Great Irish Short Stories (31 page)

“Ay, beside the mill.”

No more was to be said. The riddle of the weaver’s grave was still the riddle of the weaver’s grave. Cloon na Morav kept its secret. But, nevertheless, the weaver would have to be buried. He could not be housed indefinitely. Talking courage from the harrowing aspects of the deadlock, Meehaul Lynskey went back, plump and courageously to his original allegiance.

“The grave of the weaver is there,” he said, and he struck out his hooked fingers in the direction of the disturbance of the sod which the grave-diggers had made under pressure of his earlier enthusiasm.

Cahir Bowes turned on him with a withering, quavering glance.

“Aren’t you afraid that God would strike you where you stand?” he demanded.

“I’m not—not a bit afraid,” said Meehaul Lynskey. “It’s the weaver’s grave.”

“You say that,” cried Cahir Bowes, “after what we all saw and what we all heard?”

“I do,” said Meehaul Lynskey, stoutly. He wiped his lips with the palm of his hand, and launched out into one of his arguments, arguments, as usual, packed with particulars.

“I saw the weaver’s father lowered in that place. And I’ll tell you, what’s more, it was Father Owen MacCarthy that read over him, he a young red-haired curate in this place at the time, long before ever he became parish priest of Benelog. There was I, standing in this exact spot, a young man, too, with a light moustache, holding me hat in me hand, and there one side of me—maybe five yards from the marble stone of the Keernahans—was Patsy Curtin that drank himself to death after, and on the other side of me was Honor Costello, that fell on the grave and married the cattle drover, a big, loose-shouldered Dane.”

Patiently, half absent-mindedly, listening to the renewal of the dispute, the widow remembered the words of Malachi Roohan, and his story of Honor Costello, who fell on the grave over fifty years ago. What memories these old men had! How unreliable they were, and yet flashing out astounding corroborations of each other. Maybe there was something in what Meehaul Lynskey was saying. Maybe—but the widow checked her thoughts. What was the use of it all? This grave could not be the weaver’s grave; it had been grimly demonstrated to them all that it was full of stout coffins. The widow, with a gesture of agitation, smoothed her hair down the gentle slope of her head under the shawl. As she did so her eyes caught the eyes of the grave-digger; he was looking at her! He withdrew his eyes at once, and began to twitch the ends of his dark moustache with his fingers.

“If,” said Cahir Bowes, “this be the grave of the weaver, what’s Julia Rafferty doing in it? Answer me that, Meehaul Lynskey.”

“I don’t know what’s she doing in it, and what’s more, I don’t care. And believe you my word, many a queer thing happened in Cloon na Morav that had no right to happen in it. Julia Rafferty, maybe, isn’t the only one that is where she had no right to be.”

“Maybe she isn’t,” said Cahir Bowes, “but it’s there she is, anyhow, and I’m thinking it’s there she’s likely to stay.”

“If she’s in the weaver’s grave,” cried Meehaul Lynskey, “what I say is, out with her!”

“Very well, then, Meehaul Lynskey. Let you yourself be the powerful man to deal with Julia Rafferty. But remember this, and remember it’s my word, that touch one bone in this place and you touch all.”

“No fear at all have I to right a wrong. I’m no backslider when it comes to justice, and justice I’ll see done among the living and the dead.”

“Go ahead, then, me hearty fellow. If Julia herself is in the wrong place somebody else must be in her own place, and you’ll be following one rightment with another wrongment until in the end you’ll go mad with the tangle of dead men’s wrongs. That’s the end that’s in store for you, Meehaul Lynskey.”

Meehaul Lynskey spat on his fist and struck out with the hooked fingers. His blood was up.

“That I may be as dead as my father!” he began in a traditional oath, and at that Cahir Bowes gave a little cry and raised his stick with a battle flourish. They went up and down the dips of the ground, rising and falling on the waves of their anger, and the widow stood where she was, miserable and downhearted, her feet growing stone cold from the chilly dampness of the ground. The twin, who did not now count, took out his pipe and lit it, looking at the old men with a stolid gaze. The twin who now counted walked uneasily away, bit an end off a chunk of tobacco, and came to stand in the ground in a line with the widow, looking on with her several feet away; but again the widow was conscious of the man’s growing sympathy.

“They’re a nice pair of boyos, them two old lads,” he remarked to the widow. He turned his head to her. He was very handsome.

“Do you think they will find it?” she asked. Her voice was a little nervous, and the man shifted on his feet, nervously responsive.

“It’s hard to say,” he said. “You’d never know what to think. Two old lads, the like of them, do be very tricky.”

“God grant they’ll get it,” said the widow.

“God grant,” said the grave-digger.

But they didn’t. They only got exhausted as before, wheezing and coughing, and glaring at each other as they sat down on two mounds.

The grave-digger turned to the widow.

She was aware of the nice warmth of his brown eyes.

“Are you waking the weaver again tonight?” he asked.

“I am,” said the widow.

“Well, maybe some person—some old man or woman from the country—may turn up and be able to tell where the grave is. You could make inquiries.”

“Yes,” said the widow, but without any enthusiasm, “I could make inquiries.”

The grave-digger hesitated for a moment, and said more sympathetically, “We could all, maybe, make inquiries.” There was a softer personal note, a note of adventure, in the voice.

The widow turned her head to the man and smiled at him quite frankly.

“I’m beholding to you,” she said and then added with a little wounded sigh, “Everyone is very good to me.”

The grave-digger twirled the ends of his moustache.

Cahir Bowes, who had heard, rose from his mound and said briskly, “I’ll agree to leave it at that.” His air was that of one who had made an extraordinary personal sacrifice. What was he really thinking was that he would have another great day of it with Meehaul Lynskey in Cloon na Morav to-morrow. He’d show that oul’ fellow, Lynskey, what stuff Boweses were made of.

“And I’m not against it,” said Meehaul Lynskey. He took the tone of one who was never to be outdone in magnanimity. He was also thinking of another day of effort to-morrow, a day that would, please God, show the Boweses what the Lynskeys were like.

With that the party came straggling out of Cloon na Morav, the two old men first, the widow next, the grave-diggers waiting to put on their coats and light their pipes.

There was a little upward slope on the road to the town, and as the two old men took it the widow thought they looked very spent after their day. She wondered if Cahir Bowes would ever be able for that hill. She would give him a glass of whiskey at home, if there was any left in the bottle. Of the two, and as limp and slack as his body looked, Meehaul Lynskey appeared the better able for the hill. They walked together, that is to say, abreast, but they kept almost the width of the road between each other, as if this gulf expressed the breach of friendship between them on the head of the dispute about the weaver’s grave. They had been making liars of each other all day, and they would, please God, make liars of each other all day to-morrow. The widow, understanding the meaning of this hostility, had a faint sense of amusement at the contrariness of old men. How could she tell what was passing in the head which Cahir Bowes hung, like a fuchsia drop, over the road? How could she know of the strange rise and fall of the thoughts, the little frets, the tempers, the faint humours, which chased each other there? Nobody—not even Cahir Bowes himself—could account for them. All the widow knew was that Cahir Bowes stood suddenly on the road. Something had happened in his brain, some old memory cell long dormant had become nascent, had a stir, a pulse, a flicker of warmth, of activity, and swiftly as a flash of lightning in the sky, a glow of lucidity lit up his memory. It was as if a searchlight had suddenly flooded the dark corners of his brain. The immediate physical effect on Cahir Bowes was to cause him to stand stark still on the road, Meehaul Lynskey going ahead without him. The widow saw Cahir Bowes pivot on his heels, his head, at the end of the horizontal body, swinging round like the movement of a hand on a runaway clock. Instead of pointing up the hill homeward the head pointed down the hill and back to Cloon na Morav. There followed the most extraordinary movements—shufflings, gyrations—that the widow had ever seen. Cahir Bowes wanted to run like mad away down the road. That was plain. And Cahir Bowes believed that he was running like mad away down the road. That was also evident. But what he actually did was to make little jumps on his feet, his stick rattling the ground in front, and each jump did not bring him an inch of ground. He would have gone more rapidly in his normal shuffle. His efforts were like a terrible parody of the springs of a kangaroo. And Cahir Bowes, in a voice that was now more a scream than a cackle, was calling out unintelligible things. The widow, looking at him, paused in wonder, then over her face there came a relaxation, a colour, her eyes warmed, her expression lost its settled pensiveness, and all her body was shaken with uncontrollable laughter. Cahir Bowes passed her on the road in his fantastic leaps, his abortive buck-jumps, screaming and cracking his stick on the ground, his left hand still gripped tightly behind, a powerful brake on the small of his back.

Meehaul Lynskey turned back and his face was shaken with an aged emotion as he looked after the stone-breaker. Then he removed his hat and blessed himself.

“The cross of Christ between us and harm,” he exclaimed. “Old Cahir Bowes has gone off his head at last. I thought there was something up with him all day. It was easily known there was something ugly working in his mind.”

The widow controlled her laughter and checked herself, making the sign of the Cross on her forehead, too. She said:

“God forgive me for laughing and the weaver with the habit but fresh upon him.”

The grave-digger who counted was coming out somewhat eagerly over the stile, but Cahir Bowes, flourishing his stick, beat him back again and then himself re-entered Cloon na Morav. He stumbled over the grass, now rising on a mound, now disappearing altogether in a dip of the ground, travelling in a giddy course like a hooker in a storm; again, for a long time, he remained submerged, showing, however, the eternal stick, his periscope, his indication to the world that he was about his business. In a level piece of ground, marked by stones with large mottle white marks upon them, he settled and cried out to all, and calling God to witness, that this surely was the weaver’s grave. There was scepticism, hesitation, on the part of the grave-diggers, but after some parley, and because Cahir Bowes was so passionate, vehement, crying and shouting, dribbling water from the mouth, showing his yellow teeth, pouring sweat on his forehead, quivering on his legs, they began to dig carefully in the spot. The widow, at this, re-arranged the shawl on her head and entered Cloon na Morav, conscious, as she shuffled over the stile, that a pair of warm brown eyes were, for a moment, upon her movements and then withdrawn. She stood a little way back from the digging and waited the result with a slightly more accelerated beating of the heart. The twins looked as if they were ready to strike something unexpected at any moment, digging carefully, and Cahir Bowes hung over the place, cackling and crowing, urging the men to swifter work. The earth sang up out of the ground, dark and rich in colour, gleaming like gold, in the deepening twilight in the place. Two feet, three feet, four feet of earth came up, the spades pushing through the earth in regular and powerful pushes, and still the coast was clear. Cahir Bowes trembled with excitement on his stick. Five feet of a pit yawned in the ancient ground. The spade work ceased. One of the grave-diggers looked up at Cahir Bowes and said:

“You hit the weaver’s grave this time right enough. Not another grave in the place could be as free as this.”

The widow sighed a quick little sigh and looked at the face of the other grave-digger, hesitated, then allowed a remote smile of thankfulness to flit across her palely sad face. The eyes of the man wandered away over the darkening spaces of Cloon na Morav.

“I got the weaver’s grave surely,” cried Cahir Bowes, his old face full of a weird animation. If he had found the Philosopher’s Stone he would only have broken it. But to find the weaver’s grave was an accomplishment that would help him into a wisdom before which all his world would bow. He looked around triumphantly and said:

“Where is Meehaul Lynskey now; what will the people be saying at all about his attack on Julia Rafferty’s grave? Julia will haunt him, and I’d sooner have anyone at all haunting me than the ghost of Julia Rafferty. Where is Meehaul Lynskey now? Is it ashamed to show his liary face he is? And what talk had Malachi Roohan about an elm tree? Elm tree, indeed! If it’s trees that is troubling him now let him climb up on one of them and hang himself from it with his rope! Where is that old fellow, Meehaul Lynskey, and his rotten head? Where is he, I say? Let him come in here now to Cloon na Morav until I be showing him the weaver’s grave, five feet down and not a rib or a knuckle in it, as clean and beautiful as the weaver ever wished it. Come in here, Meehaul Lynskey, until I hear the lies panting again in your yellow throat.”

He went in his extraordinary movement over the ground, making for the stile all the while talking.

Meehaul Lynskey had crouched behind the wall outside when Cahir Bowes led the diggers to the new site, his old face twisted in an attentive, almost agonizing emotion. He stood peeping over the wall, saying to himself:

“Whisht, will you! Don’t mind that old madman. He hasn’t it at all. I’m telling you he hasn’t it. Whisht, will you! Let him dig away. They’ll hit something in a minute. They’ll level him when they find out. His brain has turned. Whist, now, will you, and I’ll have that rambling old lunatic, Cahir Bowes, in a minute. I’ll leap in on him. I’ll charge him before the world. I’ll show him up. I’ll take the gab out of him. I’ll lacerate him. I’ll lambaste him. Whisht, will you!”