_ BOOK I. THE COMING OF PAN
CHAPTER VI
THE Thin Woman of Inis Magrath slept very late that morning, but when
she did awaken her impatience was so urgent that she could scarcely
delay to eat her breakfast. Immediately after she had eaten she put on
her bonnet and shawl and went through the pine wood in the direction of
Gort na Cloca Mora. In a short time she reached the rocky field, and,
walking over to the tree in the southeast corner, she picked up a small
stone and hammered loudly against the trunk of the tree. She hammered
in a peculiar fashion, giving two knocks and then three knocks, and then
one knock. A voice came up from the hole.
"Who is that, please?" said the voice.
"Ban na Droid of Inis Magrath, and well you know it," was her reply.
"I am coming up, Noble Woman," said the voice, and in another moment the
Leprecaun leaped out of the hole.
"Where are Seumas and Brigid Beg?" said the Thin Woman sternly.
"How would I know where they are?" replied the Leprecaun. "Wouldn't they
be at home now?"
"If they were at home I wouldn't have come here looking for them," was
her reply. "It is my belief that you have them."
"Search me," said the Leprecaun, opening his waistcoat.
"They are down there in your little house," said the Thin Woman angrily,
"and the sooner you let them up the better it will be for yourself and
your five brothers."
"Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, "you can go down yourself into our
little house and look. I can't say fairer than that."
"I wouldn't fit down there," said she. "I'm too big."
"You know the way for making yourself little," replied the Leprecaun.
"But I mightn't be able to make myself big again," said the Thin Woman,
"and then you and your dirty brothers would have it all your own way. If
you don't let the children up," she continued, "I'll raise the Shee of
Croghan Conghaile against you. You know what happened to the Cluricauns
of Oilean na Glas when they stole the Queen's baby--It will be a worse
thing than that for you. If the children are not back in my house before
moonrise this night, I'll go round to my people. Just tell that to your
five ugly brothers. Health with you," she added, and strode away.
"Health with yourself, Noble Woman," said the Leprecaun, and he stood on
one leg until she was out of sight and then he slid down into the hole
again.
When the Thin Woman was going back through the pine wood she saw Meehawl
MacMurrachu travelling in the same direction and his brows were in a
tangle of perplexity.
"God be with you, Meehawl MacMurrachu," said she.
"God and Mary be with you, ma'am," he replied, "I am in great trouble
this day."
"Why wouldn't you be?" said the Thin Woman.
"I came up to have a talk with your husband about a particular thing."
"If it's talk you want you have come to a good house, Meehawl."
"He's a powerful man right enough," said Meehawl.
After a few minutes the Thin Woman spoke again. "I can get the reek of
his pipe from here. Let you go right in to him now and I'll stay outside
for a while, for the sound of your two voices would give me a pain in my
head."
"Whatever will please you will please me, ma'am," said her companion,
and he went into the little house.
Meehawl MacMurrachu had good reason to be perplexed. He was the father
of one child only, and she was the most beautiful girl in the whole
world. The pity of it was that no one at all knew she was beautiful, and
she did not even know it herself. At times when she bathed in the eddy
of a mountain stream and saw her reflection looking up from the placid
water she thought that she looked very nice, and then a great sadness
would come upon her, for what is the use of looking nice if there is
nobody to see one's beauty? Beauty, also, is usefulness. The arts as
well as the crafts, the graces equally with the utilities must stand up
in the marketplace and be judged by the gombeen men.
The only house near to her father's was that occupied by Bessie
Hannigan. The other few houses were scattered widely with long, quiet
miles of hill and bog between them, so that she had hardly seen more
than a couple of men beside her father since she was born. She helped
her father and mother in all the small businesses of their house, and
every day also she drove their three cows and two goats to pasture on
the mountain slopes. Here through the sunny days the years had passed
in a slow, warm thoughtlessness wherein, without thinking, many thoughts
had entered into her mind and many pictures hung for a moment like
birds in the thin air. At first, and for a long time, she had been happy
enough; there were many things in which a child might be interested:
the spacious heavens which never wore the same beauty on any day; the
innumerable little creatures living among the grasses or in the heather;
the steep swing of a bird down from the mountain to the infinite plains
below; the little flowers which were so contented each in its peaceful
place; the bees gathering food for their houses, and the stout beetles
who are always losing their way in the dusk. These things, and many
others, interested her. The three cows after they had grazed for a long
time would come and lie by her side and look at her as they chewed their
cud, and the goats would prance from the bracken to push their heads
against her breast because they loved her.
Indeed, everything in her quiet world loved this girl: but very slowly
there was growing in her consciousness an unrest, a disquietude to
which she had hitherto been a stranger. Sometimes an infinite weariness
oppressed her to the earth. A thought was born in her mind and it had
no name. It was growing and could not be expressed. She had no words
wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or greet this stranger who, more and
more insistently and pleadingly, tapped upon her doors and begged to
be spoken to, admitted and caressed and nourished. A thought is a real
thing and words are only its raiment, but a thought is as shy as a
virgin; unless it is fittingly apparelled we may not look on its shadowy
nakedness: it will fly from us and only return again in the darkness
crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with
aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it those
symbols which are its protection and its banner. So she could not
understand the touch that came to her from afar and yet how intimately,
the whisper so aloof and yet so thrillingly personal. The standard of
either language or experience was not hers; she could listen but not
think, she could feel but not know, her eyes looked forward and did not
see, her hands groped in the sunlight and felt nothing. It was like the
edge of a little wind which stirred her tresses but could not lift them,
or the first white peep of the dawn which is neither light nor darkness.
But she listened, not with her ears but with her blood. The fingers of
her soul stretched out to clasp a stranger's hand, and her disquietude
was quickened through with an eagerness which was neither physical nor
mental, for neither her body nor her mind was definitely interested.
Some dim region between these grew alarmed and watched and waited and
did not sleep or grow weary at all.
One morning she lay among the long, warm grasses. She watched a bird who
soared and sang for a little time, and then it sped swiftly away down
the steep air and out of sight in the blue distance. Even when it was
gone the song seemed to ring in her ears. It seemed to linger with her
as a faint, sweet echo, coming fitfully, with little pauses as though a
wind disturbed it, and careless, distant eddies. After a few moments she
knew it was not a bird. No bird's song had that consecutive melody, for
their themes are as careless as their wings. She sat up and looked about
her, but there was nothing in sight: the mountains sloped gently above
her and away to the clear sky; around her the scattered clumps of
heather were drowsing in the sunlight; far below she could see her
father's house, a little grey patch near some trees-and then the music
stopped and left her wondering.
She could not find her goats anywhere although for a long time she
searched. They came to her at last of their own accord from behind a
fold in the hills, and they were more wildly excited than she had ever
seen them before. Even the cows forsook their solemnity and broke into
awkward gambols around her. As she walked home that evening a strange
elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and thither she flitted in
front of the beasts and behind them. Her feet tripped to a wayward
measure. There was a tune in her ears and she danced to it, throwing
her arms out and above her head and swaying and bending as she went.
The full freedom of her body was hers now: the lightness and poise and
certainty of her limbs delighted her, and the strength that did not
tire delighted her also. The evening was full of peace and quietude, the
mellow, dusky sunlight made a path for her feet, and everywhere through
the wide fields birds were flashing and singing, and she sang with them
a song that had no words and wanted none.
The following day she heard the music again, faint and thin, wonderfully
sweet and as wild as the song of a bird, but it was a melody which
no bird would adhere to. A theme was repeated again and again. In the
middle of trills, grace-notes, runs and catches it recurred with a
strange, almost holy, solemnity,--a hushing, slender melody full of
austerity and aloofness. There was something in it to set her heart
beating. She yearned to it with her ears and her lips. Was it joy,
menace, carelessness? She did not know, but this she did know, that
however terrible it was personal to her. It was her unborn thought
strangely audible and felt rather than understood.
On that day she did not see anybody either. She drove her charges home
in the evening listlessly and the beasts also were very quiet.
When the music came again she made no effort to discover where it came
from. She only listened, and when the tune was ended she saw a figure
rise from the fold of a little hill. The sunlight was gleaming from his
arms and shoulders but the rest of his body was hidden by the bracken,
and he did not look at her as he went away playing softly on a double
pipe.
The next day he did look at her. He stood waist-deep in greenery
fronting her squarely. She had never seen so strange a face before. Her
eyes almost died on him as she gazed and he returned her look for a long
minute with an intent, expressionless regard. His hair was a cluster of
brown curls, his nose was little and straight, and his wide mouth
drooped sadly at the corners. His eyes were wide and most mournful, and
his forehead was very broad and white. His sad eyes and mouth almost
made her weep.
When he turned away he smiled at her, and it was as though the sun had
shone suddenly in a dark place, banishing all sadness and gloom. Then he
went mincingly away. As he went he lifted the slender double reed to his
lips and blew a few careless notes.
The next day he fronted her as before, looking down to her eyes from a
short distance. He played for only a few moments, and fitfully, and then
he came to her. When he left the bracken the girl suddenly clapped
her hands against her eyes affrighted. There was something different,
terrible about him. The upper part of his body was beautiful, but the
lower part.... She dared not look at him again. She would have risen and
fled away but she feared he might pursue her, and the thought of such
a chase and the inevitable capture froze her blood. The thought of
anything behind us is always terrible. The sound of pursuing feet is
worse than the murder from which we fly--So she sat still and waited but
nothing happened. At last, desperately, she dropped her hands. He was
sitting on the ground a few paces from her. He was not looking at her
but far away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs were crossed;
they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat: but she would not
look at these because of his wonderful, sad, grotesque face. Gaiety is
good to look upon and an innocent face is delightful to our souls,
but no woman can resist sadness or weakness, and ugliness she dare
not resist. Her nature leaps to be the comforter. It is her reason. It
exalts her to an ecstasy wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself
has any proportion. Men are not fathers by instinct but by chance, but
women are mothers beyond thought, beyond instinct which is the father
of thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice--these are the charges
of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are comedians,
liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she looked at the pathos
of his face she repudiated the hideousness of his body. The beast
which is in all men is glossed by women; it is his childishness, the
destructive energy inseparable from youth and high spirits, and it is
always forgiven by women, often forgotten, sometimes, and not rarely,
cherished and fostered.
After a few moments of this silence he placed the reed to his lips and
played a plaintive little air, and then he spoke to her in a strange
voice, coming like a wind from distant places.
"What is your name, Shepherd Girl?" said he.
"Caitilin, Ingin Ni Murrachu," she whispered.
"Daughter of Murrachu," said he, "I have come from a far place where
there are high hills. The men and maidens who follow their flocks in
that place know me and love me for I am the Master of the Shepherds.
They sing and dance and are glad when I come to them in the sunlight;
but in this country no people have done any reverence to me. The
shepherds fly away when they hear my pipes in the pastures; the maidens
scream in fear when I dance to them in the meadows. I am very lonely in
this strange country. You also, although you danced to the music of my
pipes, have covered your face against me and made no reverence."
"I will do whatever you say if it is right," said she.
"You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is your
wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines in the
morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of these words
which have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and the seed goes
abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl?--it is wrong also.
I come to you because the bee goes to the flower--it is wrong! If I did
not come to you to whom would I go? There is no right and no wrong but
only the will of the gods."
"I am afraid of you," said the girl.
"You fear me because my legs are shaggy like the legs of a goat. Look at
them well, O Maiden, and know that they are indeed the legs of a beast
and then you will not be afraid any more. Do you not love beasts? Surely
you should love them for they yearn to you humbly or fiercely, craving
your hand upon their heads as I do. If I were not fashioned thus I would
not come to you because I would not need you. Man is a god and a brute.
He aspires to the stars with his head but his feet are contented in
the grasses of the field, and when he forsakes the brute upon which he
stands then there will be no more men and no more women and the immortal
gods will blow this world away like smoke."
"I don't know what you want me to do," said the girl.
"I want you to want me. I want you to forget right and wrong; to be as
happy as the beasts, as careless as the flowers and the birds. To live
to the depths of your nature as well as to the heights. Truly there are
stars in the heights and they will be a garland for your forehead. But
the depths are equal to the heights. Wondrous deep are the depths, very
fertile is the lowest deep. There are stars there also, brighter than
the stars on high. The name of the heights is Wisdom and the name of the
depths is Love. How shall they come together and be fruitful if you do
not plunge deeply and fearlessly? Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of
the spirit, Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives,
below thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high above these as he
had first descended. Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean
and holy. I sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean purging
itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure or the ice
or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the pulse of fury.
The Crown of Life is not lodged in the sun: the wise gods have buried it
deeply where the thoughtful will not find it, nor the good: but the Gay
Ones, the Adventurous Ones, the Careless Plungers, they will bring it to
the wise and astonish them. All things are seen in the light--How shall
we value that which is easy to see? But the precious things which
are hidden, they will be more precious for our search: they will be
beautiful with our sorrow: they will be noble because of our desire for
them. Come away with me, Shepherd Girl, through the fields, and we will
be careless and happy, and we will leave thought to find us when it can,
for that is the duty of thought, and it is more anxious to discover us
than we are to be found."
So Caitilin Ni Murrachu arose and went with him through the fields, and
she did not go with him because of love, nor because his words had been
understood by her, but only because he was naked and unashamed. _