the tales of old cronies could have effect and make him suddenly fearful, but for him there had always lingered something of terror in the aspect of the tombstones. For often, while he was in the fields, the chapel bell of Glannidan would ring out and a little later down this way he would see the poor coffin borne. . . It was the funeral of some old man whose existence people had scarcely noticed, some ancient, maybe, who had died as he leaned upon his stick looking into the forge fire of an evening. . . At such times and as now a passage from a poem would come into his mind:

“Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”

It was something he remembered clearly from his scanty schooldays. That and Goldsmith’s poem of The Deserted Village. Sometimes he would see the churchyard of Glannanea enlarged beyond the little stir of beauty the lines of the poem would cause in his mind. Then a curious regret and a dumb longing to know more would come to him, and he would pause, whether at his labour in the fields or on his way home down the boreen, to wonder, the horses looking at him pityingly with their big eyes. . .

Now after a few lapses of this kind Martin came into the wide untidy yard before the long, low thatched house where he lived with his mother and sister. Mary Duignan came out of the house to look proudly upon her horses. It was not every woman in the townland who could say she was mistress of two horses, although it was only quite recently that they had been able to purchase the second. She was a fine woman, remarkable with pride in the possession of land. This was how she would strike one as she came out of her own house, her bosom great before her in the twilight. . .

From beneath her apron she took a bottle of holy water with which it was her evident intention to besprinkle the horses’ drink and feed and bedding, so that they might remain alive and strong to labour on the morrow. This was a precaution taken in the hope of averting a calamity which sometimes happened in the townland of Glannanea, a scourge which sometimes came and swept away a man’s cattle and horses and sheep. Many years before a curse had been put upon the place by a holy priest who was here scandalised and silenced. It seemed a very terrible thing that the poor, dumb, patient beasts should be made to suffer from generation to generation for something that had once been said about a holy man to satisfy the hunger of lying tongues. It was a great punishment. The death of one of their Christian selves did not appear half so terrible since their inherent belief in their own holiness vouchsafed eternal glory to the dear departed. But the death of one of their beasts smote them with a sickening, awful feeling of loss. It was an event which denied them even the satisfaction of a certain mournful, morbid pride that was the constant comfort of hearing the priest reading out during the interval at Mass—

“Your prayers are requested for the repose of the soul

of There was something which always stirred

them in the public announcement of the deceased’s name. And there might also be the accompanying satisfaction of bragging about the cost of the solid, brass-mounted coffin or the amount of whiskey that the mourners had drunk at the wake. . . Even nothing like this as the outcome of the curse, but just the dead beast in the field or stable with the dew of death upon its eyes and a few men muttering something about “the will of God.” The digging of the grave in a lonely quarter of the bit of land and the journey to Glannidan for a sup of drink to help them forget. . . Later the thick, enclosing gloom as they sat in some dark corner of the widow Kelly’s pub, drinking a pint or two while people were whispering all round:

“The poor, unfortunate crew, sure they’re after burying their grand mare this evening, bad luck to the lie in it.”

In the light of all this it did not seem strange that Mary Duignan should be anxious about her horses. She was troubled by a double annoyance now since they had purchased the second. . . She bent down and felt their hard, sinewy forelegs in turn; then rising drew her hand alternately along their sweaty, shiny flanks.

“The poor things!” she said.

Martin felt hurt. The horses were more to his mother than her only son. . . Such moments were frequent in his life. They reached his flicker of emotion always as he passed the churchyard of Glannanea and seemed to tell that there existed in his breast some subtle quality which separated him from the clay. And yet

S how very obediently he had taken to the land upon the death of his father? He had been doing the will of the household since he was sixteen, ploughing, mucking daily in the clay, tending cattle, mowing, tramping to distant fairs. They had prospered as a result of his industry. Yet he had stood in a somewhat different relation to life. His father, Arthur Duignan had had a certain amount of enlightenment beyond his station. When in his cups, which was often, he would speak of the fine future he had planned for his boy, Martin, of education and position and the fine life of cities . . . and, after all, this was the result of that ambition and just now his life had narrowed down, a smattering of National Education that was of no use to him even as a farmer, the eternal clay and his poor life in a thatched house with crooked walls and little windows near the village of Glannidan.

His head was bent low over his plate as he went on with the half cold supper of potatoes and milk he had taken from the ashes. There was little attendance or consideration for him in this house. But his attention was now all for the meal before him. He must be just like the horses, he thought, who were now rapidly munching their hay while his own mother patted their necks and whispered affectionately into their ears. . . At last she came in.

“Is Brigid in Glannidan this evening?” he inquired, without lifting his head.

“She is then.”

“She’s getting to be damnable flighty, that one.”

“Musha sure she only went for a few wants. She’ll be back in no time for she brought the bicycle.”

“Aye, the bicycle!”

“Aye, indeed!”

“A bicycle and fine dresses and an accent, I thank ye, when she meets some jackeen in Glannidan. But what about me, mother dear? I’m only able to show myself there after dark. But I’m not much of a character don’t ye know? Brigid, of course, is a great beauty and has to be abroad in the daylight.”

“Well, and sure hasn’t a poor girl to make the most of herself just like a man? Sure you make the most of yourself out there in the fields!”

“Aye!”

“You’re a hard son, Martin. Just as your father was a hard husband. A very reckless man who spent the most of his time in the widow Kelly’s. Ah, deara-dear, sure he left little provision for any of us, only the bit of land. Your poor little sister that looks so elegant when she’s dressed up. God only knows but it’s to Austin Fagan, the Clerk of the Union, she’ll be getting married to yet, your little sister.”

“My little sister! I’m thinking of my end of the story.”

“Well, give her her fortune and she won’t be bothering you here.”

“And where would I get a fortune for her in the name of God?”

“Now if you were to get married, Martin! I’m sure you’d be well able to command a fine gerrl with a nice penny, and not a lassie like Lucy Flynn, the one you do be after.”

“You’re a smart woman, mother.” . . .

It was only after such a talk with his mother that Martin began to feel the dumb stirrings of his own will and a kind of craving flow into his heart and brain. Such were times when he felt some touch of another ability, something that already raised him beyond the tillers of the soil. . .

This diversion of his thought was interrupted by the entry of Brigid. She came into the smoky kitchen wheeling her bright bicycle and a look of disdain sped across her face as she observed the loutish figure of Martin, sitting there with his head bowed upon his bent arm, as he began to brood so sullenly upon the purpose of his life. She had just been speaking with Austin Fagan and the immediate sense of contrast between her brother and the Clerk of the Union was still present in her mind.

Austin Fagan was a constant figure of admiration in Glannidan. He was before all else a ladies’ man, a fellow who wore kid gloves, smoked expensive cigarettes and patronized dogs and horses. He was vastly contemptuous of such as Martin Duignan. He spoke with a sneer of their corduroy breeches, although they paid the rates out of which he was paid. Often in the long, heavy period of the day a motor bicycle would dash down the road from Glannidan and fervent curses would rise out of the fields.

“There’s Austin Fagan; the curse of hell on him! He must have a quare laugh at the likes of us working like this to make a gentleman of the likes of him!”

And one night Martin had seen him giggling with Brian Doyle, the reporter for the Ballycullen Gazette outside Whelehan’s public house. They were looking over a packet of postcards. Just a short while before Martin had seen them talking to his sister Brigid a little way up the street. . . As the two grand young men passed off into the dusk still grinning, Martin saw that one of the postcards had slipped from the packet and looked filthy there upon the lamplit gutter of the street. He picked it up and remained a long time gazing upon it. . .

Just now his mother came rushing down from the bedroom where she had gone to speak a word to Brigid. She appeared excited.

“D’ye know what, Martin? Brigid is after being invited to the St. Patrick’s night dance in Glannidan by no less than two young men! ”

“Begad!”

“By William Moore and Austin Fagan. Of course you know William is the makings of a great match for any girl. His ould father is rotten with money. But me bould Brigid is doing the right thing when its with Austin she intends to go. There’s no use in letting William think too soon that I’m going to put her after his money. Musha, won’t it be the great night entirely she’ll have and isn’t it the grand comfort to me to think that I have a daughter so accomplished and so lucky and so wise! Arrah, sure, you never could know the grand piece of good fortune she’d be bringing in here upon this very floor some day!”

“The devil a know you know,” said Martin doggedly, as he rose from his chair and lurched awkwardly out of the house.

II

M ARTIN had been thinking of a smoke with the little comfort that it brought and a curious turn of reserve here manifested itself. It was part of the usual attitude of a son to a parent in this part of the world. A young man might come home drunk from a fair and use primitive language in the hearing of his mother. But he would never dare to smoke his pipe in her presence. The same young man might take drink for drink with his father in a public house and enter into the general blasphemy of the place, but he would go out into the yard to light his pipe.

Now, therefore, that Martin had moved out of the presence of his mother he leaned across the boreen gate pulling at his pipe in keen enjoyment and listening. He could hear the sound of men coming from their labour down all the distant boreens, but this sound came to be replaced gradually by the heavy tramp, tramp of nailed brogues down all the road into Glannidan. There was an eager look upon the faces that went by, burning out through the dusk as they went down the road. It was no portion of Martin’s existence yet, somehow, it appeared as a comfort to the others as they went on to the pubs at the end of the day. They were not like him, despondent, weary, but men with a purpose in life hurrying erectly along the road. Their pipes too were alight, and left a dense fog of smoke behind them. They seemed to be smoking in ecstasy as if to produce that very thirst which was burning from their tongues down into their very hearts. Soon they would be drinking and talking as they stood by the wet counters in the stinking pubs of Glannidan while a great forgetfulness came upon them, a horrible prelude to swinish sleep.

“There must be something in it after all,” he would say, but a few hours later he would be convinced of its emptiness as he listened to them stuttering homeward in utter degradation, bawling songs which shuddered away beneath the moon into the dark stillness of the bog. And as he listened to these sounds of their return he would have just spent the evening with Lucy Flynn.

Lucy represented the bit of excitement which kept him from Glannidan in the evenings. Step by step they had been driven inevitably into this comradeship of one another. His father, Arthur Duignan, had made Glannidan a place of dread in the household, and one to which his steps should not turn. Her father,

Henry Flynn, angry with his wife that she had not borne him a son, had turned to warp the mind of his daughter towards a mannish love for the land producing something unnatural in a body that had some show of comeliness, a girl who talked about cattle and the crops and went through the fields like no female to observe the fruiting of the earth. Even about

Glannidan it was as natural for a man to be a drunkard as for a girl to be vain of her skin and hair and anxious to buy pretty, flowered hats to adorn herself from

Esther Gilligan, the milliner. But the mind of Lucy Flynn was all upon land and upon Martin Duignan, because he had a bit of land. Continually their conversation turned curiously:

“How much did yous get for the black heifer at

Bally cullen fair?”

THE PEASANT n

“Twenty-four ten was what my father held out for and got.”

“By hell, I wouldn’t doubt you!”

“She was a fine baste to grow up from a bit of a calf that was bought from a dealer.”

“How’s the turnips doing with yous this season?”

“Middling, middling, the devil a more!”

“But the praties is doing well, I suppose.”

“Now d’ye know what I’m going to tell you, there’s nothing like the new seed!”

“The devil a thing. . . Come out here across the hedge, Lucy, and give me a court!”

“Indeed then I won’t. I have a pig’s pot to boil yet, and then mebbe I’d have to stay up a part of the night for the white cow’s time was up a week ago.”

They would often part there and then without another word beyond this outburst of agricultural tenderness, and Martin would take another way through Glannidan while the night was still young. Sometimes he would peer in through the windows at the men drinking by the wet counters. . . He would guess from the looks on their faces that they were talking of the land. It was the crude magic of the land that held them all through the day and even now, in their hour of lesiure, they could not let it out of their minds. But, as Martin glimpsed those looks beyond the windows, his mind would return to the comfort of Lucy Flynn. She too was always talking of the land, but one night he had crossed a gate between their fields and kissed her fiercely upon the wet, red lips. Then he had looked quietly upon her face and had felt a kind of gladness from gazing upon it so soft and white amid the green fields, . .

This was the little dream which lit his mean life in Glannanea, but he had never a thought that his dream might merge into reality. Sometimes this sense of impossibility would crush in upon him with such strength that he would turn away from the windows of Glannidan in search of other comfort. He found it generally in the little crowd of girls who passed after nightfall down the secluded ways leading out of Glannidan, with their hair down their backs in rich, shining plaits. They would smile up into his face as they went by or across their shoulders after they had gone past him. He would steal after them, often for long distances down the roads, yet always without speaking to them or entering into their company. Their rich young bodies moving gladly on their shapely limbs, the velvet whiteness of their skin against the velvet darkness of the night; the music of their young, pleasant voices when they sang snatches of old songs, the cloudy impression which their moist red lips made upon him when they smiled, the wounding magic of their eyes; all these seemed to melt his very being into a helpless wonder. . .

III

I F there was little change in Martin’s condition from day to day his sister moving towards the realisation of her beauty seemed to represent an advance in the adventures of the household. The Spring was flowing in over Glannanea, and as he went his way now the boreen down to the tillage fields was arched loftily by the morning sky and the world was always a great, windy mass of illumination. There was a hush, as if of wonder, upon the gray stone walls that stretched away into the sleeping fields. A new day was rising into strength like a giant coming out of his bed with long, balmy yawns. . . To Martin there always appeared a fine feeling of pleasure in leaving the house when the fresh, blue smoke was like a pencil mark against the fleecy sky. There was something of perpetual wonder in thus hurrying forth to meet the day. He was heavy of gait and heavy of look, and to all outward seeming he had no great stir of thought in his mind as he went down to the fields. Through a break in the trees he could always see where the newly turned earth was fresh and red. . . At intervals he would meet people upon the way, drovers, tramps and men of pride and substance. The men of cattle did not seem to dislike this young man who wore the appearance of a farmer. They would stop to talk with Martin of their cattle and the prospect of the prices at Ballycullen fair, while about them stretched far away the level, lifeless fields.

“Well, begad, ’tis a grand day!”

“Begad, ’tis a grand day!”

Now and again he would meet a girl going to the well, the sunlight catching the tin of her can like a mirror and making a little bright dancing spot before her. At this hour of the morning her hair would be loosely pinned. The lack of a corset would show in the hang of her cotton dress as it fell around her like a Greek garment. She was surely a farmer’s daughter and the wife of a farmer in the making, and later on some quiet evening in the winter she would be sold into slavery from her father’s house. The word would have gone abroad that she was a “great worker” — this going to the well so ostentatiously was part of her endeavour for a reputation. So also was the feeding of pigs outside her father’s door on the morning of a fair in Ballycullen or when people would be passing the road in throngs. Then the old women who went the rounds of the houses would drop an observation like this in many a place:

“Begad, she’s a great worker!”

“Is that so, begad?”

“She’d make a bloody fine wife for a man!”

“She’s up at six in the morning and feeds a power of pigs. Why she’d be nearly as good as a man in the house. D’ye know what I’m going to tell you now? Sure a lassie like that’d make up a man in a couple of year.”

Then the inevitable sequel to this talk — the girl herself hearing that a match for her was coming along in a week or two betaking herself to her room to dream over the beauty of her body and to read the letters that had once been sent her by a good-looking shop-boy in Dublin. And then, her thought upon the mari5

riage that was coming, so disgusting and loveless. When she had done many a thing that had gone to build up her reputation of being a “great worker” there had been a queer pain in her heart. . . Then there was the visit to the house of the man to whom she was to give her life; that dark dramatic coming in the winter evening, somewhat drunk and bringing a bottle of whiskey as the passport. . . There would be tea or the drinking of the whiskey in the musty, unfrequented parlour. After a satisfactory discussion of the fortune her father and mother would be sure to excuse themselves and leave her alone with “himself” to be. . . And then the little vision of her life would narrow down so quickly just as she broke from the room. In a mad moment of rebellion she thought of herself, not as the girl with the great reputation as a worker, but as the girl who had once seen her own beauty in the fact that she had been sent love-letters by a shop-boy in Dublin, broken ere her time with the labour of the fields and the labour of child-bearing, her husband maybe turned to beating her when he had brought about the desolation of all she had once possessed — the children born of lust and not of love springing up around them.

It was strange that in these occasional glimpses Martin should be meeting a certain heavy gloom of life upon the morning road. In the turn of his imagination there lingered a thought of Lucy Flynn. It was queer to think if he would not bring her some lovely years before the end. But what might he ever be but a great, big clod of a farmer? Already was he beginning to hang the jowl of one, and Lucy had won the reputation of being a “great worker,” although many a time he had seen her with a dark weariness about her eyes.

i6

But there was his sister, Brigid. She seemed to be going down a different road, but it too was a road of morning. She had more beauty than most other girls of Glannidan or Glannanea, but she had no fortune and had not even made her reputation as a worker. But there were wise women who said that they had known of the like of her making a good match, even marrying, I thank ye, beyond her class. This was viewed as an enormous social offence in the locality, but the sufferings of Mary Duignan during the lifetime of her husband somewhat excused her ambition although it had brought about this clash between her son and her daughter. Yet she could never help feeling a flame of pride leap through her, its glow lighting up her pale cheeks, when she saw Brigid setting forth upon her shining bicycle to idle away the evening in Glannidan. She would have spent the whole forenoon adorning herself, never so much as lifting a hand to help in the preparation of Martin’s dinner when he came in sweating from the fields. Her selfish attitude had once put him into such a rage that he had broken the looking-glass before which he had found her tittivating herself. He had been sorry a second later, and his mother had said so mournfully:

“Now isn’t that a shame for you, Martin, to go do that to your little sister Brigid, and she so fond of you. To go break a looking-glass, why you’ll have no luck for seven years, and that’s as sure as you’re there.”

She appeared a fine lady coming into Glannidan round the sweep of the hill past the door of the forge, the grimy blacksmiths running out to look at her as she went by and saying:

“Indeed I don’t wonder at Austin Fagan taking i7

a fancy to her. Damn it, but she’s a sweet cut of a lassie!”

Into Corrigan’s she would go, for the paper probably, buying a novelette, not that she intended to read it, but just for the excuse of buying something. Miss Agnes Corrigan would come out of the mouldy room where she spent the time reading the novelettes, which she sold later for a penny or threepence each, and as she came out to attend a customer there would seem to linger about her a subtle aroma of romance, a fragrant essence, the scent of the conversation lozenges she had just been chewing with her decayed teeth mingling with the scent of the “parma-de-violets” she sold at a penny a bottle. As she stood there gabbing, her pince-nez hung upon her breast by a gold chain, she would be speaking the nicest words out of books in the broad accent of county Meath. . . She was one of the few people in Glannidan who were possessed of a definite purpose in life, and girls flocked to her as to some mistress of an art. She initiated them into the ways of courtship and flirtation. Whenever she heard of such and such a girl having anything to do with a certain man she became eloquent in her advice. She told the girl things about men, queer things that were not to be found in books. . .

For Brigid, after her visit to Miss Corrigan, there were a few words to be passed with Esther Gilligan, the milliner, who lived behind a wide window in the very middle of Glannidan. She had grown old and loveless but she still took a great interest in the romance of the neighbourhood. She could give a “quare cut” to any girl if she became aware of her settled designs on any man, and out of the bitterness of her disappointed i8 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE

heart she would speak with an impassioned bluntness. Then there was the visit to the Post Office, the old woman there exercising a kind of lure or fascination towards the persecution of her presence.

And later some lout of Glannidan shouting some absurd piece of slang as she swung homeward into the shadows of the evening only to find on reaching the house her brother looking at her so sullenly across the table, the crude mess of his evening meal broken roughly before him.

IV

T HERE was something very notable about a dance in Glannidan. It was at once a concentration of life and an opportunity to express criticism of life. People were drawn to it by their love of talk merely that they might be the better tormented by the talk that came out of it. Seeing that a dance was something to which each person contributed, it was only natural to think that each person would partake to some degree of its results, and so it was always.