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) THE BLACK SOUL




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The
BLACK SOUL
BY
LIAM O'FLAHERTY


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Printed for BoNI & LiVERIGHT
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to
EDWARD GARNETT
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WINTER
Wg6 vyeN








THE BLACK SOUL
flzinter
51
IN WINTER ALL THINGS DIE. SO ROARED THE SEA
around the shores of Inverara. To the west
beyond Rooruck it was black with dim fountains
of white foam rising here and there as a wave
formed and came towering to the beach. To the
north, between Inverara and the mainland, it was
white, like the waters of a mountain torrent, white
with wide strips of green as if it had got sick and
vomited. To the south it was black with a belt
of white along the shore beneath the cliffs, where
the breakers lashed the rocks. To the east beyond
Kilmillick, where the north and south met in the
narrow channel athwart the Head of Crom, it was
a seething cauldron, hissing like a wounded snake.
And around Rooruck it roared in mad delight.
Winter had come. The sea was wrecking all
that had generated in Spring, flowered in Summer
and borne fruit in Autumn. It tore huge rocks
from its bosom and sent them rumbling through
the deep, It hurled weeds shorewards in a tumbling mass. They lined the beaches in mounds
9




The
BLACK     SOUL(&Nj       )(2
mixed with sand and the carcases of dogfish. It
struck the cliffs monstrous blows that shook
them and sent the rockbirds screaming from their
clefts. They soared wildly out, their eyes searching the foam for fish.
In winter all things die. So shrieked the wind
coming over the sea from the west. It rose from
the sea and whirled upwards over the land. It
mounted the wall of boulders that protected
Rooruck on the west. It skirted the Hill of Fate
that guarded Rooruck on the south. It swept
eastwards, flying straight in its fury between
earth and sky, blasting the earth. The grass was
plucked up by the roots. Sheep fled bleating,
seeking shelter among the crags. Horses neighed
and ran in terror, their nostrils red. The goats
wandering on the cliffs snorted and ran eastwards
to the hollow beyond Coillnamken. The fowls
in the crops cackled and hid their heads among
their feathers. Dogs howled. Pigs grunted and
then huddled close together in their straw, whining. Old men sitting by the fires in their cabins
shivered and felt that their death was near.
In winter all things die. The rain carried on the
wind fell in great black drops that pattered on
the crags and rose again in a blue mist. It came
from the darkened sky sparse and scattered as if
the clouds had been disembowelled in mid-air and
10




9he
RM~i~kMBLACK SOUL~^%(^
only fragments of them had reached the earth
terrified. There was no moon. It was hidden by
the torn clouds. And the stars shone dimly in
twos and threes, scattered over the firmament.
Between two hills, sheltered from the wind and
from the sea, lay the seventeen cabins of Rooruck.
Their thatched roofs, bound with thick ropes and
laden with rocks, shivered but remained intact.
The whitewash on their stone walls was blackened..
Their doors were buttressed with stones and strips
of sacking. Boards nailed into the wooden frames
covered the windows. Here and there men stood
at their gables leaning against the wind, their legs
wide apart, their red lips opened outwards, their
yellow teeth bared, their oilskin hats bound around
their heads with strings. They shouted to one
another from long distances, talking of the storm.
Then they would shrug their shoulders, look at
their thatch, and go indoors to their fires. Women
with their red petticoats thrown over their heads
hurried to the well for water. They stopped for
a moment with their arms akimbo and their heads
bent sideways close together, like birds, talking in
awe of the storm and praising God who had not
already destroyed them. Then night advanced
and the hamlet was still, but for the barking of the
frightened dogs.
At the most western point of the hamlet, nearest
II




'The
BLAC                 SO   L BLAC K  SOUL
the shore and the sea, Red John's cabin lay huddled against the bluff of the hill. Around it the
wind only sighed and moaned, for none but stray
blasts reached it, blasts that had wandered from
the storm, fallen in weariness from the whirling
coils that rushed eastwards without pausing for
breath. But the sea-spray sometimes struck the
door, with a slow falling swish, as of a mountain
of loose silk being crushed. The cries of the seabirds that whirled about it sounded dismally. It
was as if the lid were wrenched from the mouth
of hell and the wailing of the damned came floating
up from the distant caverns. But within there was
warmth and peace, heightened by the storm without. In the kitchen a paraffin lamp burned dimly
on the wall, its flame smoked with the draught
that struck it from the chimney, discolouring the
whitewashed wall behind it. On the open hearth
a great turf fire burned, fanned by the draught.
Its blaze was brighter than the lamp. Sometimes
a blue snaky column shot up to lick the soot, that
withered before it. The delf on the dresser
gleamed in the half-light. Among the sooty
rafters, where the earthen covering beneath the
thatch hung down in dried lumps, there was darkness. And in the corners shadows seemed to lurk.
Red John sat on a three-legged stool in a corner
to the left of the hearth, lighting his clay pipe with
12




The
WN       W1   BLACK     SOULI;
a coal that he had taken from the fire in a tongs.
His red sunburned cheeks, seen through his red
beard, were puffing in and out like a bellows as he
sucked at the pipe. Then he dropped the coal
into the fire and hit the dog that lay beside him on
the hearth with the tongs. The dog whined and
looked at him. But presently he sidled up again
and stuck his nose in the yellow ashes. He sighed,
and the outrush of his breath blew the ashes up on
the legs of Red John's trousers. Red John cursed
and struck the dog on the side with his raw-hide
shoe. The dog yelped and went to the dresser in
two bounds. There he curled up and dug his
snout into the spot where he had been kicked as if
he had a flea, while his little eyes looked at Red
John viciously.
Red John's wife sitting in the opposite corner
looked at her husband and curled up her lips.
Then she turned to the dog, cracked her fingers
and said "Poor doggie." She did not feel compassion for the cur which she often beat herself,
for it was a mangy mongrel. But she favoured it
because her husband had kicked it. The cur rose
and crept over to her almost on his belly, looking
sideways at Red John. He lay by her lap wagging
his tail and whining.
"Huh!" said Red John as he struck the turf fire
with his shoe. His lips opened again to speak, and
13




The
kt~k]KRM        ~~ BLACK  SOUL(JgRM(2ýK
the tendons of his fingers rose in ridges on the
back of his hands as if he were about to strangle
his wife, but he neither spoke nor moved. He was
afraid to strangle her, afraid even to speak to her.
They hardly ever spoke during the five years they
were married. And when they spoke, they spoke
in hissing monosyllables. Sometimes they sat a
whole winter's evening in silence, peering into the
blaze. They hated one another. Red John, crabbit, weak-featured and bandy-legged, hated and
feared Little Mary his wife; and Little Mary
(so called because she was the tallest woman in
Inverara) hated her husband and despised him.
Little Mary looked at her husband again, curled
up her lips and opened wide her nostrils. "Fcha,"
she hissed, her hate boiling within her. She hit
the dog and sent him away from her to the dresser,
and gathering her black cotton shawl around her
well-moulded breasts, she looked into the fire
thinking.
"What is she thinking of now, the sorceress?"
muttered Red John to himself. She was always
thinking that way, sometimes showing her white
teeth in a smile. That is why he feared her so. One
could never know what was passing behind her
high forehead. Red John huddled himself down
to his knees and brooded on his folly in marrying her. Was she not the illegitimate daughter
14




Th e
RZ19R         BLACK SOUL5Ng             j
of Sir Henry Blake's housekeeper, of Blake Castle
on the mainland? And the housekeeper herself
was the illegitimate daughter of a Breton smuggler.
The peasants knew it too, and often twitted him
with taking a bastard woman to wife, one, too,
with Blake blood in her. Often, when he was
drinking in Mulligan's shebeen in Kilmurrage,
a man would whisper in his ear, "Is it true that
woman of yours has dirty Blake blood in her,
Red John?" Then Red John would pull off his
blue woollen shirt and dance around the tavern
floor, offering to fight the whole of Inverara, spitting on his hands between oaths. But he was so
weak and inconsequent that everybody laughed
at him. Even the small boys, when he passed
them on his shaggy red mountain pony, shouted
after him "Empty Breeks," the deadliest insult to
a man in Inverara, where to be childless was to be
impotent.
He peered across over his red beard at his wife's
bosom. The right side of his face distorted, and
his right hand shot into the pocket of his waistcoat
for his knife. He longed to drive a knife down to
the hilt in that breast. He often pictured to himself that thrust and the upward gush of red blood.
He would lick his lips as if he were drinking it.
But he was afraid. He was afraid. He, deformed
himself, was afraid of touching such a beautiful
i5




The
thing, such well-moulded breasts, and red cheeks
and a neck like clear foam and grey eyes that were
always looking long distances, and black hair,
straight black, rolled in a huge pile on her head.
She was so different from any other woman in
Inverara. "Curse the night I went to Ballycalla,"
he muttered. He had gone to the fair at Ballycalla
on the mainland with his uncle, Sean Mor of Coillnamhan, and Michael the Drake of Kilmillick.
Little Mary's mother was then living among the
peasants after Sir Henry's death in France and
the sale of his property, and they persuaded Red
John to ask her for her daughter's hand in marriage. "Curse the lips that said 'yes,' " he muttered; ý'don't make your house on a hill; don't
marry a beautiful woman; don't... don't...
don't... may the devil mince her bones." He
was thinking of the wedding night. All the guests
had departed drunk and singing, and he had tried
to embrace her, but she hit him on the forehead
a blow that sent him reeling against the kitchen
wall. Then she went to bed alone, forcing him to
sleep on a pallet in a corner of the room. And in all
the five years he had never possessed her.
"Huh," he cried, gathering fury, as he recalled
the whole weight of his contumely. "What are
you sitting there for like a dead one? Why can't
you speak to a man?"




The
RZI]KRZ~ B LLAC K SO U L I-g;kM3k]
Little Mary smiled scornfully without replying.
Then she raised the hem of her red petticoat to
allow the flames to warm her shins, or perhaps with
feminine spite to madden her husband's lust with
the sight of her well-shaped calves.
"You're not a man," she said carelessly with a
contemptuous shrug of her shoulders.
Red John fumed and chattered impotently.
She bared her white teeth, threw back her head
slightly, nearly closed her eyes until the tips of the
long lashes almost touched her cheekbones.
"Um-m-m-m," she said.
Thousands of little snakes chased up and down
her full white throat. Then her lips closed over
her teeth and, opening wide her eyes, she looked
again into the fire, thinking.
Men, men, men. How she wanted men, never
having had any but this miserable lout of a husband, already beyond his youth when he married
her, and never shapely. The blood of her father,
Blake, the aristocratic gallant, and of her adventurous, fierce grandfather, Le Cachet, made it
impossible for her to love a peasant like her husband, or any of the peasants she saw around her
in Inverara. They were too coarse. They drank
whisky to arouse their passion, and then mated like
pigs in their drunkenness. And the longing for
love burned as fiercely within her during those
17               B




'Trh e
R!Zt-Ry       BL A CK   SO0U L
five years that it broke through everything, shame,
fear, modesty. So when a painter had come from
the mainland to paint the breakers beneath the
Hill of Fate, she had smiled at him. She was
gathering seaweed on the shore with her husband
when she saw him sitting on a rock with his easel.
She went up to him silently and looked over his
shoulder. Then she laughed. "Paint me too," she
cried, "I am more beautiful than the sea!" But he
was a stupid Catholic and fled from her. And then,
unable to find love, she longed for a son. She
would sit by the fire and imagine that a son was
drinking at her breast. It soothed the aching
within her. She actually felt the impress of his
toothless gums on her nipples. And the blood
would course madly up her neck, swelling the
veins as she shivered with passion. Often she
rushed from the cabin on a summer evening, her
bodice open at the neck, her light shawl across her
shoulders, seeking love, but the young men who
smiled at her when they met her repelled her.
They were yokels like her husband. There was a
salt smell from their bodies and their breath was
fetid. Even Father S-, who tried to touch her
shoulder once in the confessional, with the queer
light in his eyes that all men had when they looked
at her, repelled her. He was not a yokel, but... Ah! she wanted a fierce man and...
18




The
Ag)@,jD BLACK     SOUL()(
A great wave rolled to the beach at the rear. Its
wash sent a shower of water flying against the
cabin. It fell with a great noise against the door,
and the cabin shook slightly. Then a great falling
sound came like thunder, followed by a tinkling
reverberation like silver coin dancing on a plate:
another rock had been torn by the sea from the
Hill of Fate. Red John started and rose to his
feet.
"The cabin will be swept away before morning,"
he said.
Little Mary shrugged her shoulders. She did
not care. Then Red John went to the door and
opened it, and she saw the pitch darkness all
around. A blast of wind rushed in with a querulous shriek, spilt a jug of milk on the dresser, and
then died with a gasp as the door shut. She started
and, bending her neck backwards, listened to the
steady roar outside, the sea, the wind, the dogs,
the birds, the falling walls, the driven rain.
Red John was bolting the door. "He is out in
that storm," thought Little Mary. Then she
peered at the chimney, her eyes gleaming, the tip
of her tongue licking her lower lip. Her bosom
and neck heaved as if somebody were trying to
choke her. The hardness left her face, as if she
were eager to be choked. She was thinking now of
the man who had been in the cabin for the last
19




The
RZ1      2M, LBLACK  SOUL0V
seven days. That night week he had come with
her husband from Kilmurrage. "I want to be left
alone," he said, as he threw two suitcases on the
kitchen floor. Great God, what a man he was!
They said that the doctors had told him to come to
Inverara as a cure for his nerves. He had been in
the wars. At least so the people said. He had
never spoken to her yet, or even looked at her
except as an automaton who served his meals and
made his bed. Everybody called him the "Stranger," but Seameen Derrane's daughter, who
worked in Shaughnessy's hotel in Kilmurrage,
where he had stayed the first three days after his
arrival in Inverara, said that his name was Fergus
O'Connor, and that he belonged to Ashcragh on
the mainland, the little town south of the Head of
Crom. They said too that he was mad, and had
no religion. But she did not care what they said.
He was the kind of man she wanted. His great
black eyes pierced her like a wolfhound's, when he
bent his forehead into furrows and his eyebrows
contracted. And what a mouth he had! O God
of the thousand battles, it was the kind of mouth
she had kissed in her dreams, kissed until her lips
were bruised. Long straight quivering lips! Of
course he was thin and haggard, but all men were
thin and haggard who lived hard. Why should
men not live hard? Her own people had always
20




The
RSMRZB L A CK       SOU L (,tT,!(!
lived hard. Her father had lived hard. Was not
her grandfather, Le Cachet the Breton, shot during a drunken orgy in a brothel in the South of
France? All real men lived hard, not slothfully
like pigs, as her husband lived, but wildly, like
the storm that has no morals and recognizes no
laws, but ruthlessly rushes forward and yet is
beautiful in its ferocity.
Once she had touched his right hand below the
wrist while handing him a cup of tea, and,.
Virgin Mary, what a sensation! She had to turn
away her head to hide her blushes. Would he never
notice her? Perhaps he despised her as a peasant.
Of course he was different. His hands were
smooth and refined, and his face, in spite of the
brown beard he was growing, was like her father's
face. It had that peculiar expression in it that
peasants did not have, as if it were concealing something. "I will make him look at me," she panted.
"There will be wreckage to-night," said Red John,
jumping to his feet. "Get me my things ready.
Sean Mor said he would come for me to go to the
shore. Get my things, I say, woman," he shouted,
stamping on the floor.
She rose without speaking. It was as well to
obey him. In Inverara all women obeyed their
husbands even though they hated and despised
them. It was a custom, and customs are stronger
21




The
^XS  ^       BLACK    SOUL        ^)~
than desires. She took a pair of old patched frieze
trousers from a nail on the back door and threw
them in the centre of the floor. On top of them
she threw a heavy blue frieze shirt, an oilskin hat,
a pair of raw-hide shoes, a waistcoat, a pair of
woollen socks and a red muffler. She put half an
oaten loaf in a handkerchief. She made tea and
put it in a tin can. She tied a flannel cloth around
the can to keep it warm. Then she sat again by
the fire.
Red John took the clothes and went into the
room on the right to dress himself. Little Mary
was listening now for the sounds of footsteps. She
was expecting the Stranger to come in any moment. How delicious it was to be expecting him.
And she would be alone with him to-night while
her husband was away. She started as a loud
knock came to the door. She jumped up eagerly
and unbarred it. But it was only Sean Mor, her
husband's uncle. The great bulk of the fisherman
stalked into the middle of the kitchen, shaking
the rain from his clothes and stamping on the floor,
crying that it was the worst night for forty years.
He shuffled to a stool by the fire, leaving wet footprints on the earthen floor. Then he began to
talk in a loud voice to his nephew who was still in
the room.
Little Mary sat by the fire again. She knew Sean
22




TAe
(iIF    BsS  BLACK     SOUL ~     ^    (S
Mor was looking at her with his mind as he talked
with his lips, leering with those small eyes of his.
He was fifty, but strong and hardy, living on the
sea, and his wife was a thin consumptive woman.
Once he had tried to seize Little Mary, crying
with a coarse guffaw, "Now, if it were I who were
living with you, there would be little voices in the
house." How hateful he was, with the tobacco
stains on his beard and the black dirt beneath his
gnarled nails.
"Well," said Red John, coming from the room
and taking his can of tea, "in the Name of God,
let us go." They sprinkled holy water on themselves and said "In the Name of the Father" as
they crossed their breasts. The rain swept sideways into the kitchen as they went. Then the
door banged, the lamp flickered, and there was
silence. The dog smelt the door and then curled
up by the fire on Red John's stool.
Little Mary was excited now. She was constantly shivering. Her passion surged up into her
throat. She tripped around tidying the kitchen,
her hips swaying like a dancer's. She combed her
long black hair and put a ribbon in it. She turned
around and around in front of the mirror by the
lamp. She fidgeted, standing in front of the fire.
She blushed as she toyed with the breast of her
bodice. Then she gasped and put her hands to
23




The
Bg) s^        1LACK     SOUL(jg        Mj.
her heart as she heard footsteps coming around
the gable-end. She had opened the door before
the knock came.
As the Stranger entered, he stumbled against
her, buffeted by the storm. "I beg your pardon,"
he said gently, and half-turned to her before he
stopped short as if he remembered that he had
committed an indecency, and his face set again in
a scowl. Little Mary curtsied and smiled.
The Stranger went to the centre of the room and
commenced to take off his dripping oilskin coat.
Little Mary paused, half-ashamed to help him until
he called sharply, "Come, give me a hand, please."
As his face turned to her in the half-light, she
could see that he was intoxicated, but she was not
afraid of that. It seemed to her to be natural that
her man should drink. Drink made men wild, and
wildness was of the sea and of all things that were
passionate and strong and beautiful. She took the
coat gently from his shoulders and hung it on a
nail. The Stranger, muttering something, kicked
a stool to the front of the fire, sat down with a thud
and spread his hands to the blaze.
"Will you have your supper now?" she asked.
He looked around at her contemptuously. "Supper?" he said. "Oh yes. Why not? I'm not hungry. Yes, of course I will."
As she passed him going to and from the fire
24




V e
RM(iK) B9 BL A CK       -SO0U L a  T!(
preparing supper, she kept looking at him, eager
to speak and unable to begin. She was hoping that
he would begin. After that it would be easy. But
the Stranger kept silent. He had drunk several
glasses of whisky in Derrane's shebeen, and the
whisky had made him gloomy and depressed, as it
always does with men whose souls are troubled.
He kept looking into the fire, furrowing his forehead, twitching his nostrils and cracking the fingers of his right hand restlessly. His face, lit up
by the firelight, was as pale as the face of a corpse,
and the high cheekbones seemed to be straining
against the skin like the ribs of an old cab-horse.
His spine was distinct through the back of his
coat as he sat leaning forward from the hips. But
his eyes were wild and fierce. They would have
kept a strong man away in fear from the wrecked
body that encompassed them. They stared intently, and the lashes never blinked over them.
But the brows kept contracting.
He sat trying to think, but the whisky made
thought incoherent and illusory. The whining of
the wind seemed to enter his brain.
"Are there eggs for me, Mary?" he said with a
start, eager to busy himself with the world about
him to prevent the mad rush of past memories
that he felt were coming. They always came when
he sat thinking.
25




Vhe
RZR]KRBL BLACK SOUL (RgRZjg
"Yes, there are."
"Oh, well, I don't want them."
"But you must eat," said Little Mary. "A person
must eat to live in this weather."
He looked at her, about to argue with her, but he
remembered that she was a peasant. She would
not understand. He laughed and looked at the
fire again. "All right, Mary, I'll eat them." Of
course it would be ridiculous to talk to her. What
in the name of the devil did she know about life?
And why should he want to talk to people about
important things, about 'life? He had come to
Inverara to get rid of important things, of life.
But was life important?
He clenched his hands and gritted his teeth to
kill those hateful thoughts that began to rush into
his mind like a shower of bullets fired in rapid
succession. He moved his stool back from the
fire with a nervous gesture, but the draught between the chimney and the door caught him, and
he moved up again with a muttered oath. He
began to tremble with rage. A dog began to bark
in a cabin to the right. The roar of the sea became
distinct and separate from the other sounds. He
gasped and let his body go lax. He couldn't resist
his thoughts. He couldn't govern them. With his
lips wide open and a kind of wondering expression
in his eyes he stared into the fire. Immediately
26




The
'41 /2 e
00   0BLACK       SOUL
something began to throb in his brain, like a
motor, jumping back into the past. Then a door
seemed to open - the door of his memory. It
opened with a snap. As a whirlwind catches up
suddenly a heap of snow, just around the bend of
a mountain road, and lashes the countless flakes
round and round in the air, the bulk remaining
together in a winding column that rises higher
and higher, while stray flakes drop from the white
cloud, stand still for a moment and then fall into
the valley beneath, so visions of his thirty years of
life whirled round and round in the cell of his
memory. One of them would break loose, pause
for a moment at the door and then vanish. They
did not come in the order of time or importance.
They did not even seem to bear any relation to
himself. In fact, he could see himself as if he
were a stranger.
First he saw himself, a boy of twelve years, sitting in a brake with a score of other boys, some
older than himself, some the same age. He was
dressed in a knickerbocker suit with a belt down
the back of the jacket, a school cap on his head, a
cutaway starched collar over his jacket. Beside
him sat a rosy-cheeked priest, with huge red
hands, and his clerical waistcoat stained with snuff.
The brake was approaching a large dome-shaped
marble gate, with a large bronze cross over it.
27




RZ1RMBLACK S OUL~kR!~j
All the boys were silent, some smoking cigarettes.
"Ha, ha!1" laughed the priest, "this is the Pearly
Gate, my boys. No smoking allowed in Heaven."
And as the brake scratched its way over the granite
dust in through the school-gate, the boys with a
sigh threw their cigarettes on the huge pile of
other cigarettes that lay to the left of the gate,
under the niche that held a statue of the Blessed
Virgin.
That picture vanished. There was a hum in his
ears, and another picture stood out like a little red
star. He saw himself as an infant, sprawling
naked in his mother's lap. Black clouds were
forming far away from his eyes, and then they
approached nearer and nearer until they became
little red spots. He was crying from fear. He
was afraid of his mother. He could see a queer
look in her eyes above him as he lay on his
back. She was fondling his naked toes, but
she was laughing boisterously at the same time
and talking shortly to an old woman who was
mixing punch at the table. Then that picture
merged into another, in which he himself did not
figure. It was, his home, a square grey building,
with a garden in front, white blinds drawn on the
upper windows, and the yellow chimney-pots discoloured with black soot. Voices were coming
from the dining-room. His mother was shrieking,,28




T4e
B BLACK   S  U L
"Oh then, oh then, oh then! Are you going to
murder me, John? Can't I take a drop of brandy
for my rheumatism? Oh then, oh then, oh then!"
Then his father came out and banged the door
behind him. He walked down the gravel path
to the gate, his left hand in his pocket, his right
hand stroking his brown beard, his grey cloth hat
pulled down over his eyes, a melancholy expression
in his face, his full red lips twitching. Next came
a vision of himself, at seventeen, standing over his
mother's corpse. His father's hand was on his
shoulder, the fingers clasping the shoulder-blade
spasmodically. "Fergus," said his father, "promise me now that you will never forget how..."
And then the voice faded as he heard the parish
priest denounce his father from the altar as an
atheist, ordering his parishioners under pain of
excommunication to keep their children from
Mr. O'Connor's school.
"I should love to see that priest dying of cancer,"
the Stranger muttered aloud.
Then came his father's death. It was a back
room, in one of those drab streets off the South
Circular Road in Dublin. He himself, then an
enthusiastic youth of twenty, a brilliant student
at the University, chaste, studious, supporting
his father by clerical work in the evening in a
newspaper office, while he maintained himself at
29




rhe
RM5NiU.k     ) BLACSK SOUL 0 UL
college with scholarships, was holding his father's
hand, comforting him, telling him he would be
happy and prosperous yet. And the old man
shook his head and said, "I wonder, Fergus, is
their hell as cruel as life?"
"Oh, damn it!" cried the Stranger, striking his
forehead with his clenched fist.
Little Mary started and looked at him tenderly.
"Keep away from the fire," she said, "until you
have eaten your supper. Food will settle your
stomach. The heat goes badly with whisky."
Ha! Now the visions became more comfortable.
He could recognize himself as he was now. He
was alone in the world, scoffing at the world.
There was his first night at a music-hall. What a
strange effect that had on him! When he saw the
women, half-naked, displaying their plump limbs
sensuously as they glided up and down the stage,
he almost went mad with suppressed passion. He
was then twenty-one and had never touched drink
or knew women. That night after the theatre he
tasted both.
"Of course. Why not?" he said aloud.
"What's that?" said Little Mary, as she laid a cup
and saucer on the table.
"Oh, nothing," grumbled the Stranger.
Little Mary shuddered and thought that it might
have been the wind she heard. It sometimes
30




4he
ROIMM) BBLACK S OUL
seemed to talk with a human voice when it whistled around the western gable of the cabin, where
the thatch rubbed between the two round stones
that held the manilla ropes to the roof. Or it
might have been the Wave of Destiny that roared
distantly off the Fountain Hole. People said there
was an underground palace there, submerged for
thousands of years. Dead warriors feasted there
in winter and the sound of their banquet music
was carried by the wind over the sea, to drive
lonely women crazy with longing for love. She
sighed and brushed the Stranger's elbow as she
passed him to the fire.
The Stranger shivered inwardly as he felt her
body touch his. He turned his head slowly to
look at her. As she bent over the fire, with the
fire-glow on her cheeks, she looked beautiful to
him. But she did not arouse his passion. For him
it was like looking at a statue.
"Women are a curse," he muttered. "No, no.
Not a curse, but the playthings of folly, disused... "
With a snap the motor in his brain began to purr
again. Again a picture eddied out of the mass of
memories and stood still. It was the picture of
the night with his first woman. She became distinct for a moment, beautiful eyes burning like
coals in the wreck of a beautiful face, a loose soiled
31




The
]^~(SCed~ BLACK          SOUL @^%~(^^
dressing-gown with a fleshless collar-bone showing at the open neck. Then the woman vanished
as she held out her thin hands and said, "Are you
leaving me so soon, dearie?" He himself became
distinct, wandering through back streets, tearing
his hair, cursing himself, feeling his body unclean, begging the earth to open up and devour
him. Then a whole series of pictures came with
a rush, crowding one over the other. That was
his year of debauch before he joined the army.
At last the pictures joined together and formed
into one. He saw himself standing outside a recruiting office, down at heel, in a tattered coat,
with sunken cheeks. Then a monstrous picture
came, distorted like a madman's fancy. It was a
vast plain without a tree or a blade of grass, pockmarked with shell holes, covered with rotting
corpses. He could see the vermin crawling on the
dead lips. And he smiled. That picture did not
accuse himself. It accused the world that he hated.
"Just think of it," he muttered, "I spent three
years in that hell. Great God!"
He smiled as he saw himself wandering around
the world for two years after the war, trying to find
somewhere to rest - Canada, the Argentine, South
Africa. "What a blasted fool I was! As if there
were any rest for a man in this world!" And then,
worse still, he saw himself back again in Dublin,
32




T4e
B L BLACK  SOULL
burrowing in the bowels of philosophy, trying to
find consolation one day in religion, next day in
anarchism, next day in Communism, and rejecting
everything as empty, false and valueless. And at
last, despairing of life, flying from it as from an
ogre that was torturing him, he had come to
Inverara.
He jumped to his feet, and with his hands behind
his back he began to stalk up and down the floor,
muttering disjointedly:
"Honour, civilization... eh... all rot... culture be damned... all the culture in the world... prostitution and hypocrisy... only thing is
to live like a beast without thought... not to
give a damn..."
"Your supper is ready," said Little Mary.
He had forgotten his supper, and he felt no desire
to eat. Still, he had no energy to refuse it. What
did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether he ate
or did not eat? "In the world men make revolutions in order to eat. How ridiculous!" He took a
seat at the deal table. He broke an egg and tasted
it.
"Drink the tea first," said Little Mary. "It will
do you good."
"Oh, for God's sake, woman, let me alone. How
do you know what's good or bad?"
Mary almost dropped the kettle she was taking
33               c




The
RZ~ffM         B L BLAC K So    U UL
from the hearth. She whirled around like a tigress.
Her eyes blazed. He had sworn at her. Her lips
went white. Her husband had often sworn at
her. The men around Rooruck always swore at
their women and often beat them. But she had
expected that this man would have been refined.
He had insulted her! She forgot that she was a
peasant. Her father's blood boiled in her. The
hand holding the kettle shivered. Then her anger
fled in a flash. Instead she felt a throbbing of her
breast. It hurt her, as fire hurts a numbed hand.
The Stranger had looked at her fiercely, and before
his stare her anger had changed into the hunger
of love. She felt a physical pain as if.he had beaten
her with a stick. It was more cruel than that. He
had burnt her with his tongue and his eyes had
drawn the sting from her body, leaving it numb.
She sighed. Her breast heaved and her eyes
dimmed with sadness looking into his. They said,
"Come, you may kill me. I am yours."
He looked at her through the mist that the
whisky raised before his eyes, and thought that
she was a cocotte ogling him. He could see her
only at a far distance. Between his eyes and hers
there were a host of visions - his mother, his father,
his youth that was pure, his debauched manhood,
and the horrors of war. All these visions told hipm
that she was a cocotte, "like all women," that she
34




The
would look at all men as she looked at him. Beyond these visions was the beauty of her sad eyes
and her swelling white throat. That beauty attracted him. But his soul, enraged with his sordid
past, hissed at the beauty and scowled, persuading
itself that the woman was repulsive, "like all
women."
"I won't let the slut drag me back to life," he
muttered, savagely eating his griddle cake.
And Little Mary moved about the kitchen excitedly, watching him without looking at him.
"He has trouble on his mind," she thought. "I
will wait. Wait, wait, wait for ever."
The Stranger finished his meal and sat again in
front of the fire. Little Mary cleared the table and
sat in the corner beside him looking into the fire.
And then he began to feel her presence drawing
him towards her again. His mind was bored. It
was his body that was excited. It was an ugly excitement that filled his mind with repulsion. He
struggled against it, but it remained. Then he
looked at her with the look in his eyes that all men
had when they looked at her. She shuddered.
The accumulated passion of years was burning in
her and she was eager for his love. And yet she
began to feel afraid. She did not see the light of
love in his eyes. She wanted him for ever. And
that hot passion in his face was like what she saw
35




The
g ggBLACK SOUL G
in all men's faces. It was lust. He had arisen from
his stool and was moving slowly towards her, his
hands shaking.
"No, no," she cried with her lips, as her body
moved towards his. "No,no. I... I... don't."
He swore as he grasped her shoulders, and then
there was a loud roar that sent them both to their
feet gasping.
The cabin shook. Thunder crashed across the
heavens. The slits between the boards on the
windows were bright with the forked lightning.
The sound came rumbling from east to west
louder and louder, as if each peal gave birth in its
passage to a peal louder than itself. Through the
sound of the thunder came the screech of the wind.
And the sea roared monotonously like a hungry
lion. The air was full of sound.
The Stranger stood transfixed by the fire. Little
Mary stood beside him looking up at him, careless
of the storm. Then she threw her arms around
his neck and pressed close to him feigning fear.
"Protect me," she murmured.
He thrust her gently from him and went to the
centre of the floor trembling. He felt that the
thunder had clapped as a warning to him. It
warned him against falling a victim to passion.
So God might have warned a hermit monk of old.
He became full of self-pity. He told himself that
36




rThe,   g) (BL) BLACK      SOUL 5N      ^
the whole world was in arms against him, dragging him back again into the torture from which
he had fled. Even here, to the desolate bleak fastness of Rooruck, the wickedness of the world had
pursued him. These passions and desires of the
flesh were ugly and futile. Passion belonged to
young men, full of the enthusiasm of youth. It
belonged to the chattering mob. He was dead to
it. He had heaped huge rocks on its grave.
"Ye-ah," he said, baring his teeth. A demoniac
look came into his eyes. Then his stomach turned.
He went stumbling to the door and out into the
night.
Little Mary dropped into her seat by the fire.
Her bosom heaved with sobs. She bit her finger,
trying to think what was the matter with her. Her
body felt as if pins were being stuck through every
pore of her skin. The soles of her feet itched.
"Virgin Mary," she kept saying, "what is coming
over me? I love him, I love him."
She could not look at him when he came in. She
wanted to be alone with this wonderful thing that
had seized her body. She wanted to master it.
He stood at the door dripping with rain, his black
hair in a matted mass about his face. Nothing of
his face was visible but his bloodshot black eyes
staring wildly. His bosom heaved as he hiccupped.
Then he stumbled to his room, tore off his clothes,
37




Vre
and fell on the bed. In a momi'ent he was fast
asleep. His passion died and left him as helpless
as death, for in winter all things die that live in
summer.
But even in winter morning brings life and
motion. It is a glorious motion to the strong,
that winter movement of life in Inverara. It
makes the body feel clean and the mind strong, as
if it were bound with laths of steel. But for the
weak, of body or of mind, it is a torture. The sun
rose in the east, dim and sour, with a veil over its
face. It sank again in the west without warming
the earth. The birds were silent, hiding in their
holes, or fled to the mainland over the sea, sitting
on the masts of ships, searching the south and the
sun. The sea moved mightily. At times it rested,
green and bilious, between two battles. And the
wind whined when the sea was resting. Everywhere in Inverara there was death on the ground
and above it. The people went about clad in their
heavy frieze, talking in low voices. At night they
sat in the shebeens and around their own hearths
telling stories of wrecks and drowning and death.
Even sin had fled, for sin is born of the languorous
passion of summer, and of the cold gritty breezes
of spring.
Little Mary, her soul strong like the fierce soul
of winter, was happy. She had found a man to
38




The
J&  g   BLACK    SOUL5NR         I
love. He had spurned her. What of it? So did
the sea spurn in winter and caress in spring and
love in summer. What of it? She sang as she
milked her cow in the morning. She sang as she
went to the village well for water. The peasant
women noticed her joy and began to whisper
among themselves and point fingers at her. "O
wife of Red John," they would say to her, with
mock anxiety and a vicious gleam in their eyes,
"what kind of man is he who is lodging in your
house?" "They say he is mad from the wars; beware of him," whispered another. "How handsome he is! Does he talk to you nicely?" whispered another. And they would all laugh. And
Little Mary, careless of their chatter, would throw
back her head and laugh, her throat swelling like
the throat of a singing thrush. Her husband began to look fearfully at her and say to himself:
"What has come to the woman? Eh, Red John,
what has come to her?"
To the Stranger those days were a torture. Afterwards they remained only as a blur on his memory,
the blur that rises before the mind when the
fumes of chloroform are sucked up the nostrils as
if mountains were crowding up to crush one's life,
with loud awe-inspiring sounds. In the morning
he would walk up and down the crag overlooking
the Hill of Fate. His figure stooped. His head
39




BLACK     SOUL fn~
was thrust forward between his shoulders. His
lips were compressed. There was a scowl on his
face that terrified people who saw him. Often the
small boys of the village peeped at him through
the holes in the stone fence that runs parallel to
the cliff. But their mothers would drive them
away saying, "Lord have mercy on us. It's a curse
is on his soul. Father Shannon, may God be good
to the poor man, was the same way after they
unfrocked him."
Then another terrific night of storm came. A
Norwegian barque was wrecked off the Head of
Crom and all her crew were drowned. Sheep and
goats were killed on the crags by the storm. The
bleak morning saw the peasants of Rooruck quarrelling on the shore, up to their necks in the huge
breakers, grabbing at the planks and spars of the
wrecked ship. The Stranger watched them, horrified, watching the living looting the house of the
dead. Then he strode eastward to the cliffs. The
storm of the night still raged. The salt spray
whirled past him, climbing the two hundred feet
from the sea in one light leap. The thundering
waves rolled beneath madly. They rolled gaily,
advancing, retreating, rising and falling with the
rhythm of an orchestra. He was seized with their
madness. He walked up and down the cliff revelling in it. The sea and the wind were mad, and he
40




The
felt that he too was mad with them. They were
committing suicide in their madness. So would
he. But as soon as the thought came it terrified
him. When he looked down through the spray
at the white foam on the dark heaving bellies of
the sea, he thought they were grinning at him.
And he fled back to the cabin.
He locked himself in his room all the day, lying
on the bed on his back looking at the ceiling.
Little Mary called him to his midday meal, but he
growled at her to leave him alone. Then when
darkness began to fall he left the house and went
into Derrane's shebeen at the eastern end of the
village. Derrane's kitchen was empty that night.
All the people were at the shore salving the wreck
of the Norwegian ship. He sat in a corner by the
fire drinking glass after glass of potheen. Derrane's wife, an inquisitive, loose-tongued woman,
tried to draw him into conversation, asking him
what did he think of the women of Rooruck. He
did not reply, but she kept on talking after the
manner of women.
At last she was saying, "And sure it's the hand
of God..." when the Stranger flung his glass
into the fire and jumped to his feet.
"May the devil devour both you and God," he
yelled, frothing with rage. The woman screamed,
and he danced around the room shouting, "Yes,
41




'4e
R0thlMM       BL A CK  SO0U L M   kZL4 -to hell with God. To hell with Him, I say. What
do you know about the fool?" Then he rushed
out of the house and staggered up the boreen to
Red John's, shouting. Little Mary came running
down to meet him and dragged him indoors.
A group of women gathered outside the gate of
Red John's yard listening to the sounds of quarrelling that came from the house.
"Lord save us, it's murder," said one.
"Let somebody go to the shore for the men," said
another.
Then Red John came rushing from the cabin,
his forehead bleeding from a long cut that reached
from the right eye to the right temple. The
women shrieked and crowded about him.
"What has come to you?" they gasped.
Red John stood for a few moments spluttering
and waving his hands in the air.
"Police, police," he yelled. "The son of misfortune came in blaspheming and I tried to send
him from the house and the loose woman on
whom I put a ring gave me this. Police, police."
And he rushed away for his pony. He rode madly
into Kilmurrage for the police, but passing the
schoolmaster's house he got afraid. He dismounted from his pony and let it wander home
alone. Then he went across the crags to Branigan's shebeen in Kilmillick. He spent the night
42




Ve
2L BLACK                SOUL,    ~(j
there drinking. The first streaks of the grey dawn
were beginning to light the crags about Rooruck
when he crept into his cabin and sat by his bed,
shivering. He could hear his wife crooning-in the
Stranger's room, as if she were rocking a child.
"Ho-wa, ho-wa my pulse, white love of my heart.
Ho-wa, ho-wa, brilliant gem of gladness. Howa."
He listened with open mouth.
"Ha," he said fearfully, his hand on the white
bandage that covered his wound, "he has put a
spell on her. So he has." Hurriedly he put an
oaten loaf in a cloth and left the cabin to look for
wreckage.
The Stranger slept through the day. It was his
first refreshing sleep since he had come to Inverara. Little Mary moved noiselessly about the
cabin. Now and again she stood at her cabin door
and looked longingly out towards the mainland.
She could see it distantly when the mist broke,
scattered by the breezes that blew intermittently
over the green sea. She would go into the darkened room where he lay and look at his face, gentle
and childish in sleep. Once she bent down and
caressed his hair and his forehead with her lips.
The Stranger, sleeping, dreamt that a fairy had
touched him. He kept dreaming a long time of
beautiful women, with roses entwined in their
43




The
R2  a]BLA BLACK        SOUL IKRGj
black hair, kissing his lips.:Then he awoke and
saw only a peasant woman standing by his bed.J
The consciousness of his degradation swept back
to him. He swallowed a cup of hot tea, dressed
and went out. Night was falling in a thick mist
that coloured everything pale blue. He felt a dryness in his throat.
"Hell," he said, "I must get somebody to talk to.
It's awful being alone like this among yokels who
only stare with open mouths when a man talks to
them. I wish I hadn't come here." But trudging
along the wet road, the ends of his oilskin coat
swishing damply against his legs, he shuddered
as he thought of staying in Dublin "among so
many people that don't seem to care a damn." He
could see that evening he went to Dr. McCarthy
and said that he couldn't sleep. "Hey, my boy,
can't sleep, eh?" cried McCarthy, his fat stomach
puffing in and out as he paced up and down the
hearthrug. "You say you are working in the
library. Like the work?" "I hate it." "Any
money left?" "About two hundred." "Well, get
to blazes out of Dublin then. Go out to the west
and catch fish. Do you more good than cataloguing books. Out with ye, as quick as lightning."
The tramcars sounded in his ears that evening as
he rushed away from the doctor's as loud as an
artillery barrage. He hardly breathed peacefully
44




The
RZ9SLC                 SOUL5N._k~a
until he left the Broadstone Station next morning.
And now...
"Damned if I'm going back again," he muttered.
"Some day I'm going to throw myself down from
that cliff and be done with it. By all the gods, I
will. You see if I don't."
Then he heard the sounds of music as he was
approaching John Carmody's public-house at the
cross-roads above the beach at Coillnamhan. He
stopped dead in the road and listened.
Night had fallen. It was bitterly cold, but there
was no wind. The wind was drowned by the wet
fog, that came like a great blight from the mountains on the mainland to the north. He could
dimly see the lights of the public-house, a squat
one-storied concrete building on a slope a little
back from the road. John Carmody had built it
the year before. It looked as incongruous in the
surroundings as the electric railways at Niagara
Falls. And the sounds of wild music came through
its windows. The music had a peculiar effect on
the Stranger. Music of any kind always maddened him with a sad happy madness. It affected
him in the bowels. He often cried with the sadness
of the thoughts that it inspired within him. At
other times it made him want to kill. Now as he
listened to the rough twanging of the accordion
he was wrapped in an ecstasy of sadness.
45




'4e
R k    BLACK     SOUL
He walked up a bypath to the house over trodden
grass, avoiding the road, lest he should lose the
sound of the music. He tripped over an empty
barrel and fell against the door. The music
stopped suddenly. Somebody jumped to his feet
within and shouted, "God with you." Then the
door opened and he entered the kitchen.
The kitchen covered half the floor space of the
house. To the right was a counter cut into the
partition, and behind the partition was a room
lined with shelves of black-brown bottles and
green bottles. Several barrels were pushed back,
their round heads over the counter. On the
counter John Carmody was leaning smoking a
pipe while his wife wiped a pint mug behind him.
Around the fire on the hearth and on wooden
forms by the wall a number of peasants sat drinking and smoking. Two of them had been dancing
when the Stranger entered. Another group had
been listening to John Carmody discussing politics. For the good man, even though he was now
nearing middle-age and had become, as he himself
said, a "bourgeois" (a word the peasants understood to mean "an enemy of God"), he still liked
to preach Socialism when he was in a good humour
and slightly intoxicated.
"I'll make you fellahs drink out of a trough," he
would say, "if you don't get busy and organize to
46




The
22        BLA C K   SOUL L     R    x
socialize the land and industry, and do away with
the priests."
And the people just thought that he was a harmless poor man and well-meaning.
There was silence when the Stranger entered.
"Who is that fellah?" said John Carmody to a
man who stood beside him.
The man bent his mouth close to Carmody's ear
and whispered:
"That's Red John's lodger. They say he's gone
in the head. We call him the Stranger."
"Go away, you galoot," said Carmody. "I heard
about him. If you fellahs were as cracked as he is
you wouldn't be the bloody fools you are."
He coughed loudly, stepped into the kitchen, and
advanced to the Stranger who was sitting on a
form by the back door.
"Say," he cried in a loud hearty voice, "I'm tickled
to death to see a live man come into my house.
Shake! Stranger. You must have a drink with
me."
As soon as the peasants saw Carmody welcoming
the Stranger, they looked at one another and
whispered:
"He must be all right after all."
For Mrs. Derrane had broadcasted the story of
the night before, and with the quickness of peasants
to believe harm of everybody, no matter how ridi47




The
culous the story might be, they all thought the
Stranger possessed of a devil. The music started
once more and a ragged fisherman with a dirty
black beard got up to dance a hornpipe. He did a
few whirls clumsily, but he was so drunk that he
stumbled straight backwards trying to clap his
hands under the crook of his left knee, and fell on
his buttocks in a pot at the back door.
"Oh, you God of all evil!" he cried mournfully,
amid a roar of laughter.
The Stranger, sitting beside Carmody on the
form, laughed as loudly as the rest. He felt a
strange joy in the association of these people.
They appeared to him to be real. He felt the joy
that the bad young man feels when he returns to
the tavern after spending an evening with genteel
and boring society in the respectability of his
home. And he felt drawn towards Carmody in
particular. He drank the bad brandy that was
offered to him and somehow it tasted better than
anything he had ever drunk. Carmody began to
talk at a great pace about the United States, where
he had spent ten years of his youth.
"A great country. None o' yer goddam superstitions there."
The Stranger felt a sense of freedom creeping
over him. The outspoken wanderer, Carmody
was, he felt, an outcast from society like himself,
48




TVe
R0M19R       BBLACK S O U L
at war with the world. He was a kindred spirit.
"Ha, ha," he thought, it would be a great life to
lounge around in Inverara, drinking and talking
to Carmody, enjoying himself, abandoning himself, without any thought of the world outside, just
living like a pig. It would be a revenge on the
world. It would be far better than to kill himself.
If he were dead he could not feel anything, whereas alive, his life would be a constant insult to
civilization. Civilization? That cursed quagmire
that sucked everything good into its bosom! That
mirage that lures youth with promises that are
never fulfilled! Sure. This was the ideal thing.
To meet a few fellows like Carmody and drink
with them and scoff at the world with them, laughing loudly to cheat the blackness in his soul. He
would wear his body away until the damn thing
fell to pieces. He would use up every ounce of it
in wild debauch."
He felt himself getting drunk, and was glad. It
was the first time he felt the exhilaration of drunkenness since he had come to Inverara. The whisky
he had drunk in the shebeen only stupefied him.
The company prevented him from getting drunk.
Talking to a man like Carmody he could get
drunk. He seized Carmody's hand. Carmody
turned his long bronzed muscular face towards
him.


49


D




BLACK     SOUL
"I'm glad I met you," he said, "I've been dying
for somebody to whom I could talk."
Carmody was about to reply when somebody
stumbled against the barrel outside the door.
There was a loud string of curses.
"Another man fallen," shouted a peasant.
"Blast ye, Michaeleen Grealish," shouted Carmody, "didn't I tell ye to take away that - - - - -
barrel?"
"Hey there, hey there," came the voice, "open
the door. I can't see my hand."
Somebody raised the latch and a man flopped
into the kitchen with his left hand held out in front
of him. He began to talk as soon as he was within
the house and he kept talking. His voice rang
out loud and clear. He kept gesticulating with
both hands and throwing his head back with a
twist, like a dog shaking a rat. He had taken his
hat from his head and his bald forehead shone in
the light. The lumps on the white skin around
the temples stood out distinctly. His grey bushy
eyebrows twitched. His cheeks were blood red,
with narrow blue veins showing through them.
His nose was long and straight. Its ridge was as
sharp as a lean horse's spine. He wore a bushy
grey beard, shaven on both lips. His chin showed
red through the beard, and it had a dimple in the
centre. His blue eyes gleamed like the biight
so50




The
B BLAC K  S OUL
blue dust that shines in granite. His grey trousers
hung close to his thin legs, showing the outward
bend in the left leg below the knee. His black
coat hung loose about his body.
"Somebody wants to kill me," he cried, his blue
eyes glaring all around him fiercely. Yet everybody laughed. Then the man opened his mouth
too and laughed. He had only five teeth in his
upper jaw, scattered at irregular intervals.
"Say, you must excuse me, Mr. O'Daly," said
Carmody, coming up to him. "I told that fool
Michaeleen-"
"That's all right, my good man, that's all right.
Good evening," he said, seeing the Stranger, "I
heard you were staying at Red John's. I meant to
go and see you. Come on, look alive there, Carmody, and bring a bottle into the parlour. Bring
a glass for yourself."
"A bottle of that best brandy, Mary," shouted
Carmody to his wife as he respectfully went in
front to open the parlour door. He placed chairs
in front of the parlour fire and asked his guests to
seat themselves, hitching his American trousers
about his waist and spitting on his hands like a
waiter in a New York bowery lunch room. His
huge stature loomed over the two middle-sized
men like the figure of a Praetorian guardsman
protecting a Caesar.
51




Te
RZIgBLALCK              SO   LM_~~
"Let me introduce you -" he began.
"I always introduce myself," interrupted O'Daly,
leaning back with his two feet crossed on the
mantelpiece until his chair stood on its hind legs.
"My name is Matthew O'Daly of Lisamuc, Co.
Sligo."
He threw out his chest as he spoke and his eyes
flashed. He made a gesture with his left hand in
front of his face and then rubbed it along his left
shin as he turned to the Stranger, his eyes gleaming aggressively as if he were challenging the
Stranger to doubt his identity. The wrist above
his hand seemed to be made solely of a square flat
bone, covered with white hairy skin. In fact, all
his body seemed to be made of one flexible bone
like a steel sword.
The Stranger winced, and blinked his eyes under
the unexpected stare. It was some time before he
could get himself to give his own name. Suddenly
it occurred to him that he was ashamed of his
name, of his ancestry, that his father was an
obscure schoolmaster, that he himself was a failure
in life and a coward.
"My name is Fergus O'Connor of Ashcragh," he
said with an affected drawl.
"Heh," said O'Daly. Then he made a noise at
the back of his palate like a man urging on a horse.
"I declare to Christ but you must be the son of
52




T e
RT(        LAM BLAC K   SOUL
John O'Connor the schoolmaster. Hell to my
soul, that dog of a priest treated him badly. Shake
hands."
Carmody's face beamed at hearing O'Daly abuse
a priest, and he hit himself a great blow in the chest
and laughed until his teeth seemed about to fall
out. He hated priests as enemies of "all people
who can think intelligent."
"Drink up," he said, handing them glasses from
the tray that had been brought in. "You two will
drink on me to-night. It's seldom that three
men-"
But O'Daly interrupted him again, and began to
talk at a tremendous rate, denouncing the parish
priest, the doctor, the-district inspector of police,
and all the people of note in Inverara, as scoundrels
of the worst kind, inhuman rascals, low fellows,
and men whose parentage was in doubt.
"Since this new Government came into power,
Carmody," he cried, "the country is gone to the
dogs."
The Stranger drank his brandy and felt the blood
rushing to his head. Suddenly he began to lose
his grip of everything. He became defiant and
aggressive. He joined in the conversation and
began to boast on his own account, boasting of his
past life, of which he had been mortally ashamed
an hour ago. Carmody began to boast, but O'Daly
53




rhe
RMM__;Ta.RB  ) B LACK   SOUL (1gR       J~
boasted loudest of them all. None of the three
would listen to the others. Only snatches of their
conversation rose abdve the volume of sound, amid
the clinking of glasses and the gurgling of the
brandy from the bottle. It seemed that the three
of them had spent all their lives fighting, drinking,
and breaking women's hearts. O'Daly spent more
nights of his sixty years of life in his boots than
out of them. He had drunk more whisky "than
they make now in the distilleries." He had broken
a man's hand in two places with a simple twist of
his wrist. He had been all over Ireland, and knew
every bishop, politician, racehorse-owner and
athlete. In other words, he knew everybody whom
anybody cares to be known to know in Ireland.
Carmody was not behindhand. In fact, he had
once stood, it seems, as a candidate for the American Congress in the Socialist interest. He was
known all over the American continent as a crack
shot, and he had more love affairs than he could
count. The Stranger had been one of the most
gifted and promising geniuses in Europe before
the war, drink, and women laid him low.
Then they became slightly maudlin. The Stranger felt that he was enjoying himself as he had
never done before. He kept laughing boisterously
for no reason in the world. He felt sure that he
would live happily for ever in Inverara in this
54




T e
R0~21~        BLACK    SO0UL (,        R
society. Suddenly death appeared to him to be a
menace that he must avoid.
"Hey," he hiccupped, leaning over to O'Daly,
"what do you think of the next world?"
O'Daly made a noise again like a man urging on
a horse.
"Look here," he said, "it's only the young that
can afford to waste their time thinking of the next
world. As far as I know, this world is too short
and it's seldom Carmody offers us free brandy.
Drink to life and damn the next world. Let's have
a song before we go."
Hot and foolish with drink they began to sing
some ridiculous thing out of tune. Before the
first verse was finished, each was singing a different song. Then Carmody suddenly dropped his
head on the table and fell asleep. O'Daly shook
him and tried to wake him. Carmody raised his
head and stuttered:
"Come in here every evening... talk about Karl
Marx." Then he dropped asleep again.
"Hell to my soul," said O'Daly, "who is this fellow Marx he's always talking about? Must owe
him some money. Tight-fisted fellows, these publicans, between the two of us. Come on up to my
house and let him sleep."
The two of them got into O'Daly's jaunting
car that was waiting in the yard. The hardy moun55




B LA BLACK              S  U L
tain pony, careless of the freezing mist, had been
contentedly chewing bad hay there for two or
three hours. They drove up through the village
at a walking pace. O'Daly explained that he had
been into Kilmurrage to attend a meeting of the
local court.
"This new Government made me a magistrate," he
shouted. Then he began again to denounce everybody, and the cruelty of bad fortune that had pursued him and his family for generations. He
lashed the mare furiously as he spoke, but the
mare's hide was obviously as tough as his own,
and she never changed her gait. "I have to live up
here in a little cottage with my daughter and an
old woman who looks after the place. She's even
too old to sleep with. And my daughter has to
teach these brats in the school for a living. Everybody has to work for a living nowadays. The
world is changed. So it is. I remember in my
time... Begob, my daughter is a poor specimen
of a woman compared to her mother. In my time
they were as wild as the men, strong, hefty women.
Ah well..." And he went on to tell stories of
his youth, and of the glory of his ancestors, stories
which were for the most part lies, for the days
when the O'Dalys of Lisamuc were people of
importance were too distant to be remembered
by anybody.




'Tc e
B9 L0 BA CK          SO0U L5N.gk    a
The cold mist was scattering the exhilarating
effect of the brandy from the Stranger's mind.
He began to be melancholic and dissatisfied again.
He grew jealous of O'Daly's strength, of his coolness, and strong nerves.
"Ah," he said to himself, "he has no intellect.
That's what it is." And he cursed God for having
given himself a strong intellect until he remembered that there was no God and became still
more depressed because he had nobody to blame
for his sorrow. Then, in order to ease the pent-up
volume of his sadness, he began to tell O'Daly his
troubles, but O'Daly paid no attention to him.
He continually interrupted with his own reminiscences.
"You're a young man," he would say, "and you
don't understand the world. Now, in my time, the
young men feared nothing. Not even the devil in
hell. Is it that measly war you're talking about?
Sure that was only a cockfight compared to what
I've seen in my young days."
They reached O'Daly's cottage. The Stranger,
irritated because O'Daly would not pity him,
wanted to go home immediately, but O'Daly
would have none of it. He stood in the middle of
the road, one hand holding the reins, the other
hand grasping the Stranger's shoulder.
"See that house of mine," he shouted at the top of
57




t      ~      B LBAC  K  SO U  L jI
his voice. "There's a hovel for an O'Daly to live
in! Hell to my soul, but the world is gone to the
dogs. Listen to me" -he panted loudly and
wheezed- "listen to me. The O'Malleys used to
live here in the old days. And now where are they?
Gone to hell. Gone and forgotten. There isn't a
trace of them. The last of them, devil take him,
he had queer notions in his head, I hear; ran away
to America with a slip of a flighty woman. And
there you are. Wait there till I put the mare in
the stable."
The Stranger stood leaning against the gate leading up to the cottage. He became ashamed of
having been fond of life an hour before. He felt
as a monk might feel after being seduced by a
woman. Blackness gathered again around his soul.
"I made a fool of myself," he muttered.
The mist seemed to stick like icicles to his cheekbones. He wanted to run away, but he hadn't the
energy to make up his mind to do anything. His
stomach became as hard as a ball. It robbed him
of all energy. Weakness crept through the extremities of his hands and feet. Then O'Daly
came along breathing loudly. The Stranger felt
that he could kill the man for his very power to
breathe so loudly.
"Come on in," said O'Daly gruffly. "Make as
little noise as ye can," he added. "I don't want
58




The
to wake Kathleen. The poor girl has to go to that
damn school in the morning. The shame and
disgrace of it is killing me."
They crept on tiptoe up the path and into the
kitchen by the back door. O'Daly was staggering
a little. He lit a candle and placed it on a table
in the centre of the room. Then he got a bottle
from somewhere and two empty cups without
handles. They set to drinking again. O'Daly became maudlin, crying about the fallen fortunes of
his family. The Stranger suddenly became afraid,
afraid of O'Daly, afraid of the dark kitchen with
the dim flickering candle standing in the centre of
it like a warning of death, afraid of the dark silent
night outside, with the sound of the sea coming
from a distance. He drank hurriedly, but the
drink seemed to evaporate impotently in his throat.
It tasted like water. Strange shadows began to
gather before his eyes. He started at every sound.
He couldn't see O'Daly, but he could hear his
quavering voice. The sea rolling on to the beach
at Coillnamhan reminded him of the "keene"
women at wakes over dead bodies. It was as if one
heard a pot boiling a million miles away. And to
the south against the cliffs it sounded like a great
weight falling swiftly into a deep cavern. Then he
jumped to his feet as he heard O'Daly snore.
He listened for a full minute, breathing gently,
59




'The
RBL            BLACK     SOUL(g       S
perfectly motionless. In that minute he felt that he
was a pure soul being judged by wicked demons.
Then his mouth gaped as the picture of the night
he was buried by a shell in France flashed before
his mind. A cormorant called dismally passing
over the house. He listened to the swishing wings.
Then his right knee began to tremble. His left
foot began to tap the ground. He bent down carefully to hold it steady.
"Hold on there," he muttered, trying to laugh.
Then his whole body trembled. Beads of cold
sweat poured out through his forehead and neck.
With an oath he shot out his hands and made for
the door. He felt sure that he would be dead before he reached the open air. The round ball in
his stomach was stifling him.
The night air revived him. He laughed at his
fears. He straightened himself when he got into
the road and said, "Pooh, I'm all right." But at
that moment the wind rose suddenly. A squall
came from the south over the crags. It came with
a swoop. He gasped and his eyeballs started. As
he ran headlong forward, fantastic visions crowded
into his mind. He saw millions of dying men,
worlds falling to pieces, continents being hurled
into the air, while he himself wandered among the
chaos, the only living atom in the wrecked universe. He ran faster, trying to escape the vision,
60




but they pursued him, crowding on one another,
cries of the wounded, shrieks of the damned,
corpses piled mountain-high, races wandering
across deserts, chasms opening everywhere, devils
grinning, wild animals with gory jaws rushing
hither and thither in dark forests, myriads of men
talking in strange languages, gesticulating, shouting furiously, the wails of women, the bodies of
children transfixed on spears. Over all came the
noise of the guns, millions of guns, rising and
falling and intermingling. Their sound was like a
mill race. It made beautiful music that enthralled
him and made him want to kill. Then the music
died and dread spectres returned. They were bare
grinning skulls now and fetid smells. His body
was rising into space and flying away, headed for
the moon. But there was a great weight tied to
the stomach that held it back. His brain began
to expand. It covered the earth and then the
universe, and then it burst, hurting his forehead.
He had fallen against the door of Red John's
cabin. He was unconscious when Little Mary
threw herself on his neck. Folly, folly, folly, what
is folly?




~2
A     T ROORUCK, WINTER SLEEPS IN ITS DEPTHS.
But it's a troubled sleep, sad, weary, and full
of nightmares. It is the sleep of a wanton who is
hiding from the wreckage she has caused.
After a month of storm and fury, the sea lay
frothing about the Hill of Fate, licking its grey
base as a lion licks his wounds. It stretched out
for leagues white with foam, coloured here and
there with wreckage and masses of straying seaweed, with planks, weeds, and dead bodies of
birds. Strewn amid the rocks to the north, along
the shore at Rooruck, where the cliff fell away into
a long uneven battlement of huge boulders, there
was more wreckage. It was said that three mangled corpses were seen tangled among the rocks
at Firbolg's Point. Sean Mor, who saw them, fled
in fear, and when the villagers came they were
washed away again by the tide. Farther north
again, just south of the point where the waters of
the north and south joined to travel eastwards,
where the swift current seemed to suck the waves
downwards to some cavern in the depths, three
horses lay on a rock, lying on their sides, their stiff
legs extended hairlessly, their bellies expanded,
their nostrils full of sand.
The people feared the resting bilious sea as
a soldier fears the silence of the guns in an in62




The
ksaffm BLACK SOUL (J^^^^
terval between two engagements. When it raged,
churned by the wind, it showed its might, but
now the huge claws of its breakers were hidden in
its frothing back. And they might shoot forth
any moment. The sea might rise suddenly far
away to the west and come towering in, each
forked wave-crest a magnet, that drew the sea
before it into its hollow breast, until the Giants'
Reef lay bared for a mile and the slimy insects
clinging to its back stared gasping at the aweinspiring sky before the retreating sea again enveloped them in accustomed darkness. For the
battle is not as fearsome as the waiting for it, nor
is the sword as terrible as the fire in the eye that
guides it. So the peasants feared the sea, and
fearing it blessed it as their generous mother, who
wrecked ships afar off to give them planks and
barrels of oil and manilla ropes and bales of cotton.
They prowled about the shores and among the
boulders beneath the Hill of Fate looking for
wreckage.
By day the sun shone fitfully on Rooruck coming
laggardly over the high cliff of Coillnamhan Fort.
Its shadows glistened through the mist and
through the clouds that pursued it. By night
the hoar-frost covered the earth, eating into the
gashes that the wind had made. Wild starry nights
were those nights in Inverara. Boys sat by their
63




The
9rTA. e
RZ21RM         BL A CK   SO0U L,S
windows, shivering in their shirts, afraid to sleep
because of the strange noises of falling seas that
came from the Fountain Hole, where the mermaids were said to weep for lost lovers as they
combed their long golden hair, dipping the combs
in the black brine that dripped from the roof of
their cave into the Purple Pool beneath. Wild
starry nights, when men dream of death and stillness, as they watch the shivering moon fleeing
through the scratched sky. Death, death, death,
and drear winds blowing around frozen dead
hearts, that once throbbed with love. Inverara
in winter is the island of death, the island of defeated peoples, come thither through the ages over
the sea pursued by their enemies. Their children
sit on the cliffs dreaming of the past of their
fathers, dreaming of the sea, the wind, the moon,
the stars, the scattered remnants of an army, the
remains of a feast eaten by dogs, the shattering of
a maniac's ambition.
The Stranger, lying on his bed in Red John's
cabin, was near to death. He had fallen into Little
Mary's arms when she opened the door, roused
by the noise of his fall against it.
"Ah, Mother of Christ," she gasped once, seeing
his white face with the hair streaming over it soddened by the rain, as if he were dead. She thought
he was dead. She raised him in her strong arms
64




TZe
RZ2_KZB LA CK SO U L 9
like a child and ran with him to his room, panting.
Throwing him on the bed she ran her hands wildly
over his body searching for life in him. And then
when she felt his heart beating she raised her
hands to heaven and thanked God and wept with
joy. She put him to bed and chafed his limbs with
turpentine. Then she rolled the blankets about
him and sat with her arm under his head, watching
until he should regain consciousness.
Dawn had just broken. Red John got up and
came into the kitchen in his bare feet.
"Where is that-" he began when he saw his wife
through the open door of the Stranger's room, her
arms around the Stranger's neck, her cheek to his
lips. His small eyes narrowed and he clenched his
hands. He moved stealthily to the door and looking in grinned viciously. "Ha, now I have you,
adulteress," he hissed. But when she looked up at
him he crept back terrified. There was no fear or
shame or anger in -her look. There was a sadness
in her eyes, a distant look of sadness, as if she were
no longer conscious of her relationship with him
as a wife, as if his memory had died and been forgotten in her fear for her lover who was ill.
Red John shut the door and held on to the latch
with his two hands to keep away from the look in
her eyes. His superstitious mind thought she had
gone mad or had been "taken by the fairies," just
65               E




R!Zlfý,TMB     BLAC  K  SO0U L
as Sarah Halloran had some years before. A seaserpent had leered at her as she was washing bags
in a pool beneath the Hill of Fate, and ever afterwards she sat there all day watching the spot where
the serpent disappeared, until one day, tearing her
hair, she threw herself headlong from the cliff.
So they believed in Rooruck, for who could not
believe in magic by that drear sea in winter listening to its moaning at night?
Red John ran to the hearth as he heard his wife
come to the door.
"Get the doctor, Red John," she said.
Her voice was as gentle as the voice of a mother
talking to her first-born. It was the first time he
had heard her speak gently to him since they were
married. Then she went back again to the Stranger without waiting for his reply. She felt a power
within her that would make an army obey her
command.
Red John stood by the hearth in his shirt, barefooted, scratching his thigh. He was struggling
with two impulses, fear and jealousy: fear of the
look he had seen in her eyes, and mad jealousy of
her sitting with her arms around the Stranger's
neck and her cheek to his lips.
"Let the bastard die," he mumbled.
But again the memory of Sarah Halloran came
to his mind and the ghost he himself had seen at
66




rThe
Ri saffR     BLACK    SOUL @     ^   (
the Monks' Well coming one night from Kilmurrage. He sat by the fire hugging his armpits,
and became so much afraid of his wife being enchanted that he was unable to do anything. He
didn't even hear her come rushing at him from
the room until her hand was entwined in his hair
and she hissed in his ear:
"Get the doctor quickly, or I will brain you."
"Don't strike, woman," he whined. "I'm going."
She watched while he dressed and left the cabin
to get his pony. Soon he was riding down the
rocky boreen through the village on to the road to
Kilmurrage, waving the ends of the halter around
his head and yelling to the mare like a madman.
Little Mary stood at the door listening to the
dying rattle of the horse's hoofs and she shuddered.
"Oh, cruel God, don't take him from me," she
cried, clasping her throat.
The sound of racing hoofs suggested to her her
lover's death. That sound is the harbinger of
death in Inverara in winter, heard at dawn or in
the dead of night, when the sea is always devouring
some one or shattering their limbs, and horses
gallop in haste into Kilmurrage with froth on their
flanks, hurrying for the doctor and the priest.
Women rush to their windows in their shifts and
whisper, "Lord between us and all harm, who is
it has been drowned or who is hurt?"
67




T/Te
RM)@9MM)BLACK           SOUL5,gjM
Then she shut the door and went on tiptoe to
the Stranger's bed, looking about her as if she
were going to commit a shameful crime. She took
a charm from her breast. Her mother had given
it to her on her marriage day. It had been in her
mother's family for countless generations. Her
ancestry on the mother's side had all given their
love freely and were superstitious, like all women
who ask nothing of the world and are scorned for
so doing. She laid the charm on the bed. She
filled a cup with water and laid it on a chair beside
the bed. Then she pressed the charm to her heart
and kissed it. It was a square flat piece of yellowish stone covered with inscriptions, supposed to
be written in Ogham Craombh, the old Druidic
writing. Her mother had told her that the charm
itself had originally been given to a Firbolg princess as the price of her love by a Tuatha De Danaan warrior, and that it had power to save its
owner's lover from death or the designs of the
devil. And who knows? One thing is as certain
as another and nothing is reasonable. All men and
women fashion their own gods, and they are all
omnipotent.
Three times she dipped the stone in the water
and three times she pressed it to the Stranger's
lips, praying to Crom. And strangely enough,
after the third pressure he stirred, then turned on
68




Vhe
R!Z1]KR!B      BLACK    SOUL (jgR!7)jg
his side and opened his eyes. She hastily hid the
stone in the little embroidered packet that hung
between her breasts, suspended by a silk string.
As she buttoned her bodice she turned to him and
smiled. He smiled too, fleetingly, as if he had
been dreaming. Then the smile died quickly, like
a gleam of sunshine followed by rain on a wet day
in spring. He started. His limbs quivered, and
he clutched at the clothes.
"What noise is that I hear?" he cried with a wild
look in his eyes.
"It is nothing," said Little Mary, "but the high
tide beating on the Jagged Rock. Perhaps it is
the noises of your dreams you hear."
"The noises of my dreams? What do you mean?
What happened to me?"
She began to tell him. Her voice had a ringing
sweet sound totally different to her usual voice
when talking to Red John. The resonance of
each word seemed to stand in the air for a moment
after she had spoken the word. So it seemed to
the Stranger. He listened to that after-sound
without hearing the words she was uttering. His
imagination, strained by the fit that was upon him,
thought that she was a spirit.
"Ha," he said to himself, "I don't believe in
spirits."
Then suddenly he felt a queer sensation in his
69




T e
head, as if something were going to snap within
the roof of his skull, just inside. He sat up in bed
and strairied out his hands to the full extent of his
arms. He was afraid something was going to happen. He did not know what. Death? The thought
came suddenly and he screamed with fright.
"What i6 it?" cried Little Mary, her face white
with fear.
She rushed to his side, clutched him about the
waist, and put her face up to his. He clutched
her in turn, but his eyes wandered over her body
without 5eeing her. The vision of death was before his eyes. He could see his own corpse lying
stiff and naked. He was waiting for that thing to
snap within his skull. Where would he go then?
What was there beyond? He had mocked death.
He had told himself that he was eager to end the
misery of existence. Death, death, yes death, but
not like this. Like what then? With his boots on?
In battle? But his memory, clear and scornful in
that dread moment of waiting, taunted him with
the fact that he had feared it just as much in battle. He had trembled with fear when the shells
burst near him, and at night when he heard the
dull sound of tunnelling under his feet. Christ!
where was his philosophy?
"Little Mary," he moaned, "I don't want to die."
As he uttered the words "to die" his voice rose
70




're
RZ1]R        BL A CK     S 0tUL~~
almost to a shriek, as if he were afraid even to hear
himself talk of death.
"You will not die," she said calmly. But she clung
to him more closely, for she too was afraid. She
was not afraid of death but of life without her
lover. Her strong healthy body could not imagine
death.
"No, I will not die," he said, but even as he said
it, he felt more afraid. The fright spread all over
his limbs as if he had conscious nerve-centres
everywhere. The soles of his feet itched. His
feet and shins felt as if needles were being thrust
rapidly into them. He thought his heart was going
to burst. Then his lungs were expanding. Then
his throat swelled. Then his eyes commenced to
move straight forward from his head. Then there
was a complete stoppage of all his organs. His
body went rigid. There was a tense moment of
waiting, wondering when it would happen, his
death. But just when he reached that point his
reason began to work again. It began to work
like a clock that stops mysteriously for a moment
in the stillness of the night and begins to work
again of its own accord. Thought flashed across
his mind, cool and cunning. It mocked his fear.
"Bah," he said with a laugh, "what was I talking
about? Get me a drink!"
While she was away for the drink, he lay on his
71




The
201ýKBLA BLACK         SOU    L L;:
back thinking. His reason kept tormenting him.
"There you are," it said. "You wanted to die, but
now that death threatens you, you are afraid to
die." He tried to deny that. His vanity said that
he did not fear death itself, but the uncertainty of
what came after it, that he hated to die because he
had not done any of the things he might have
done. "With my ability I could have done...
oh damn it." Again he began to reason out what
would happen to him if that thing did snap in his
brain and he died. By the time Little Mary came
back with the drink he had forgotten about himself altogether and was debating whether the
Monistic conception of the Universe were the
correct one. He had just decided that "that idea,"
he did not know very clearly what it was, was far
more terrible than complete annihilation, when
Little Mary put her hand under his head and held
a drink to his lips.
"Drink this," she said.. He gulped down the hot milk and then suddenly
he felt grateful to her. He became clearly conscious of her presence beside him and it gave him
a peculiar sense of cleanliness. It was the first
awakening of his clean youth in him, of the Fergus
O'Connor who lived a clean life before his father's
death turned him towards cynicism-and debauchery. He had always been that way, a prey to
72




V e
RT&jR BBLA CK           SO0TUL~~
impulses. He could contemplate with equanimity
the destruction of a race, and yet he would remember the generosity of a tramp and to hurt a fly
caused him physical pain.
He looked up at her and touched her hand. He
tried to say something but he couldn't. His throat
went dry and he flushed. He saw her beauty as
a pure thing, too, for the first time. It made him
feel ashamed of himself, her beauty. He let go
her hand hurriedly.
While he held her hand Little Mary blushed
deeply. Until then she had been as cool and
collected as a hospital nurse. But the pressure of
his hand sent a warm thrill through her body.
She wanted to lie down and close her eyes. The
fierceness of passion that filled her while he was
unconscious of her presence left her. As soon as
he noticed her with even a glance of the eye and a
pressure of the hand her womanly instincts forced
her to shrink from him, blushing. She retired to
the chair at the head of the bed and sat down; her
hands trembled as she fastened the neck of her
bodice she had left undone when she, hurriedly
put back the charm. Her face shivered spasmodically as if she were swallowing something indescribably sweet.
They waited in silence until the doctor came.
Shy even to think of him now, she listened in rapt
73




T' e
BLACK                    SULBLACK  S(
attention to the noise of the water dripping into
the barrel placed at the gable, to catch the water
that dripped from the roof. He lay thinking of
many things. His weary brain stared at this new
sensation, so different to any he had felt before,
this sensation of being purified by the presence of
a beautiful woman, of being cared for, of being
protected spiritually. Like wild nature outside,
lying bare in its winter sleep, his soul rested. So
they waited, resting, he, she and nature, as if they
were waiting in silence together for the beginning
of life.
The noise of horse's hoofs came to them from
the lane. The sounds were uneven as of a horse
ridden by an unskilled rider. Then loud shouting
was heard and Little Mary ran out. The pony was
standing at the door. He was champing at the
bit and kicking his belly with his right hind leg,
for never in his life before had a saddle touched
his back or a bit been in his mouth. In Inverara
it was considered unmanly to use anything on a
horse but a rope halter, and a rough blanket to
protect the crutch from the horse's spine. The
new doctor sat on the pony's back, Dr. Cassidy's
successor (Dr. Cassidy had been forced to retire
in his eightieth year because of a petition being
lodged with the County Council by the islanders).
The new doctor was from Dublin. He considered
74




VTe
k^(izkSz B LACCK S OUL L^^^~(^
himself an important person and therefore always
insisted on riding a saddled horse to visit a patient.
Being too mean to buy a horse and feed it, he
bought a cheap saddle and reins instead and compelled the islanders to bring him their horses for
his use. He sat on the pony's back, a white muffler
wound many times around his neck, in brandnew russet riding breeches and gaiters like an
English sportsman in a film picture. He wore a
hard bowler hat perched on his square head. The
trimmest of clipped moustaches covered his upper
lips. He cracked his whip timorously, taking care
not to touch the mare with it. He sat there waiting, either because he was unable to dismount
without assistance or because he considered it
proper for a gentleman to wait until somebody
held the stirrup. They called him Dr. Aloysius
Rogan at the post office and on Government
papers, but the peasants called him "the Son of
the Potman," because they said his father kept a
public-house in the Dublin slums.
Little Mary helped him to dismount. He leaned
against her more heavily than was necessary. In
his own estimation he was "a devil among the
girls," and he had "his eye on Little Mary" for a
long time. A group of peasants that had rushed
out of their cabins as soon as the arrival of the
doctor was reported by a dirty boy who had been
75




V'Te
B LBL            ACK    SOUL
digging for a rat in the fence beside the road,
gathered around Red John's gate, spitting from
their throats needlessly and rubbing the backs
of their hands -across their mouths. The doctor
paused a moment to inquire the name of the village, although he knew it quite well, and then
entered the cabin. The peasants leaned over the
fence and passed disparaging remarks on the
doctor, the saddle, and on Red John for not tightening his mare's hind shoes.
"Does he think a horse is a donkey the son of a
lame monk?" said one.
"Who the devil is sick, God forgive us?" said
another.
"It's the Stranger, and no wonder God would
stiffen his blasphemous tongue," said another.
"No, no, curly Stephen," said another, "sure it's
the war has stricken the poor man. He bought
me a drink the other night. He is good-natured
and God-fearing."
"Begob," said a large-eared man with a coarse
laugh, "I thought it was how Red John had
brought his boat into port at last," meaning that
he thought Red John was about to become the
father of a family. They all laughed.
The doctor stood for fully a minute in the kitchen taking off his gloves. He smelt the walls all
round like an excise officer smelling for illicit
76




The
ýJffRM BLACK SO U L
whisky. He handed his gloves to Little Mary and
looked at her deeply as she took them. Then the
Stranger's voice came from the room harshly.
"Who the devil is that, Little Mary?" he cried.
The doctor arched his eyebrows and shrugged
his shoulders. He went to the door of the Stranger's room and thrust in his head and right foot
like a man going to visit a prize sow in a pigstye.
He saw the Stranger lying on the bed, the long
pale hands lying over the coverlet, the black eyes
gleaming, looking fiercely at him, the brown
beard giving the face the expression of a beachcomber. He shrugged his shoulders again and
advanced into the room. His face was set in an
expression that he had studied in the Dublin hospitals when he realized that his abilities would
never allow him to aim any higher than a practice
among peasants or in the slums. It was a disdainful, condescending expression.
"Well, my man," he said, "how do you feel?"
Then without waiting for an answer he turned to
Little Mary and said, "Does the sea ever come
down as far as this from the beach? What did you
say the village was called? Ro-ro-rooy, oh! Funny
name." Then immediately he forgot Little Mary
and his question, began to whistle "Over the
waves," took from his shoulders the shooting bag
that held his instruments and began to open it on
77




7he
^Dd^^Df,      BLACK     SOUL (^     ^(^J^
the table. Little Mary stared at him with a brooding expression in her eyes, as if he were a dangerous animal. The Stranger turned on his side and
glared at him. He was fuming inwardly against
"this impertinent fellow," but he was afraid to
say anything. He was more afraid of death than
he was insulted by the attitude of the doctor.
Would the doctor be able to assist him? Would he
be able to cure that catching in the chest, when the
heart beat too quickly? Would he be able to stop
the trembling of the limbs when fear struck him?
Would he be able to dispel the visions from the
brain? He was ashamed too of the position in
which the doctor found him, lying in the cabin of
a peasant. He struggled between shame and fear
and hope and anger on the bed until at last the
doctor approached him with a stethoscope. Then
he felt a desire to jump up and strangle the doctor,
in order to rid himself of this complex tangle of
emotions by some sudden physical act. But that
impulse vanished immediately. He felt a kind of
careless resignation, much the same as the soldier
feels when he is being court-martialled and he
knows that no effort of will or of body or no
strength of evidence will have any effect on the
stupidity of his judges or on the mighty machine
that they control.
The doctor sounded his chest and back. He
78




rTe
R!ZI]KRMBLACK SOULGgRZ2
tapped his knees. He put his hand before his
eyes, ordering him to look at a point on the wall
in a voice one would use talking to a stone man.
He looked at his tongue and put a lens down his
jaws and peered at it. He tapped the teeth casually
with the lens. He pressed his finger against the
cheekbones and watched the blood crawling back
over the whitened space. He felt the pulse and
whistled like an engine thudding and tapped his
foot in time with the tune as he took the count.
He felt his loins and asked him did he ever have
venereal disease. Then he threw the clothes back
over the body with a sigh, went to the table and
laid down his instruments. The Stranger lay trembling, resignedly accepting all this contumely in
his fear of death. He stopped breathing, waiting
for the doctor's verdict.
"Nothing the matter with you that I can see,"
said the doctor, lighting a cigarette. "Been drinking too much and you are suffering from acute
indigestion. Just come back from the United
States? A relative of these people?" He waved
the match in Little Mary's direction.
The Stranger having discovered that there was
no danger of immediate death and that his fears
were all fantasies, now boiled with rage against
"this lout of a fellow." He grew choleric. His
lips twitched and his nostrils curved upwards like
79




The
REATHE         BLACK     SOUL/O~hý etr,
a dog going to snarl. But he could say nothing.
Still the doctor was absolutely unmoved.
"Sorry, my man," he said. "One gets irritable in a
place like this. That sea must be lonely at nights.
Dreadful place. Wonder the Government doesn't... Ah yes, this will be... yes, h'm... Let's
say ten shillings. I'll send you a bottle. A spoonful three times a day. The - er - your husband, I
believe, my good woman, will - er - take it over
to you. And by crickey, I'd advise you to stop
drinking."
"Get me my purse," said the Stranger to Little
Mary. "You'll find it in the portmanteau there.
There, there, that black one. Quick." He snapped
his fingers, eager to pay the doctor and get him
out of the room before he should lose control of
himself and strangle him. "The ass," he muttered
to himself, sitting up in bed, twitching his toes
and gripping the blanket with his hands, waiting
for his purse. "To think that I must be insulted
by a fellow like that. Great Scott, is this the way
they treat everybody? Great Christ, if I could only
beat his face into a pulp." He took a ten-shilling
note from his purse with trembling hands and
threw it to the doctor without speaking. The
doctor caught it deftly between his fingers as it
fluttered to the floor. He carelessly packed his
bag, slung it on his shoulder, said "Good morn80




fthe
RZ~ffk~z) BLACK S O U L 5N
ing, you'll be all right in a few days," and left the
room, followed by Little Mary.
The Stranger lay on the bed without moving
with the notecase in his hands. He suddenly took
out the notes and counted them. As he was not
going to die, he had an interest in his material
wealth, and he put his hand to his chin.
"Wait now," he mused; "I have paid for a year's
board and lodging to Red John. Good job I did
that. I'm safe for a year. And let me see: twenty,
twenty-five, thirty, forty, forty-five, fifty, fiftythree pounds... ten and there are a few shillings
in my trousers pockets." He put the notes back
and gripped the purse between his fingers. He
must look after that money. Life was sweet after
all. It would be all right living in Rooruck...
away from the world. Just living without any
effort. God knows what he might not discover
about life sitting up there on the Hill of Fate.
"Say, supposing I was sent here by fate to discover something wonderful 1" He became enthusiastic.
Then Little Mary came in and he handed her
the purse. She was smiling, glad that he was not
seriously ill. The white streaks in her grey eyes
were shining brightly as she smiled.
"Thank God, you'll be all right," she said. "He
told me to get you a drop of brandy for the pain
81                F




7k e
R0a!K      0  BLACK     SOUL
in your stomach. He said it was wind. I'll run
down to Derrane's and see have they got any."
"Don't be long away, Mary," he called after her
as she went. He was afraid of being alone. As
soon as she had left the house he became worried
again. His enthusiasm vanished. He suspected
that the doctor had told him a lie. What did the
doctor care? He recalled stories he had heard of
doctors letting people die without making the
least effort to save them. He felt that he was
deserted by the world, that nobody cared whether
he lived or died, that he was unable to help himself, that there was nobody bound to him by ties
of blood. He heard the sea rumble. He felt a
morose satisfaction in the thought that it was
licking its jaws preparing to devour him. Then
the thought came to him that he would die at
night, alone in his room. The wind would sing a
cunning hissing song trying to calm his fears so
that the sea would crawl up unawares and devour
him. Then all those black cormorants that he had
seen on the Jagged Reef would strain out their
twisted long necks and tear pieces from his carcass. They would swallow the pieces without
chewing them and tear again. Then he discovered
himself counting the number of cormorants that
were tearing at his body and he tried to shout.
But he was too agitated to shout. He crept down
82




V4e
R!lf,ýR       B LAC K  SO UL       ~
under the blankets and commenced to cry. He
felt sorry that he couldn't pray to God without
losing his self-respect. It would be such a comfort
to throw himself on the mercy of some Being that
was stronger than nature. There was no use
appealing to nature. Nature was too strong and
just to be influenced by prayer. Then he remembered Little Mary. "Great God," he murmured,
"that woman is good to me." Then to hide from
himself the fact that he wanted her near him because he was ill and helpless, he told himself that
he was very fond of her and he became jealous of
her husband.
When she brought him the brandy he thanked
her with tears in his eyes. She wanted to put her
arms about him and embrace him, but instead she
drew away to the window and pulled the curtain
over it.
"Go to sleep now," she whispered. She tiptoed
to the door. She was closing the door when he
asked her to leave it open. He wanted to hear
her moving in the kitchen. He was afraid of being
alone. He watched her move around the kitchen
for a time and then he became sleepy as the brandy
warmed his stomach. He lay prone and closed his
eyes. He heard Red John coming into the kitchen, shuffling and grumbling.
"Hey then, woman, there's a journey for you, and




The
the son of a loose woman never gave me a drink.
Hey then there's a doctor for you."
"Be quiet there, you pest," said Little Mary.
"Hey then, whose house is this, cracked woman?"
Then he heard Red John talking in a loud voice
outside the door to somebody about the weather.
"I would say in spite of the four Gospels if they
were laid on my palm that the wind has veered
southward a point," Red John was saying.
The Stranger wondered for a few moments where
Red John had heard of the four Gospels, or if he
knew what they were about, and if he did read
them, would he think them credible? He decided
that Red John would spit and say "Huh" when he
had finished reading the Gospels. Then he fell
asleep.
He awoke at intervals during the day. The kitchen was full of peasants, men and women, every
time he awoke. The peasants of Rooruck, like
all peasants and rustics and small townspeople,
loved the sensation of somebody in their village
being dead or sick or murdered or accused of
murder or gone mad. They did not read newspapers, so the pleasure of talking scandal and trying to foist crimes and immoral habits on each
other was their only harmless pleasure. But they
were willing to pay for their pleasure. They
brought Little Mary jugs of milk, round "hil84




The
BLACK     SOUL L      a
locks" of butter, and dried fish as gifts for the
"sick man." The men sat near the door on a
wooden bench with their elbows on their knees,
spitting everywhere. The women huddled themselves like Turks on the floor with their hands
clasped in front of their shins. They would sit in
silence for a long time, pitching from side to side
uneasily like sheep being eaten by maggots. They
rolled their eyes around vigorously to examine
everything. Then they went away and gathered
in groups around the village. They talked for
hours with their heads close together, hugging
their elbows like wicked Chinamen in a film
tragedy.
"Lord save us, the way Little Mary looks at one."
"Did you notice anything, O wife of Lame Peter?"
"I did, but I wouldn't like to mention it."
"Ye needn't be afraid. I noticed the same thing
myself."
"You mean to say that-"
"Yes, that's the very thing I said to myself as soon
as I entered the house."
"It should be stopped."
"A fine-built woman like that not to have a child.
It's the curse of God that struck her barren."
It was about midnight when the Stranger awoke.
He felt refreshed. When his consciousness fully
awakened and he remembered the events of the
85




7'k e
RVk6     BLAC BLACK     SOUL
day before, he felt a strange happiness. It appeared to him that he had escaped a great catastrophe. He sat up in bed with his hands about
his knees, contemplating himself.
Nature was still, except for the distant quarrelling of the sea, as if the waves were complaining
at being forced to keep vigil over sleeping nature.
It was so still that he thought the world was dead.
"This is the turning-point in my life," he said,
nodding his head and frowning as if he were stating an irrefutable fact. Then he began to think
with remarkable clarity. He fancied that he could
see his brain thinking. It appeared to him to be
like a crystal with amorphous ideas glinting within
it. He wanted to poke his fingers into its sides
like a boy watching goldfish in a glass. Then he
lay back from the contemplation of his brain and
became aware of the power and vastness of nature.
"I am a part of nature." Before, he had considered
himself superior to nature. Now it struck him
that he was merely a component part of the universe, just an atom, with less power than the
smallest fleck of foam that was snatched by the
wind from the nostrils of an advancing wave.
Ha! Then he belonged to something. There was
a mother too between whose breasts he could hide
his head, a mother more powerful than a thousand
gods. Just fancy. He could surrender himself to
86




VTe
RZ2]K!   BBLAC K   SOU L
nature without fear. He smiled, confident that
he had solved the puzzle of life. Now death could
hold no terror for him, since after death he would
return to nature and nature was immortal. It
always moved, and motion was life. He listened
to the voice of the sea eagerly, as to the voice of a
father. He pictured it tumbling in among the
rocks, beds of seaweed swimming in the white
surf. He heard its crash as it struck the base of
the cliffs. He saw the fountain of surf rising, hissing as it rose to a slender curving point. He saw
it fall backwards into the retreating wave that
scurried in and out among the long-toothed rocks
as if it had been blinded and had lost its way. He
saw it drivelling into pools and then rush with a
subdued roar into the body of the ocean, to join
another wave that towered higher and higher as it
advanced, green and menacing. Ha! It moved
without purpose. That was life, motion without
purpose.
He jumped up in bed and cried in an awed whisper, "By God, I've found it!" He judged the
world in the light of his discovery, that life was
motion without purpose. His brain had a weird
faculty for presenting things to him vividly, as
clearly as if they were filmed. He watched the
tens of millions of people in cities striving for
wealth, power and fame, sacrificing everything
87




The
~BLACK                   S B]LACK  KU  f
to gain honour and property. He laughed outright, heartily. It was the most ridiculous farce
he had ever looked at. He held his sides laughing.
He began to imitate them. He saw a fat-bellied
man rising at a Business Dinner. "Gentlemen!"
he said, "I can confidently assert that James Buchanan is a man who will leave his mark on the
pages of the world's history. His self-sacrifice, his
indomitable courage, his business acumen, his
untiring energy, his..." "Oh hell," gurgled the
Stranger, "now I understand Rabelais!" He saw
others, lean-faced men, with anger in their eyes
and hunger in their stomachs, shouting at the fatbellied men, agitating for revolution and liberty,
shouting about ideals and principles, honour, selfsacrifice, brotherly love! They were still more
ridiculous. Did the sea have principles? Did the
wind rise and tear down houses inspired by ideas?
Did the rain flood towns, inspired by the spirit of
self-sacrifice? Did the waves consider themselves
in honour bound to wreck ships? "Pish! It's
motion without purpose," he said, turning on his
side to have a better view of the idiots. He nestled
his hands between his thighs. And now the world
presented the appearance of a lunatic asylum.
Demented people were running about, grinning
like apes, shouting at one another, puffing out
their chests, turning somersaults like small boys
88




V e
R!Z5!ffR!     BLAC K    SOUL~jf      ~    f
from school on a holiday. One man came running
with a manuscript in his hand. "I am a genius,"
he cried. "See this book I have written!" The
manuscript rolled page after page before the
Stranger's eyes. He read every word in a trice.
He saw vermin crawling on the beautiful heroine's
corpse even before she had fallen into her lover's
arms in the last paragraph. Then another man
appeared, with something in a little glass tube.
"Hey! you people," he cried, "hey you, look at
me. I'm the devil of a scientist! I have discovered
a cure for all diseases. Man will soon be immortal." And he had scarcely finished speaking
when he got run over by a motor-car and got
killed. A fat general with bandy legs, a fierce
moustache and a sloping forehead came along.
He stood squat and roared like a bull until his
lungs almost burst and his face was red and choleric. "This is General Dictator speaking," he
shouted. "I have killed a million of the enemy.
Now let liberty reign and peace." The millions
flung their hats in the air, when a huge wave rose
playfully and enveloped all the millions! Then the
whole world froze up and skidded off through
space. Another planet had collided with it.
The Stranger was laughing at his vision when he
suddenly became vexed with the folly of the world.
"What a scoundrelly farce!" he muttered. "And
89




rhe
"W's ni       BLACK     SOUL L   ^^    (
look at all the good men it deceives!" There was
no end, no goal, no certainty, except in living aimlessly. Nothing was assured but the air, the earth
and the sea. He fancied that he could see the
cormorants sitting stupidly on the Jagged Rock,
bobbing their heads lazily. "We have lived here
five hundreds of years," they croaked sardonically. "And we have heard it all, all before now!
but tell us what does it end in? In ashes and
oblivion."
Then having torn the veil of sanity from the face
of the mad world he turned on himself. He had
been just as insane as the others whom he despised,
trying to create a purpose in life. He had considered himself a genius and was enraged with his
fellows for ignoring him. "Fancy being vexed
with people whom you despise!" Ha, he could
laugh at them all now!
Then, having satisfied his vanity, he stopped
thinking. He listened for sounds in the house.
He felt a slight thirst and thought he would call
out for some brandy. But he immediately found
that he did not feel thirsty but hungry. He was
so glad at feeling hungry that he flopped down
flat in the bed, snored and fell asleep immediately.
Little Mary sitting by the kitchen fire, keeping
vigil over him, heard the creaking of the bed and
tiptoed to the room door.
90




The
D20           B LACK    SO U L   ZR     j,
"Do you want anything?" she whispered.
Hearing no reply she moved softly to the bed
and heard him sleeping calmly. She brushed her
hand lightly over his hair and went back to the
fire again. She sat half-sleeping, half-dreaming of
love, arranging the minutest detail of her future
life with her lover. Her dreams all began with
the day they would fly from Inverara together.
Before that day there was a vast wilderness in
which she could see nothing.
When the Stranger awoke next morning he felt
better. There was nothing but a slight twitching
at the knees when, in spite of himself, his mind
scurried into the past for a fleeting moment. He
ate ravenously. Little Mary stood beside him
while he ate, hoping that he would give her a
glance of recognition. But he had forgotten all
about her as soon as his fit had vanished. She was
again to him but a peasant woman who was handing him his food. Her eyelashes drooped. Her
lips quivered. She was debating in her mind
whether she hated or loved him. She wanted to
hate him, but she couldn't. But she made an irritated gesture as she swept away the remains of
his breakfast. He did not notice it. He noticed
nothing but himself. He lay back and smoked
a pipe.
"I am a new man," he thought. "I'm finished
91




rhe
BLACK     SOUL -
with the.past. I think I will get up and walk
around the shore. I will look at the sea." He put
on his clothes and walked into the kitchen. But
then he got dizzy and Little Mary had to help him
to a seat.
Little Mary was arranging a couch for him by
the fire when Red John came in.
"How does the sea look to-day?" asked the Stranger.
Red John growled, "It looks very well," and
spat into the fire. He sat in the opposite corner
with his head between his hands. Since he had
seen his wife by the Stranger's bedside with the
bewitched look.in her eyes his mind was troubled
with queer and terrible thoughts. He wanted to
kill his wife, but he was afraid to do so. The good
God forbade it. And in what other way could he
get rid of her? What were the neighbours saying
about him? Great Virgin of the Valiant Deeds!
how they'd laugh at him if they found his wife was
in love with the Stranger! As he sat by the fire
he thought of the fat widow in Kilmillick who had
fifteen acres of land, whom he knew was willing
to marry him. Had she not whispered to him one
night in Kilmurrage that it was lonely sleeping
alone in winter. And Kilmillick was a better
village in every way than Rooruck. He had heard
Sean Mor prove it one night in Mulligan's public92




rhe
house. But how was he to get rid of his wife?
Eh? He looked at the Stranger furtively over his
beard and then jumped to his feet and muttered
as he went out of the door, "To the devil with it
for a story."
"What is that he said, Little Mary?" said the
Stranger.
"Oh, don't mind him," she said, fussing anxiously
about the room. She swore to herself that she
would thrash her husband at the first opportunity.
But the Stranger felt uneasy. He realized that
Red John was jealous of him. He thought that
he was making a fool of himself with Little Mary.
"But good God! I have done nothing," he told
himself. It was ridiculous to think that he would
have "an affair" with her. "She is good to me and
that is all," he thought. But even as he thought
that his passion became slightly aroused. But it
died again immediately. His body was very weak.
He laughed lowly and thought, "What a fool I
am!" Little Mary looked at him and he said to
her with a laugh, "Oh well, of course I know he
didn't mean anything." But they both blushed as
they looked at one another, as if they were conscious of having something to hide from Red John.
He passed the day quietly thinking by the fire,
flying from one field of thought to another sleepily. At one moment he felt happy and certain of
93




The
B0 BLACK                  OU L
everything; at another moment he felt gloomy and
in doubt. He reacted to every sound that he heard
from outside. At one moment it was a boy riding
a donkey down the lane; the wild yells of the boy
rose triumphantly after each hissing lash of a dried
sea rod across the donkey's flank. And the donkey's hoofs tipped the ground slowly in jingling
succession as if he were not being hit. A flock of
seagulls whirled screaming over the village. A
peasant woman called out "Ho-e-e-e-e White
Anthony, what news have you got?" Then all
sounds would die except the sounds of the sea,
thr-r-up, flup, hsssss. Then a cock would crow
sadly. And he wove trains of thought about all
these sounds. Night brought him sound sleep.
His mind was shrouded by a kind of birth bag
that shut out the world. The past was becoming
unreal and distant. The sea was singing a crooning song in his ears that lulled him to sleep. It
was a sad song, like the songs that mothers sing
to their babes in Inverara, where all joy is the
depth of sadness in winter. It was the joyous
sadness of those who grow to despise joy in their
sorrow. There was a half-smile on his lips as he
was falling asleep. The wind coming down the
slope of Coillnamhan Fort from the east was the
last sound he heard. It played somnolent music
on the grey smooth crags, epics of races dead a
94




Trze
million years, a moment in its ageless life. It sang
them with a jeer at the end of each blast, jeering
at effort and ambition. He stretched out his legs,
crossed his feet and slept.
Next morning he sat once more by the fire. He
had no energy. He wanted to sit quietly and listen
to life moving about him. He shuddered when
he saw Red John come in after a night hunting
for wreckage, drenched to the skin by the ice-cold
sea-water. He had been fighting the other peasants for two barrels of paraffin oil that had been
washed ashore and he had got nothing. Red John
walked up and down by the door stamping his wet
feet and saying "huh" now and again viciously.
He began to curse the other peasants, gesticulating.
"That son of a wanton, Patch the son of Bartly,
prevented me from getting the second barrel," he
cried, spitting out of the door. He crouched
around the floor describing the struggle for the
barrel. He had gone out to his waist to meet a huge
wave. He had his hand on the barrel as it was
carried past him. Then the wave swept the barrel
and himself fifty feet along the weed-covered rocks.
He was knocked into a pool. The barrel was
sweeping back again towards him on the backwash
of the wave, when Patch the son of Bartly, his eyes
starting from his head with greed, rushed in front
95




Th e
0B2 BLACK               SOUL
of him. Clinging with one hand to a ledge of rock
Red John was about to grasp the barrel with the
other hand when Patch threw himself upon it
with a yell, shouting "Let go, let go, it's mine!"
And then they both struggled and the barrel was
carried out along the rocks until Michael the son
of Little Michael grappled it with a hook. "I'll
have his life yet, the son of a wanton," cried Red
John furiously. Then without changing his clothes
he took a pitchfork and went out to gather seaweed on the pebbly beach that stretched along
the north of Rooruck towards Coillnamhan.
Little Mary was at the well beetling clothes, and
the Stranger sat by the fire shivering, glad that
he did not have to go out to fight for barrels. It
made him afraid of life, that fierce struggle on the
wild beach.
"I wish Little Mary would come," he muttered.
He felt lonely. He listened to the splashing
sound of her beetle falling on the clothes and
counted the strokes, wondering when she would
have finished and come back to him. "Why do I
want her?" he cried angrily. "I'm all right, eh?
I don't want anybody." He began to excuse himself for wanting her near him. Yes, it was nothing
more than her company. Nothing more. It would
be utterly disgraceful falling in love with her.
"Love?" he cried aloud. Then he laughed harshly.
96




V e
"Go on, O'Connor! You are a fool. An utter
idiot. I just want to talk to the woman. I must
talk to somebody." He waited until she came
back. "Sit down, Little Mary," he said, "I want
to talk to you." Little Mary took her knitting
and sat near him quietly. Her face bore the expression of a man preparing for confession.
He began to talk, listening to his own voice
excitedly. He debated abstruse problems. He
asked himself questions as he talked. He threw
out theories as his own and began to refute them
as if they were set up by an enemy. Now and
again he asked Little Mary, "Do you understand
that?" She nodded her head in silence and looked
at him with a smile from under her lashes. But
she never understood a word of what he was sayýing. She was watching the play of his lips as he
spoke, feeling that she wanted to kiss them. She
was debating with herself what would put "some
flesh on his body." She was wondering how he
would make love to her if she could only arouse
his passion. She smiled instinctively in the right
place or nodded her head or shrugged her shoulders, in order that he might think she was listening to him and be pleased with her. Then the
Stranger disarranged the pillows under his back
in the heat of an argument with himself and
she jumped up to settle them comfortably. The


97


G




he
]fe~12&    BLACK    S OUL L^   ^   )
Stranger paused suddenly with open mouth. He
had reached what he thought was a marvellous
climax to a chain of reasoning. He was denouncing
the cupidity of an American millionaire who had
rushed from success to success, until at last the
dreary accumulation of his satisfied mercenary
desires drove him to... And just then when he
expected Little Mary to be waiting eagerly for the
climax she jumped up to arrange his pillows.
"Bah!" he thought, "she is a stupid peasant. She
doesn't understand me. I must go and have a talk
to O'Daly. I can talk to him. He is a man of the
world." But he sat moodily by the fire for another
hour, unable to rouse his energy.
Then the wind began to sigh more loudly. Cows
lowed. The sea crashed heavily against the southern cliffs. The dim shadows of day crept up closer
to the door of the cabin. Night was falling. He
jumped to his feet. "Get me an oilskin coat,
Mary," he said, "I want to go to Coillnamhan."
She started, afraid that he was going to Carmody's public-house.
"Oh, don't go drinking again," she said beseechingly, standing near him.
"Go on, get me the coat," he said angrily.
She forgot her shyness of him and caught him
by the breast. She pressed close to him and looked
fondly into his eyes. He felt her hot sweet breath
98




'he
R!    B( LAC BLACK      SO U L (2!,J   )(
on his face. Unconsciously he put his arms about
her and kissed her red lips. But even as his lips
touched hers, his mind was far away contemplating a million men kissing a million women
aimlessly. The soft suction of her lips burying
themselves in his repelled him. He put her from
him and stroked her hair. She stood motionless.
Then he snatched his coat from its peg and went
out. And as he strode away down the lane he felt
proud of his conquest of her, and he smiled. But
coming out on the highroad he halted and bit his
lip. His conscience pricked him for having kissed
her. He cracked his fingers and frowned. "She's
an excellent woman to me, I must look after her,"
he said and walked on, as if he were an omnipotent
God who could perform a miracle or blast a kingdom with the snapping of a finger.
But still the kiss pursued him. He kept wiping
his lips with his handkerchief as if it were a physical injury. He had kissed a hundred women, in
carbarets, in cafes, even in brothels. He had made
love sometimes with passion, sometimes boredly,
always carelessly, forgetting the women nonchalantly after he had left them. Yet he now felt
conscience-stricken after kissing this peasant
woman. "It's this damn- island," he growled.
"It's enchanted. Ugh!" Nature seemed to be
leering at him viciously. He thought spirits were
99




The
R   1    BLA BLACK     S O U L (2g3ýTjg
watching him among the black crags that loomed
sombrely out of the darkness on either side of the
white road, warning him against violating the
mating law of nature. The sea was running
sibilantly in and out on the sandy beach at Coillnamhan. It was cutting narrow deep gashes in
the sand. He felt it was showing him how sharp
its claws were. The wind came in little fawning
rushes about his ears, like a cat tapping a mouse
with furred claws before it suddenly drives its sharp
teeth through the neck and growls as it hears
the bones crunch. He said "Phew" and walked
faster. Then he cried aloud querulously, "But,
Great Scott, it was she herself... but oh to hell
with it, I'm going crazy. Ha, ha, ha!" Then he
forgot about her and began to array in his mind the
pet subjects that he wanted to discuss with O'Daly.
He heard sounds of music coming from O'Daly's
cottage as he approached. He stood in wonder
listening, drinking in the delicious sound that
always intoxicated him. He realized this was
classic music and he wondered who was playing.
"It's a violin," he said. He became jealous of
O'Daly for being able to play so well, for he himself could not play and he hated anybody being
able to do anything which he himself could not do.
He swore and knocked at the door. He waited for
two minutes but no answer came. The music still
I00




'T'h e
RSM97CS       B L ACK   SO0U L   g!    g
continued. Then a woman's voice began to accompany it. "Ha, that's his daughter," he said, and
his heart began to throb. Her voice was sad and
sweet. It seemed to mingle with the sounds of
the wind and the sea. It would go forward for a
space softly, sibilantly. Then it gathered strength
and rose in a thickening wild cascade of sound,
like a wave ridden by the wind breaking against a
cliff. Then another clear note joined it at the
height, a note of fierce unconquerable pride, that
wound whirling steel bands about it. And immediately it fell, lower and lower, laughing, tingling,
as if it were shivering in an ecstasy of ferocious
joy, like the voice of a mad woman laughing over
the dead body of her lover. A frenzy of passion
rose within him as he listened. He longed to grasp
a sword, to smite mountains, to heave huge
weights, in order to exhaust the energy born in
him by the music. He ran down the path away
from the house. But as soon as he was out of reach
of the music he stopped, snorting. He leaned
over the gate, his perspiring body chilled. He
looked back at the house as if it concealed enemies.
He trembled with fear, thinking it was enchanted.
The moon and myriads of stars made the night
bright. The thatched cottage stood out clearly
against the face of the low hill behind it, where
the crag ended in a glen. The glen was covered
IOI




The
R!ZM]KRMBLACK SOUL (2gf~n^g
with a shadowy mist, the gaunt bare trees standing about in it. He could hear the dull rumble of
the spring water dripping from the base -of the
ivy-covered rock to the left. The roof of the cottage hung low, as if it staggered under its thatch.
The rain had stained the yellow paint on the walls.
Withered rose bushes lined each side of the little
portico. "Hell, I'm silly!" he said. "I've seen
hundreds of cottages like that. I'll go in."
He walked steadily up to the door again and
knocked. The music stopped. He heard a chair
upset and then the door opened. O'Daly's daughter faced him in the hall. A lamp swinging over
her enveloped her head in a bright light. Stray
tresses of auburn hair rose quivering in the wind
from the huge coil that lay banked about her
forehead. They glistened as if sparks of fire had
fallen from the lamp on them. Her eyes were just
like her father's, blue, gleaming, fierce, cold eyes.
Her face was like her father's. The lips were thin
and compressed. The nose was straight and the
nostrils were slightly distended. The rest of her
body was slight. In her right hand she held the
violin she had been playing.
"You are heartily welcome," she said, bowing
slightly. Her voice was cold, almost sharp, totally
unlike the voice he had heard singing a minute
before.
102




He said "Thank you" and followed her into the
sitting-room on the right.
The sitting-room was low-roofed and large. A
turf fire burned brightly in a large black grate.
A French window, with sloping bays, almost
covered one side. A reading lamp rested on a
round mahogany table in the centre. The remaining walls were lined with books. The picture of a
fierce-looking man, wearing side-whiskers, hung
over the fireplace. Evidently an O'Daly and an
ancient one, for he wore ruffles. O'Daly's head
appeared over the back of a leather-covered armchair that was drawn up in front of the fire. The
toes of his right foot, covered with a grey sock, also
appeared over the back of the chair. It was resting
on the low mantelpiece. O'Daly did not rise, but
he wheezed and groaned, as he apologized for not
rising. "Rheumatism... Meet my daughter
Kathleen... nearing my last... heard you had
the doctor... sorry to hear it... an awful
scoundrel... take your chair to the fire... get
that bottle of brandy, Kathleen."
The Stranger sat opposite O'Daly. He cast a
hesitating look after Kathleen as she walked
slowly to the door, strumming her fingers along
the table as she passed. He noticed she was wearing a knitted saffron dress, with a deep black band
around the waist. Her slim body was as lithe as
103




The
MM97B          BLACK SOUL 0U
the body of a wild animal. The length of the fingers that strummed along the table made him stare
after her, as she disappeared through the door.
There was a deep hollow in the back of her neck
beneath her piled-up hair and the hair grew thickly
each side of the hollow. As he looked towards
O'Daly from her he blushed. She was the first
educated woman with whom he had come in contact for a long time. In fact he had never known
the companionship of educated women. The kind
who gave their love easily attracted him more.
"They were less waste of time," he used to say.
Now he felt embarrassed and attracted. He also
felt ashamed of himself. He was looking at
O'Daly for several seconds before he could see the
man. O'Daly was making peculiar grimaces, jerking his face upwards slightly with his upper lip
curled. Then he leaned over and whispered,
grasping the Stranger's right knee, "Be careful
what you say. She is very religious. Gives me
dog's abuse for swearing. I declare to Christ the
women nowadays... whist! here she comes."
Kathleen entered the room with a tray, carrying
a bottle and two glasses. As she filled the glasses
in silence, she made grimaces as if the smell of
the brandy were stifling her. She handed a glass
to each of them and then sat by the table holding
her handkerchief to her mouth.
104




The
BT 2        LBLACK   SO U L M   R    j
O'Daly, with his glass half-raised to his lips,
looked at her half mournfully, half fiercely, like an
old dog after being beaten by a young master, and
then he said, "Phew. Here's a good health, Mr.
O'Connor." He drank. "My daughter is a temperance woman," he added. Kathleen shrugged
her shoulders with a sigh and they both looked at
her. But nobody spoke. O'Daly swallowed the
contents of his glass, but the Stranger put down
his glass almost full. He knew Kathleen was
watching him and he became oppressedly conscious of the dilapidated state of his clothes, his
worn features, and... though he hated to admit
it... of his sinful past. Then he began to talk
to her; casually at first, while O'Daly glared furiously at each of them, cracked his fingers, made a
noise like a man urging a horse, and swore under
his breath, trying to find a more comfortable place
in his chair. He was like a fish out of water in the
presence of his religious, cultured and highly
civilized daughter. But the Stranger, as soon as
she began to talk to him, felt a stiffening that drove
out his embarrassment. There was an aggressive
yet pitying tone in her voice that maddened him.
"You've been to the University," she said, rubbing the fingers of her right hand slowly along
the back of the left.
He felt she was patronizing him.
I05




rh e
R0kRRM BLACK SOUL                 K
"Yes," he said curtly, "I spent a few years in that
den of superstition before I had sense enough to
begin my education properly."
O'Daly laughed loudly and then swore as he
stubbed his toes trying to sit upright.
"Damn right," he yelled, waving his beard in an
ecstasy of self-enjoyment, "the only place to learn
is..." And then he stopped dead, meeting the
cold stare of his daughter. He dropped down into
his chair until only his arms protruded.
Kathleen looked at the Stranger with a half-pitiful, half-contemptuous look. She looked from
under her eyelashes and seemed to shiver inwardly
in horror of such a statement.
"Oh," she said, "I see."
The Stranger fumed. He understood quite well
that she said several things, after the manner
women have of saying a thousand bitter things in
a silent glance. She said, "You have been in the
British army and therefore you are an enemy of
your country," since she, like all cultured young
Irishwomen, was a Nationalist for the same reason
that similar types in other countries are suffragettes or followers of nature-cults or social reformers, to express their newly discovered sex
freedom. She said, "You are a pariah since you
have lost your religion," for as a cultured young
Irish woman, the Christian religion was to her an
1o6




'rhe
kzlýKRB       BLACK     SOUL
emblem of purity, sex freedom, and a bulwark
against everything gross and foreign. And the
Stranger, even though his reason despised both
Nationalism and Christianity as relics of the childhood of human thought, felt himself in the position of a man accused by his own family of heinous
crimes against the family honour.
He began furiously to denounce everythingreligion, Nationalism, civilization.
"Civilization," he said, "is only a plaster to hide
sores. Priests are hirelings of the patriotic vampires who suck the blood of the people."
He became eloquent, as Kathleen tried to refute
his arguments. In Irish fashion they gesticulated,
they struck the table, they said things they didn't
mean to say, and they finally ended by forgetting
what they began to discuss and lapsed into a
heated silence.
O'Daly, who had stared open-mouthed at them
during the argument, then jumped to his feet and
laughed.
"Yah," he said, "you two are young and foolish.
Sure you know nothing about life. Said the man,
'Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.'
Come on, we'll go down to Carmody's."
"No, I must go home," said the Stranger, also
rising. "I don't feel very well." He was very
pale and weak and he trembled slightly, over107




.T e
R~(SRRM       BLACK    SOUL 0 UL
wrought by his recent illness and his excitement.
"Damn my soul," cried O'Daly tenderly, catching
him by the shoulder, "I didn't know you were
seedy. Drink that brandy. There now. Kathleen,
ye're the devil for talk. You... fooh!" He
glared at his daughter.
"I'm so sorry," said Kathleen. "Of course I didn't
mean to irritate you. Please forgive me."
The Stranger took her hand and laughed.
"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I'm quite all
right, quite. It's only nervousness. I'm frightfully sorry." But he had seen the softness in Kathleen's eyes and the blush that suffused her neck
as she spoke, and it maddened him still more inwardly. He felt that she was superior to him, had
more command over herself, was purer. "I must
go now," he said. "No, no, don't move, Mr.
O'Daly. Good-night."
Kathleen began to apologize to him again at the
door, but he laughed and bid her good-night
hurriedly. She watched him going down the path
and then called out, "Be sure to come again soon."
"All right," he called, "thanks." And then, walking hurriedly down the road, he said, "Never.
Never again. I'm lost. I'm not fit to associate
with her. I'm accursed. What a wreck I have
made of my life!"


io8




SPRING








Spring
~i
W      INTER DIED WITH A MELANCHOLY ROAR OF
all the elements. For three days stormdriven rain fell furiously on Inverara, while
the exhausted sea writhed in the death agony of
its winter madness. Then the sun rose in an arc
of shimmering light south of the Head of Crom.
It shot out its myriad tentacles over the sea and
land. It sent out a heatless invigorating light. The
sea danced rippling, and hummed a tune like the
sound of insects breathing on a weed-covered rock,
as it tossed against the cliffs. Inverara washed by
the rain and torn by the wind cracked in every pore
noiselessly as it began to move. The dew on the
crags glittered and then died, sucked into the sun.
Each tuft of withered grass that had lain during
the long winter between the crevices of the crags,
bitten by the frost, shivered. Green sprouts began
to crawl up through the withered ones. In the
bare green plains above the beach at Coillnamhan
the grasses began to wave their pointed heads
spasmodically. Like blind men they clawed the air,
seeking a way to the sun and warmth. The worms,
dizzy after their winter's sleep, their heads swayIII




Vhe
ing drunkenly on the coil of their bodies, squirmed
in the cold light. The birds chirped as they flitted
hither and thither trying to find a mate and a nesting-place. The larks rose with the bleak dawn,
stammering as they leaped from the earth, as if
their music frozen by winter was being melted in
their throats by the joyous light. Their voices
rang out clear and defiant as they soared high over
Inverara. The heralds of spring and life, they
sounded the reveille to the earth below.
"Spring has come. Up, you laggards. Your sleep
is o'er." So whispered the wind, coming in fast,
hissing rushes from the sea. It was no gentle, languorous wind. It was sharp and biting. It beat the
earth with thin steel rods. It throbbed with energy.
It hardened the muscles. It sent the blood rushing from the heart to the limbs. It made the teeth
chatter. It aroused passion. It was full of cold
lust. It poured into every crevice of the crags,
catching everything in its harsh grip. It poured
into every cabin to rouse the people. It made the
horses neigh and gallop, as it tore the shaggy
winter hair from their backs. It was the lashing
wind of spring.
The back of the sea was covered with wrinkles as
if it were shrinking from the cold caress of the
wind. And, spurred by the wind, it struck the cliffs
mighty blows gently, like a giant who is building
112




The
with heavy instruments. It rolled banks of yellow
and brown and black seaweed to the beaches to
fertilize the earth. Its broad bosom was covered
with low ridges, as it heaved itself towards the
land, driven by the wind, white thin lines dividing
green swathes of water. It hurried, ceaselessly
building on the ruins of winter. Its never-ending
sound carried all over Inverara, like the panting
breath of nature building spring. Every living
thing in Inverara breathed its strong smell that
was carried on the wind. It loosened stiff limbs
and poured iron into blood that had thinned in
winter.
Life, life, life, and the labour of strong hands in
Inverara in spring. From dawn to dark the people
hurried, excitedly opening the earth to sow. At
dawn they came from their cabins, their noses
shining with frost, slapping their lean hands under
their armpits, their blue eyes hungry with energy.
They ran through the smoking dew for their
horses. From dawn to dark their horses trotted
neighing, their steel shoes ringing on the smooth
stones. Through rain and driven sleet the people
worked. Cows gave birth to calves, and the crooning of women milking in the evening mingled
dreamily with the joyous carolling of the birds.
Yellow lambs staggered by their mothers' sides as
they made their first trembling journeys in life.
113               H




The
202KR          B BL A CK  SO0U L
Lean goats were hiding their newborn kids in the
crevices among the crags. Everything moved
hungrily for life. Even the grey limestone crags
seemed to move as the sun sucked the dew from
their backs. Smoke rose everywhere, as if nature
perspired conceiving life.
The valley that lay beneath Rooruck, bound on
the south by the ivy-covered low hill where the
crags ended and on the north by the stretch of
black, rocky, sandless beach, teemed with sounds
of work. Each plot of land, bound by stone fences,
was being tilled. Rotted seaweed, whitened by
the rain, lay like a healing rash on the yellow grass,
spread in winter. Heaps of fresh seaweed, glistening in the sun and sleet, were being dropped here
and there from the horses' backs. Peasants, with
their white frieze shirts hanging loose about their
bodies, were cutting the earth with spades, covering the potato seeds that the women were spreading. Fierce sounds filled the air, men shouting,
horses neighing, spades beating the earth, boys
lashing donkeys with seaweed stems, sleet pattering against stone walls.
Spring did not come in a night. It did not
emerge from winter like a shell from a cannon
mouth. It came gradually. But to the Stranger it
appeared to come in a flash, drear' and ghastly.
For a week after returning from his meeting with
114




'he
R~A BLACK S0UL jffRZikf
O'Daly's daughter he kept indoors, feverishly disputing with himself, unconscious of everything
around him. Sitting silently by the fire, he argued
with Kathleen O'Daly, defending his own cynicism
against her piety, his own weakness against her
fortitude. "Bah," he would say, "she is a fool.
Everything is dead. What is the use of virtue or
ambition or God? They are all meaningless."
And yet he could not drive away her memory.
Her memory aroused memories of his youth, sweet
ambition, respectability, the regard of fellow beings, the solace of religion. She was the emblem of
what he had left, of what he had thrust from him.
He was conscious that he had gained nothing in
exchange. And he clung to that nothing, that
annihilation of life, as men cling to a worthless
article for which they have paid dearly. "She is a
hypocrite," he would say. He accused her of gross
immoralities, but he shuddered at the thought as
at a profanation of his mother. He tried to arouse
obscene desires in his mind for her in order to
break the spell of her personality, but in vain. He
could not think of her as a woman in the flesh.
She was almost a spirit. She was the personification of memories. And in revolt against this spell
he lounged slothfully about the cabin, unshaved,
unwashed, scowling, in order to drive himself
farther down into the abyss of degradation where
II5




Yhe
RT(12          B LAC K   S 0 TL   ]3ýaeven memories of cleanliness could not reach him.
For that whole week he was never conscious of
Little Mary or her husband. They moved about
him without his seeing them. Red John obeyed
the spring like an automaton. He obeyed it unconsciously like the grasses that were being thrust
from the earth in spite of themselves. His weak
will revolted against life that was a joyless burden
to him, but the remorseless wind lashed him into
action. He worked ceaselessly mending baskets,
splicing ropes, manuring the two fields in which
he was preparing to sow potatoes, cutting seeds.
And all the while his passion for Little Mary,
fanned by the lustful spirit of spring, maddened
him. But her glance terrified him. He saw that
she was lost to him. He would look from her to
the Stranger sitting slothfully by the fire, and his
eyes gleamed with hatred. Then they changed
immediately and distended with fear. Drear phantoms pursued one another through his savage
unreasoning mind that brought his breath from his
lungs in gasps. So he worked furiously without
purpose to keep himself from going mad. He
sowed, caring nothing whether he should reap or
not. He no longer raged against his fate. The
people about him lost interest for him. He could
understand nothing. There was a great want
within him continually demanding satisfaction, and
iI6




The
0B2 BLACK                SOUL
he was unable to satisfy it. He wanted his wife.
The wind of spring lashed the marrows of his
bones, urging him to satisfy that want. The crazy
structure of his reason lurched dangerously. He
spoke to nobody and they shook their heads at him
contemptuously saying, "What a boor of a fellow.
It's avarice that makes him that way." Nobody
cared to find the cause of his melancholy, least of
all his wife, Little Mary. Spring was in her blood
too, but it was to her an elixir that made her shiver
with love of life. She moved jauntily,.with a springing step, swaying from the hips. Her eyes glittered mischievously. The dimples in her cheeks
when she smiled were lost in a thousand creases.
Her teeth when she bared them in a laugh shone
like ivory. She used to look at the Stranger sitting
moodily by the fire and smile to herself. "Ha," she
would say, "it is the beginning." It seemed that a
skittish imp had entered her soul that was gentle
and sad in winter. That imp transformed her.
Her beauty, that was sombre in winter like the
beauty of a mist-clad mountain, was now maddening like the beauty of a fountain in which sunbeams
are sparkling.
Then one morning the Stranger awoke from sleep,
conscious of all the activity about him. Sounds
reached him from all sides of people working.
They had reached him every morning for the past
117




The
BLACK     SOUL
week, but they had flitted past unheeded. His
mind, busy with its controversies, did not grasp
their meaning. As he dressed he heard the bleating of a sheep coming down the lane at the back of
the cabin. He went to the window and looked
out. A peasant woman was carrying a newborn
lamb in her arms. Its body, yellow with the shine
of birth, hung awkwardly across her breast, its long
legs dangling, its large ears drooping. A little boy
running by the woman's side kept stroking its
head and skipped as he shouted "Tuirteen a'm,
tuirteen a'm." A sheep circled around bleating, a
brier trailing from her haunch,-her belly covered
with hard pellets of earth that jingled as she ran.
The woman held the lamb to the sheep's nose now
and again to ease her fierce anxiety.
The Stranger felt a pain in his chest looking at
the sight. It appeared to be the embodiment of
life to him, of spring, of awakening energy. Then
with it came all the other sounds of life. From the
cabin door he could see the white-shirted men
working in the fields beneath the village. The perspiration shone on the horses' flanks as they galloped past him. Their dung smoked in the lane.
The wind ran close to the earth with a whipping
sound. He stood looking out motionless, as if
amazed at the treachery of nature's return to life
and activity. He felt as bitterly alone as the roue,
118




T e
R0I]KR!Z      B L LAC K  SO U L ag~jZ(3!
when all his boon companions have suddenly
deserted vice for a life of virtue. He stood looking
out of the door for fully half an hour, unable to
understand it.
Little Mary was preparing his breakfast in the
kitchen behind him. He could hear her humming
a song carelessly as she moved about. The sound
of water gurgling from the spout of the kettle into
the teapot appeared strange to him, as if he had
never heard it before. He was afraid to turn around
to look at her, lest she too might have changed
in the night with the rest of the world about him.
"Your breakfast is ready," she said.
He wheeled about and looked at her. She moved
to the window without glancing at him and stood
looking out dreamily, arranging a curl of hair on
her right temple. He stood by his chair staring at
her as if she had done him an injury. He tried to
think of something to say to her. But he couldn't
speak. Something fermented within him that tied
his tongue to his palate. "Fuh!" he said at last,
querulously, and banged the chair against the
ground. She shot him a coquettish glance and
went out. Then he heard her calling loudly to her
hens, "Tiuc! tiuc! tiuc! come here to me, you
darlings," as if she had completely forgotten all
about him. But she kept smiling to herself as
she thought, "Now I can play with him."
119




rhe
RZ5NnKRMBLACK S
He gulped his breakfast, angry with himself.
Then he walked about the kitchen excitedly. He
put on his hat and coat to go for a walk, but he
turned back from the door and took off his coat
again. Then he swore when he realized that he
wanted her. The memory of Kathleen O'Daly
came before his mind. He found himself thinking
religiously, he who was an atheist. "It would be a
sin," he said to himself, standing by his bed. But
the very thought aroused his passion the more.
Then he laughed aloud at the incongruity of his
thinking that such a thing could be sinful in the
eyes of a man who scoffed at the world, in the eyes
of a man who had... well, done all the things
that men do when they cut adrift. He went into
the kitchen and sat by the fire waiting for her.
Then she came in. He smiled at her, but she never
noticed him.
"Is it cold outside?" he said, wondering how he
should approach her.
"No," she said carelessly, shrugging her shoulders.
"I'm going to the fields to spread seeds now.
Would you like to come and watch?"
"No, I would not," he said angrily. "The devil
take the seeds!" He put on his coat again and
rushed out.
He wanted to go eastwards to Carmody's publichouse at Coillnamhan, but he found that he could
120




T4 e
RE019RMBLACK SOUL
not leave Rooruck. He kept circling around the
field in which Little Mary was working. He
fashioned all kinds of excuses to pass by that field.
When he came near it, he talked to the peasants
in the neighbouring field, and passed on without
speaking to her. And then, coming up again to the
cabin, he cursed himself for an utter idiot. His
pride was insulted by the fact that passion was
gaining the mastery over him. His winter apathy
was slipping away from him. In fact, before dinner
he shaved himself and trimmed his beard. He felt
the lack of flesh on his bones, and wished that he
was in better condition and less repulsive physically. And all the while some skittish imp kept
smirking within him, hiding from his accusing
conscience. He felt a quickening of his pulse and
a warmth in his blood. He was almost dizzy with
that strange feeling of spring. And it was completely physical, overpowering the mind like wine.
In fact, it formed a mind of its own, with a distinct
philosophy and a moral code. That mind seemed
to be not in the brain but somewhere around the
heart and the bowels. It shut out the past and the
future, and demanded immediate satisfaction of its
desires. It was cold and biting like the wind. It
was irresistible.
While Little Mary was preparing dinner for him
he watched her breathlessly, struggling violently
121




The
~B L BLACK              S 0 U L ag!Zj
with himself. In her presence he felt ashamed,
conscience stricken. But when she was leaving the
cabin to take Red John's dinner to the field he
caught her by the hand and looked into her eyes.
She laughed and snatched away her hand. He
swore. She stopped at the door and said in a rippling voice, "I'm in a hurry." Then she ran down
the lane.
"Curse the woman," he said, "she's making a fool
of me. All right. That finishes it. Good God, I
was mad to think of a peasant woman. I'm becoming utterly degraded. I'm finished with women!
They are the curse of life. There, she's been trying totempt me. I'm glad I resisted her advances."
And he ate his dinner hungrily, quite satisfied with
himself. Then he endeavoured to fall back into his
slothful habits of winter. He sat by the fire smoking. But he couldn't rest. His hands and feet
were fidgeting. He suggested all sorts of activities,
a walk by the Hill of Fate, a visit to the old fort, a
turn around the fields where the peasants were
working, but none of these things satisfied him.
All these places were connected with Little Mary,
and he must avoid her. Finally towards evening he
set out towards Coillnamhan. He told himself
that his walk there was completely without purpose,
but he sat on a fence above the beach, waiting.
That was the road from the school to O'Daly's
122




1rhe
RZ39RzBL A CK S 0ULL(1R~a!
house. He kept watching the hill between him
and the school. Kathleen O'Daly would come
along t 'hat way.
Then he saw her coming over the hill talking to
another man, a priest. He made a movement to
jump from the fence, but he held back. "Why
should I run away from a woman?" he asked him..
self. He tried to calm himself and be indifferent
as he waited until she came up. He could hear her
laughing as she approached, but he wouldn't look
in her direction. He was watching two seagulls on
the beach quarrelling raucously over the carcass of
a dogfish. Then he turned towards her suddenly
and raised his hat as she was passing.
"Good evening, Miss O'Daly," he said.
Kathleen stopped dead and made a startled gesture.
"Good gracious! Mr. O'Connor," she said, "you
gave me a fright. I never saw you." She had in
fact seen him a long way off. "Let me introduce
you to our curate, Father Ronan - Mr. O'Connor,
Father Ronan."
The Stranger shook hands with the curate with
an effort at cheerfulness, although he hated priests-.
He associated them in some peculiar way with all
the things that had caused his ruin. The curate, a
squat, heavily built, shabbily dressed man with a
dark face and, beautiful grey eyes, stammered some123




Trhe
RZIýKRýZ B LAC K S O:U L agRJ           ag
thing inaudibly and then smiled. He began to
smile towards the Stranger, and finished smiling
towards Kathleen. He was always shy of men,
though quite at home with women. A most peculiar man, though a fine character, and absolutely
sincere in his belief in his religion and mission.
His body was that of a prize-fighter, but his eyes
were those of a nun, and his manner corresponded
with his eyes. He could look no man in the eyes,
and he always blushed and fidgeted when talking.
His face would darken suddenly, and he would grip
his side as if he had a stitch in it. The Stranger
misunderstood his embarrassment. "He's in love
with her," he said to himself. "The hypocrite!"
'Then he himself fell in beside Kathleen and began
to talk cheerfully and nonchalantly. He would
show the yokel of a priest that he was a man of the
world. But his affected cynical bantering had no
effect either on Kathleen or the priest. They both
pitied him. They did not get irritated as he hoped
they would. They merely raised their eyebrows
and said a word now and again in agreement with
the most bitterly cynical things he could say about
the country and its religion. They parted almost
in silence at the western end of the beach. As he
shook hands with Kathleen she pressed his hand
slightly and looked pityingly into his eyes.
"You must come to see us often," she said; "my
124




R!ZjffRM BLACK SOUL GN.:,fRZRf
father is always talking about you. Do please
come."
The curate tried to say something and then
blushed and looked at Kathleen. The Stranger
could catch the words "interesting books."
"Ah, yes," said Kathleen, "if you should like something to read, Father Ronan would be pleased-"
The Stranger interrupted her with a wave of his
hand, and began to walk away.
"No," he said, "I prefer to be a primitive man. I
have no wish to be converted." And he walked
on.
The roads parted at right angles. He walked
hurriedly for a short distance, and then paused to
tie his shoe lace, which did not want to be tied. He
undid it and then tied it again as he looked after
the other couple. They were on the brow of the
hill, going towards the village. Kathleen kept
twitching her shoulders slightly as she walked, and
held herself very straight, staring in front of her.
A curl of hair waved from beneath her black round
cap.
"You should try and save him," the curate was
saying. "There is something on his soul." And
Kathleen smiled, glad to give that construction to
her desires.
But the Stranger watching them thought they
had forgotten all about him.
125




3D1KRM%^      BLACK     SOUL    KRTX3!g
"They think I'm not fit to associate with them,"
he thought. "Wouldn't even argue with me. Very
well. To hell with them. It's just the price of you,
Fergus O'Connor." And suddenly he laughed
aloud, and drew his lower lip over his mouth.
"There's Little Mary, anyway," he said. Going
westwards the sharp wind cut into his marrows,
and he felt the urge of spring fiercely. "Hurrah!"
he shouted, and threw his hat in the air. "I wish
I could commit some heinous crime to satisfy
myself."
He passed Red John riding on his pony near the
cottage. Red John did not speak, but lashed his
pony and passed at a flying gallop, his short legs
swinging in opposite directions along the horse's
flanks. The Stranger could hear him swear at his
horse long after he passed out of sight.
"All right, you lout," he muttered viciously; "I'll
make you a cuckold for your surliness."
All feelings of refinement had left him now.
Spring held him in a strong grip that crushed his
conscience. He was like a primitive savage. He
vaulted over the stone fence into the yard, and
opened the door without pausing. Little Mary
was laying his supper, her back turned towards
him. Without looking around she moved to the
fire and said:
"Did you pass Red John on your way?"
126




'  e
3e~(iIK    i BLACK      SOUL (    R!j)(z
"Yes," he said; "where was he going?"
"Into Kilmurrage for a new spade. I don't suppose he will be back before morning. Whenever
he gets a shilling he drinks it. He has my heart
broken." And she gazed at the fire mournfully in
pretended woe.
But the Stranger saw the colour mounting in her
cheeks, giving the lie to her words. He sat down
to his supper in silence and toyed with the food,
but he couldn't swallow anything. His heart was
thumping wildly. He sat listening to the silence
without for fully a minute. There was a longdrawn hissing from the west, of a wave receding
over a pebbly beach. The sound like a command
made him stand up. He had to move his chair,
and the act irritated him. Then he moved swiftly
to her and bent down over her shoulders until his
cheek touched hers. He could feel her body trembling. With a sigh she turned around and fell
into his arms.
It was dark when he threw himself on his bed.
His head swam. His body seemed to be on fire,
burning with the shame that seized him for having
taken her. He writhed on the bed, murmuring,
"Christ! what possessed me to do it?" He felt
that he had committed himself to her now. His
surrender to his passion hurled him back again
into the world. It appeared gross to him. He tried
127




Tke
BLACK     SOUL
to laugh scornfully but he couldn't. He repeated
continually, "I don't love her. I shouldn't have
done it. She trusts me." He was in agony when
he recalled the look in her eyes as she lay in his
arms. They were gentle, soft, trusting. He tore
his hair and bit the bed-clothes with his teeth.
Then he lay still, and gradually his mind began to
calm. Instead of being ashamed of himself he now
became angry with Little Mary for having succumbed to him. But his anger was unreal, and he
lay on his side, resting his head on his hand, staring at the wall, wondering what he should do now.
Should he run away? Yes, he would run away. He
got up and packed his clothes. Then he realized
that he couldn't get a steamer to the mainland
until the following day, and sat down again on
his bed. He sat there for a long time thinking
gloomily until he heard the door open and somebody stagger into the kitchen. He jumped to his
feet and rubbed his eyes. It was broad daylight.
"Hey there! hey there!" came Red John's voice
in a thick whisper; "is there nobody in thiskip of
a place?" He kicked at a chair and upset it.
The Stranger went into the kitchen and asked
him what was the matter.
Red John, his clothes spattered with mud, and his
beard matted with porter froth, clung to the dresser
with his right hand.
128




'he
"Ho! ho! there, my fine fellow," he chuckled, "so
there you are, you son of a loose woman. You
spawn of a dogfish. You-" He uttered a wild
yell, and began to tear his shirt from his back when
Little Mary came rushing at him from her room,
and he dropped on his knees in a trice. "Don't
strike! merciless woman," he whined; "they
wouldn't give me a spade. They wouldn't open
the shop to me, I tell you, so I had to drink in
Mulligan's while I sent a boy to look for one. I
declare by the cross of the Crucified One that I
couldn't get a spade. What's all this noise now
about a spade? Haven't I got a good spade
already?" He kept babbling as he crawled to the
hearth and sat down glaring at the two of them
like a wild animal. Little Mary shrugged her
shoulders and said nothing.
"Good God, what sent me to this place?" thought
the Stranger. He became filled with such a violent
disgust at his sordid surroundings that he wanted
to rush away and leave them. But where should he
go? He stayed in his room all day trying to think
out a plan. Impossible! The very coldness of the
air outside was a barrier against going anywhere.
He avoided Little Mary's eyes. He never spoke
to her. He wanted to go to the O'Dalys and ask
their advice. But how could he tell them that he
had seduced Red John's wife? And all day he


129


I




Rma!9RMBLACK S0OULGN".,27
heard Red John shouting and screaming in the
other room.
"They'll eat me alive," he screamed; "blue devils
and little red ones with clay pipes in their
mouths." It was like being in hell, listening to
the man's drunken babble.
"I wish a devil would choke him and be done with
it," he thought. He went into the kitchen for his
supper and saw Little Mary calmly knitting by
the fire as if nothing in the world troubled her.
"Huh!" he thought, "she's an unnatural woman.
Good God, she has ruined me," forgetting her
kindness to him in winter, and her love that made
her give him herself.
He scowled at her fiercely, but she never looked.
All day she was in a cloud of happiness that nothing could pierce. Since the night before, when she
had abandoned herself to her love, she was unable
to think of anything but the consummation of her
womanhood. It was the beginning of life. If even
it were the end of life, it had at least been worth
while to have lived for those 'moments. Like an
opiate her satisfied love made her insensible to her
surroundings, even to the object of her love. Not
a single shadow of gross conventions or cowardly
morality darkened the cloud of her happiness.
She was not tortured by the desire that civilized
women have to demand a price for their affections
130




Y'h e
D) BLA C K              SOUL j       M
by marriage or otherwise. She had given freely
like nature. She received from nature the clean
gift of satisfied womanhood.
But his own vanity and the philosophy of degenerate fools filled the Stranger with the wind of
remorse. That night as he lay down to sleep he
said to himself, "I will keep aloof from the two of
them. It is wrong for an educated man to lower
himself to the level of peasants." For a fortnight
he did so. He roamed around Rooruck restlessly,
speaking to nobody. He pretended to be quite at
his ease in his gloomy solitude, but he was most
unhappy. At night he slept well. He ate his meals
with relish. He felt himself getting stronger every
day, and his returning strength was detestable to
him. It aroused his passion. It made him want to
exercise his hands and his mind in doing something. Each day was a perpetual struggle between
his resolution to be miserable and the urge of
spring and returning strength urging him to love
and activity.
"O God of the valiant deeds, what a ghoul of a
fellow!" the peasants would say as he passed them
in silence with a cold stare. The young women of
the village, who were all out in the fields or on
the shore, would glance at him giddily and say,
"Hist! why the hurry?" but he would take no
notice of them. Then they would whisper loud
131




rahe
R01C9Si~ B LACK SOUL (g2Z5!g:
enough for him to hear, "He's not a man at all, I
believe. They say he was badly wounded in the
big war. What a pity!" And theirjibes maddened
him.
Those days Little Mary spent in trembling
anxiety, afraid that he was lost to her. She would
look at him, sometimes sadly and wearily, with
wide-open eyes in which the hidden tears were
glistening. Sometimes she looked at him with
hatred in her eyes and her nostrils quivering
because he scorned her. Each night she lay awake
a long time thinking furiously of what she should
do if he looked at her no more. She would listen
savagely to the sea beating against the cliffs, and
picture her own body washed away on its bosom.
And then she would say, through her clenched
teeth, as she clasped her throbbing throat, "I will
make him love me. I will, or I will kill him." For
her primitive soul was as merciless as nature itself.
The tender growth of civilization had never taken
root in her mind. Her love raged mightily. Like
an ocean wave there was nothing either within her
or without her to stay its progress. It must satisfy
itself or shatter itself in death.
Then nature turned the Stranger towards her
again. Nature routed his body from its winter
apathy. It left his mind, which was not of nature
but of civilization, wriggling in the clutches of his
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The
BLACK     SOUJL^g        )^
fantastic reasoning, but his body, nourished by the
exhilarating breath of the sea and hardened by the
wind, was drawn by an overpowering force to a
mate. The most ferocious castigations prescribed
by the Christian Church for the unsexing of its
cherished saints would have been of no avail to
silence the demands of nature in Rooruck in
spring. That spring at Rooruck, when strong men
live greedily every moment from the grey cold
dawn to the mist-laden dusk! Life there is only
to the strong and to the ruthless. Oh, strong, beautiful sea! Hunger-inspiring! Life-giving! Oh, the
icy clasp of the wind, like the stern command of a
proud father. Even when it numbs the limbs at
dawn the heart throbs joyfully, loving life. So even
though his weak mind remained helpless, his body
grew daily fonder of life. Two personalities grew
within him side by side. One embraced Little
Mary and loved her bodily with the love of nature.
The other hated her and kept hidden behind a
gloomy silence. And she tried her utmost to gain
access to those caverns where his Black Soul
lurked.
"Talk to me," she would say as they sat together
in the kitchen. "Tell me about the places you
have been, about the war, and all the strange countries you saw. Do tell mel" She was eager to
learn what he knew of life, so that she could interest
I33




T/he
B L BLACK  SOUL(^     ^D(^
him by talking and make herself more attractive
to him.
For many days he refused to talk, saying to her,
"What is the use of my talking to you, you would
not understand me." Then at last his loneliness
became so oppressive that he had to speak. He
talked furiously as he walked about the kitchen,
forgetful of what he was saying or to whom he was
speaking. He talked fiercely, like spring, of conquest, of great deeds. He felt, in the ecstatic pleasure of talking to some one, that he could achieve
wonders.
She listened to him breathlessly. A new vista of
happiness opened up before her eyes. Oh, to have
words like those spoken to her! Her love that was
before but the creation of her own fancy, now
swelled within her torrentially as she realized that
he had her respect. She fell in love with his mind
that could conceive those words. How sweet they
were, those fierce words, and the gleaming eyes
through which the mind peeped and disappeared
flashing, like sunbeams through a cloud. With her
arms folded on her breast, and her head turned
sideways to hear better, she sat rocking herself like
a nun in a spiritual ecstasy.
But he felt none of her happiness. He suddenly
stopped talking, and without casting a glance at
her went out. A terrible weariness seized him.
134




'rh e
20)S@RM BBLACK SOUL Oag^jM
He always felt that discontent when he had talked
a great deal, as if there were something he wanted
to do and couldn't do. Night was falling as he
walked down the village towards the beach. A
bitter wind blew fitfully, almost drowned by a
dirty grey mist that seemed to be rolling up before
it the rays of the sinking sun. It was as if the sun,
like a sick man recovering from a long illness, were
giving up its feeble attempt to warm the earth
and the dregs of winter were putting it to flight.
Through the mist he could see dim grey forms
coming towards him, peasants coming wearily
homewards after their day's work, with spades on
their shoulders. They were talking idly and laughing. They talked of women. There was a lewd
ferocity in their tired voices. Now and again
one of them would yell and scrape his spade along
the stone fence as if seized by a drunken frenzy.
In spite of himself he felt his blood rush hotly at
their remarks and they disgusted him.
"Good God," he thought, "how coarse I am becoming! I, an educated man!" But his body
revolted against this priggishness of his mind.
Said spring within him: "You know very well
educated men are far worse than these poor peasants in matters of the kind, but they are too
cowardly to express them only. Vice is born of
repression." "That's right," he thought, and sudI35




'Tue
B BLACK   SOUL jU
denly he became aware that the reason he had kept
away from Little Mary for the past fortnight was
because she had given herself to him. And he had
thought Kathleen O'Daly superior to Little Mary.
Why? Obviously because she was better dressed,
respectable, and had been to a university. Fancy
setting a woman like that above Little Mary, a
shallow conceited woman, just like the artificial
unsexed ladies who haunt the suburbs of large
cities, full of sham intellectual vanities, the mainstay of society doctors, spiritualists, psychoanalysts, and freak writers. He recounted all Little
Mary had done for him in winter when he was ill.
He felt the warm fragrance of her body lying
within his arms. He saw the wild love-light in
her half-closed eyes turned up to his, and he shuddered, hating himself for having slighted her in
his mind. But even as he did so his morose intellect sardonically recalled the wondrous music
of Kathleen's violin, the refined hands, the ripple
of the curls on her cheeks. He struck his forehead
heavily and swore. The blow brought him back
to his senses, and he stopped with a start and
looked about him.
He found himself standing half-way out on the
Jagged Reef, absolutely alone in the dark night.
He could hear the low rumbling of the sea in front,
coming up to him through the mist. The rocks at
136




RMMKRB        BLACK     S O U L
his feet were covered with yellow sea moss, slippery and glistening. White froth oozed from it,
where his feet rested. Birds ran screaming along
the rocks. He could just see their long, bright,
red legs. Their bodies, the colour of the grey
mist, were invisible. Cormorants, flying close to
the ground, their gullets heavy with the day's
fishing, sidestepped with a whizzing sound as
they passed him. And overhead there was nothing
visible but the black fat belly of the mist. The
sharp biting wind made him shiver. "Christ,"
he said, "what a night!" Oppressed by nature
that was black as his own soul, he began to walk
out hurriedly towards the sea, pretending to himself that he could endure life no longer, and that
he was going to drown himself. The tide was
nearly at a low ebb, and he seemed to have been
walking for hours before the mighty vastness
loomed up suddenly at him out of the mist. Its
vast, dark, moving face leered. Aghast at the
thought of jumping into the belly of such an
appalling monster, he wheeled about sharply and
slipped on the moss. He fell on his knees in a
pool. His teeth began to chatter. He scrambled
to his feet and ran back madly over the rocks. He
stumbled among the pools. He thought an army
of ghosts surrounded him. He felt sure that a
huge animal was hurtling along behind him trying
137




The
RDR(Kkm       B L BLACK  SO U L  ^^~
to catch him by the heels. When he reached the
cabin he sighed with delight and broke into a
walk. He was perspiring. He looked around
cautiously lest anybody should have seen his
hurried flight, and then began to whistle nonchalantly and swing his arms as he walked towards
the cabin. He kept shaking his head and saying
to himself, "By God, never again will I slight
Little Mary." He wanted her to comfort him, so
he persuaded himself that he was a fine fellow and
loved her.
He saw two great mastiffs standing outside Red
John's door, wagging their tails and smelling
each other's noses. Red John's cur was lying on
its back at their feet, whining and shivering when
the mastiffs sniffed at it contemptuously. He recognized the dogs as O'Daly's, and jumped over
the gate, eagerly chuckling to himself. "Jove, Ill
have a great talk with him." The two mastiffs
made a snarling rush at him. He was always
afraid of dogs, but he joyously kicked at them as
if the great hairy things with jagged fangs were
timid sheep. He opened the door and entered
the kitchen.
"How are you, Mr. O'Daly? Delighted to see
you.
O'Daly made a noise as if he were urging on a
horsel as he turned around on the stool in front
138




The
RSR9~zBLACK            SOU L ^%^)(
of the fire. With one hand stroking his beard and
the other hand on his right knee, he looked at the
Stranger with his peculiar ferocious look that
never inspired fear or embarrassment, but love
for the strange old fellow.
"Well," he said, shaking his head like a horse,
"you are a queer person. Upon my soul, you are
as unsociable as an Englishman. Why don't you
come to see the people? Sit down and tell us
what devilment you've been up to. Sit down here
and talk to the people."
"Wait until I change my clothes," said the Stranger, laughing; "I'm wet to the neck." He went
into his room.
"How are you getting on with your sowing, Red
John?" said O'Daly, taking out his pipe and looking from Red John and Little Mary, who sat in
opposite corners, back and forth, fiercely as if he
were interrogating them at the Petty Sessions in
his capacity as a magistrate.
Red John drew his legs up under him and sniffed.
"Oh, well enough, well enough," he said with a
sigh.
"My soul from the devil," cried O'Daly, "what a
miserable fellow you are. You're the most" - he
pulled at his pipe - "miserable fellow I ever met.
So you are." He cracked his fingers, wagged his
head, and blew clouds of tobacco smoke from his
139




200 20BLACK SOUL
mouth. "My soul from the devil, but you have
the most beautiful woman in Inverara, and yet you
are a miserable fellow. How do you explain it?
What do you say about it, my good woman?" He
began to talk to Little Mary, subtly flattering her,
until she almost cried with laughter and enjoyment, while Red John's forehead twitched as he
looked from one to the other of them. He would
look at Little Mary's beautiful face and flashing
eyes and say to himself, "My woman, eh? May
the devil rape her." Then he would look at
O'Daly with hatred. He hated him because he
was big and strong, and was able to talk freely to
women. His eyes would roam over O'Daly's
brown patched suit that hung loosely about his
lean body, and he imagined that even the stuff of
the cloth was a living enemy. The game bag that
hung on O'Daly's shoulder assumed the properties of an enemy. It was associated with the things
that he never knew, that he never possessed.
Even the blood-stained head of a curlew that protruded from a hole in the side of the bag leered
at him. It said, "There you are, you miserable
peasant, you never could kill a curlew. You are a
poor oppressed wretch. You are a worm. You
are only fit to be kicked like a cur." And the gun
that lay on the ground beside O'Daly, its barrel
gleaming in the firelight, seemed to threaten him
140




rhe
with instant death if he dared to lift a finger in
order to assert his manhood. As he sat in his
corner his soul shrank to a trembling point in
his breast. The whole range of his understanding
cowered within that point in awe of everything
that moved about him. Not a solitary being, not
even a dog or a bird watched with him in sympathy. He was alone, without even the knowledge
of a God to comfort him. His reason was slowly
dying like a plant suddenly stricken with drought
under a scorching sun. He sat still without
thought, lest a movement or a thought would betray his presence to all these enemies that were
eager to overwhelm him. Slowly, fearfully, his
soul fled backwards, dragging his body with it
into the vast unconscious emptiness of the primeval life from which his ancestors had arisen. For
in Rooruck in spring life is only to the strong
and the ruthless.
The Stranger dressing in his room heard Little
Mary laughing merrily in response to O'Daly's
bantering, and he became madly jealous of her.
He was jealous not because he suspected that she
did not love him - he took that for granted- but
because she could laugh with another man. "Nonsense," he said to himself, "O'Daly is an old man,
and I don't love her, anyway. What does it matter
to me what she does?" But he was furious never141




rhe
B BLACKK         SOUL L
theless. Every time she laughed, the ringing
sound with a ripple in the middle of it, as if it
caught in her throat, struck at his chest like the
flat base of a hammer. He finished dressing and
sat on his bed pettishly, saying to himself that he
wouldn't go into the kitchen. Sitting there he
discovered that he had never been jealous of any
other woman in his life, and he decided that he
must be becoming very weak-minded. "It's this
miserable existence that's-"
Just then O'Daly shouted to him.
"Oh, lawdy, lawdy dah! you take as long to dress
as a woman."
He laughed with pretended gaiety and strolled
into the kitchen. He took a seat away from the
fire so as to remain hidden from the light.
O'Daly eyed him up and down appraisingly.
"Begob, yer putting on flesh," he said. "Now,
what d'ye think o' that. We'll soon make a man
of ye. And sure yer father, Lord have mercy
on him, was a fine man... as good as the
best."
The Stranger shot a sharp glance at Little Mary
and saw her smiling happily. He fumed and
turned to O'Daly with a smile. He felt himself
intensely flattered by O'Daly's remarking his returning strength. He was, after all, a strong man.
Fancy a strong man concerning himself about a
142




The
RS(      M    BLACK     SOUL ag3?
miserable woman! Yes, he would put her out of
his head.
"I met your daughter Kathleen the other day,"
he said. laughing; "I am afraid she is trying to
convert me."
"Upon my soul, she will before she finishes,.although she made a poor job of myself. Mind ye,
don't fall in love with her. They all do. Although
in my time we looked for a different kind. When
I was young-"
The Stranger heard Little Mary make a movement, and forgot O'Daly immediately. His first
impulse was joy at the success of his effort to make
her jealous. Then immediately he despised himself for his meanness. She was smiling weakly at
the fire, but her throat was throbbing, and the
fingers of her right hand tapped her knee restlessly. Then she rose hastily and went into her
room. She thought she would never get across
the floor to her room. She threw herself face
downwards on her bed and burst into tears.
"So he is in love with Kathleen O'Daly," she
gasped; "that skimpy girl, that empty-headed
doll! Oh, if I had her head between my hands!"
Then she puckered up her lips and swept her hair
back tightly from her forehead with her right
hand. Her wet eyes hardened as she tried to
arouse hatred against the Stranger. He had talked
143




rhe
B LBLAC K                SOUL
of Kathleen purposely to hurt her. She knew he
had. She tried to persuade herself that she hated
him and despised him, and did not want him any
more. But then, as soon as she imagined life without him, she was seized with horror. Her mind,
like a butterfly flitting among barren flowers,
rushed terror-stricken from one thing to another
trying to attach itself to some interest, but in vain.
A black shroud descended on everything with a
jeering rush as soon as she told herself that she
didn't want him. And a flood of tears gushed
afresh from her eyes in her misery. Then sobbing
she dried her eyes, her jealousy washed out by her
tears. "No, no, I love him, whatever he does,"
she panted. "What else have I got?" And she
began to beseech heaven, the sea and Crom Dubh
to blast everybody that ever bore the name of
O'Daly. She poured out a torrent of mad words
endlessly until she had to stop breathlessly. Then
she was satisfied.
The Stranger, endeavouring to listen cheerfully
to O'Daly's conversation, knew that she was weeping in her room, and he felt intensely ashamed of
himself. He longed to be able to go into the room
to her and take her in his arms. But he felt Red
John's red eyes piercing his right cheek. They
were like the eyes of a she-wolf whose cubs are
stolen. Yet he laughed in response to O'Daly's
144




TThe
jokes. And his ability to laugh in such a situation
made him feel that he was a cur. He wanted to
get up and strike somebody. He was afraid of
O'Daly, so he turned his wrath against Red John
because he knew he was weaker than himself.
He looked at him savagely. Red John, who had
been looking at him malignantly, lowered his eyes
and began to fidget with the fire. Then he rose
and stretched himself with a foolish grin.
"I must go and see has Long Bartly got a pitchfork to lend me," he muttered, and slunk out of
the cabin. But he didn't go to Long Bartly's.
He crossed up over the crags to where his black
sheep were grazing on the cliff top and kept
driving them up and down the crags all night.
"Hist!" he would say, throwing a pebble at them.
"Let the fairies take you. What good are you to
me? May the maggots eat you. I am eaten myself by the devils." And he would laugh like a
child.
When Red John had gone out, O'Daly bent
over close to the Stranger and whispered, "Something the matter with that fellow. How do they
get on together?" nodding his head towards the
room where Little Mary was.
"Oh, all right," said the Stranger. "'Why?"
O'Daly looked at him curiously and then looked
towards the fire, winking an eye.
145               K




Vhe
J^ ^       BLACK    SOUL SS       )^
"She is a beautiful woman. You had better take
care of yourself."
"Why?" said the Stranger again, irritably.
"Oh, nothing," whispered O'Daly; "women are
the very devil."
"Oh, rot!" said the Stranger, "I'm a man of the
world."
"Hm, hm," said O'Daly; "it's funny how young
men always think they're wiser than their fathers.
Oh, well, I must be going. Good night, my good
woman.''
Little Mary saw him to the door, begging him
to stay longer and hoping in her heart that an
evil demon would "cast the light of the morning
sun on his rotting corpse." The Stranger walked
down the toad with him. They walked in silence
for a while. Then O'Daly said: "I pity that poor
woman. Begob, it hurts my soul to see a beautiful
horse hurt or a beautiful woman living in poverty.
The cruel injustice of the world."
O'Daly, who, like most Irishmen of his type, had
no sense of justice whatever, felt that at that
moment he would give a fortune to get Little
Mary out of her miserable surroundings. Yet he
would have whipped her with pleasure and with
equal sincerity and feeling of justice had a birthmark on her face irritated him. They say that he
once, at the same sitting of the Parish Court in
146




The
3   a3  B     BLAC  K  SOUL (K       D(
Kilmurrage, acquitted a man for opening a neighbour's skull in a fit of anger, and sentenced another
man to a month's hard labour for tying a sharp
cord around an old goat's thigh. His type is almost
extinct to-day in the country, which does not
appreciate the impulsive strength of the iron men
of old who were so close to merciless unjust nature.
Suddenly O'Daly stopped in the road and laid
his hand on the Stranger's shoulder.
"Damn it, man," he said, "I don't like to see you
pining away here, wasting your life. It's no place
for a young man. I wouldn't mind, but your
father was one of the old tribe, one of ourselves.
I know ye got good blood in you. Mind, I'm not
pokin' my old nose, but if there's anything I could
do... There now, what the hell am I talking
about?" And he began to curse loudly and gruffly
in order to hide his sudden exposure of what he
considered a disgraceful show of sentiment. The
Stranger kicked the road and said nothing. "Hell
to my soul," said O'Daly, catching his hand;
"come over any time you've nothing to do and
have a bottle with me. Don't be too proud to
visit an old man. Now good night, and God bless
ye, my son." Then he stalked down the road
cursing himself for having taken an interest in
that "good-for-nothing weakling; how in the hell
they breed them I don't know."
147




'rh e
RIgkm BL A CK SO0U L 2kZg
The Stranger stood looking after him, clenching
his fist, grateful to him for his sympathy and at
the same time cursing him for having attempted
to do him a favour. He heard a small boy coming
up the road riding a donkey, and O'Daly stopped
to talk to him.
"Oh, boys, oh, boys, where did you get that
elegant donkey?"
The Stranger turned sharply on his heel and
walked back to the cabin. "Yeah, he forgot all
about me immediately," he muttered angrily;
"nobody cares a damn about me."
Through the thick darkness stray lights flickered
here and there about him in the windows of the
cabins. They were little sickly red scars on the
black face of the night. One would heave up
towards him glimmering, as if the night swayed,
and then retreat again. Or was it his mind that
swayed endeavouring to find an exit from the
conflicting suggestions that urged him to do this
and to do that? O'Daly's words, "you are wasting
your life," tumbled around in his brain, assuming
strange formations as the words mixed, "are you
wasting your life," "life wasting you are," in
every conceivable way. He shrank from those
words, and then pointing his finger at the sky he
traced the words, "I will waste my life as I think
fit." But that seemed to be childish. And his
148




The
R!Z(1    BLAC BLACK     SOUL -4RC      M
mind swayed again as suddenly something within
said, "Why bother about your life? There is Little
Mary in there. Forget the world." And he went
into the cabin.
She was sitting by the fire rocking herself as he
entered. She jumped up with an eager gleam in
her eyes as she looked at him, but she immediately
suppressed that look and stared coolly as she set
a chair for him in front of the fire. Then she sat
in the corner again, nervously arranging her shawl
closely about her neck. He looked at her, feeling
vexed with himself for having injured her, and with
her for being the cause of his feeling vexed, for
being a selfish fellow, like most men, he always
took care to cast the blame for his meanness on
other shoulders. His nerves began to strain at
the silence and his lips twitched. One moment
they twitched trying to hold back an onrush of
apologies, at the very next moment trying to hold
back an outburst of anger. In his anger he would
say to himself, "What right has she to be jealous
of Kathleen O'Daly? It was her own fault if I
am under an obligation to her." Then when he
looked at her sad beautiful face he grew tender.
He would make a motion to reach out his hand
to her and then draw back shuddering and put
his hand over his mouth. At last he jumped to his
feet and cried, "Oh, damn this business, it will
149




rThe
drive me mad." He stood looking stupidly at the
fire with his hands in his pockets. Unable to
restrain herself any longer, she uttered a low cry,
and jumping up threw her arms about his neck.
But somehow her touch hardened him. He unbound her arms, and holding her by the shoulders
looked into her eyes with set lips. She looked at
him wearily. The sadness in her eyes pained his
heart physically. He felt a desperate longing to
kiss her and say sweet things to her. Yet something held him back, and he kept looking at her
with hard eyes. Then Little Mary, her eyes staring with fright at his look, her bosom heaving
with unborn sobs, rushed from his arms. She
staggered to her stool and fell in a heap face downwards on it, bursting into tears. Then that something that held him back vanished with a snap
and he fell on his knees beside her. He kissed her
eyes, her lips, her ears, her forehead, her throat,
her hands. He rubbed his hands through her
hair, and pressing his cheek against hers, mumbled almost inaudibly, "I love you, I love you."
Her sobs stopped suddenly, and she strained her
ears excitedly, scarcely able to believe the words
that she had hardly even dared to hope for. Slowly
she raised her eyes to his face, and a low gurgling
*sound began to rise from her breast louder and
louder until it rushed from her lips almost with a
150




The
BLC                     SOBLACK  SOUL
scream, a sound that might be a scream of pain or
of intense joy. Covering her eyes with her hands
she nestled her head against his breast. With his
chin resting on her head he knew that he loved
her and he wondered fearfully what was going to
be the outcome. Even love filled his Black Soul
with fear.
And Little Mary, when he had gone to bed, sat
by the fire kissing the places on her hands where
his lips had rested.


s15




~2
AT ROORUCK SPRING DOES NOT DIE. LIKE A
river seeking the ocean, it gathered strength
and beauty each day from its staggering frozen
birth until it passed majestically into the luxuriant
bosom of summer. Rooruck changed hour by
hour, minute by minute, with each rush of the
wind, each westward leap of the sun, each thud
of the sea against its cliffs. The hungry black
earth grew green with dewy grass. Sharp-pointed
buds edged their way timorously through the
hard soil of the tilled fields. The wind and rain
descended softly on the crags and fields, whispering to the life that was coming from the womb of
the earth. The air was fragrant with a sense of
joy. It was like hearing good news of a loved one.
Lambs frisked in the fields among the crags above
the village, their growing wool already hanging
from their sides in zigzag ringlets. Calves were
rushing about stupidly, their tails in the air. The
people began to laugh and look about them happily, their crops sown. They had already eaten
eggs in homage to Crom for all the lives that had
been born to them, from their sheep and cattle,
on the day that Christians call Easter Sunday.
One could almost hear nature clashing cymbals
urging life to grow. Beautiful, hard, grey spring
life at Rooruck that swelled the chest and put steel
152




V e
RSMR0 BLACK SOUL
into the eye and a warlike song in the throat.
Full-grown spring at Rooruck that robbed men
of fear and weakness.
Little Mary was as happy as the lark that rose
each morning to sing from her grassy nest in the
clover field beneath the cabin, where those furryheaded young larks were hugging one another.
Now everything was plain to her. She could see
the expanse of the future rolling itself out before
her, and always she and her lover walked hand in
hand across it. Every other year at the end of
spring she had set a goose to hatch. But that
year she did not. She had already cut herself
adrift. She was waiting eagerly for her lover to
say "come," waiting to fly with him over the sea.
When they embraced she would look in his eyes
and say, "I wish we were together away from
everybody." And he would say, "So do I, dearest," and then bite his lips, for he feared that final
step that would make him hers.
Nature tugged at his heart, urging him to be a
man and take her with him out into the world,
but his intellect refused to move in response to
nature. "How could I support her?" it would
say. And then, "What the hell do I want her for,
anyway? I'm not going back into the world for
anybody." And his fear of having to go back
to the struggle of life kept him in torment,
153




rhe
]^~(S^BL      B BLACK  S OUL LI       )~
preventing him from loving her. Every time
he embraced her, the thought was constantly in
his mind that she was trying to use him for her
own purposes, selfishly. He told himself repeatedly that life did not interest him, and yet he felt
the urge to do something growing daily more intense. The satisfied happy look on the faces of
the peasants who had sown their crops maddened
him. He felt like a soldier who is straggling
behind a victorious army, unable to reach the
conquered capital with them because he has led a
debauched life. He felt everybody despised him,
and that made him long still more to pretend
indifference.
Then Bartly the son of Black Peter got married
to a woman from Coillnamhan. Horses galloped
madly from Rooruck to the church at Coillnamhan. Then they galloped back again, the bridegroom leading with the bride riding pillion. The
whole village gathered in Bartly's cabin and prepared to spend that day and the following night
carousing, in celebration of the mating. Two men
went around all the cabins in the village with a
jar of whisky, forcing everybody to drink to the
health of the newly wedded couple. Then everybody who had not been to the church drank a
glass, saying, "May their seed prosper," and went
to the wedding. Red John and Little Mary went.
'54




rVe
RZM9RXL       B LAC  K  S  U L
The Stranger, seeing Little Mary going to mix
with the peasants, eager for the music and dancing,
felt madly jealous and grew disgusted with her.
It was as if he had seen, a civilized savage woman
eat human flesh in a moment of abandonment.
At least he told himself that it was disgust, but
he really felt vexed with her for being able to
enjoy simple things from which he himself was
cut off by his Black Soul and his foolish belief in
his own importance. He waited alone in the cabin,
listening to the distant sounds of merry-making
and pretended that he was indifferent, but he
could not feel indifferent. He kept wondering
whether she was dancing with somebody else or
whether she would smile into some other man's
eyes and allow them to squeeze her waist.
Towards evening Little Mary came back to give
him his supper. He saw her eyes gleaming with
pleasure and her cheeks flushed with dancing
and he was enraged with her. So he pretended
to be indifferent. She noticed his jealousy and
felt glad, because it showed her that he loved
her.
"Do come down with me," she said, clinging to
him, "the people won't like it if you don't come."
"Oh, to hell with the yokels," he said, "I'm going
in to O'Daly's and have somebody to talk to.
What do I want with a lot of stupid savages?"
'55




Vre
RZI]K!  B LACK    SO U L..K
Then he ate his supper eagerly with a great show
of nonchalance and went out.
Little Mary tore off the trinkets that she had
donned so gaily that morning and sat by her bed,
moaning, "Now what have I done, now what have
I done?"
He walked southwards from the village across
the crags until he reached the cliffs. Then he
turned eastwards towards the highest cliff, whose
summit was crowned by the old fort that prehistoric warriors had built. He reached it. He
passed through the two outer walls and then
through the massive stone gate that led into the
circular level green sward that was the fort itself.
He stood still; there was perfect silence within
the tremendous walls, in that circular bare patch
of whitened grass, trodden by savage warriors
three thousand years before. Four yards in front
of him, the cliff dropped three hundred feet to a
vast expanse of blue sea. "Ah," he said, and he
felt strong and confident as if all the hosts that had
ever looked out over that sea were beside him,
defending him with their shields. He felt like a
monk who sits in a vast empty cathedral communing with his god. He mounted the ramparts
and lay on his belly along the broad wall of the
fort looking out over Inverara. There were pale
green streaks of light from the setting sun on the
156




TAe
Rsa!9MM3      B LACCK   S OUL L^^%^)(S
crags that sank in terraces from east and west and
south to the broad grassy valley of Coillnamhan.
The sea between Inverara and the blue mainland
had a million dimples on its smooth face, kisses
from the departing sun. The wide strip of sandy
beach beneath Coillnamhan shone white, like the
reflection of the moon at night in a tropical sea.
White sheep, followed by their frisking lambs,
wandered about the crags. Women in red petticoats crossed here and there with cans to milk
their cows. The cows lowed. A pattering sound
came from afar of somebody knocking a heap of
smooth stones and a horse whinnied near there,
eager for her evening drink of water perhaps.
He gazed in silence drinking in the beauty of
nature. He wanted to embrace it, to hold it to his
breast. Nature seemed to say, "See how beautiful
is the world. Fool. You despise peasants, do you?
You think you are an intellectual? I'll tell you
what you are. You are a charlatan. Go back now
to the woman that loves you and enjoy life. It is
good, but only to those who prefer truth to cheap
cynicism and intellectual piffle." And the ghosts
of dead warriors seemed to clash their battle-axes
silently on their shields and murmur, "Aye, that is
truth." And the crags and the sea and the sand
and the green valley winking under the parting
embrace of the sinking sun seemed to sigh and
'57




7'he
RT!MR tBLACK SOUL50U
say, "Aye, peace and strength are only to those
who can love beauty and truth. Beauty and truth
are life. Life comes from our womb. Nestle close
to us, my child. You will get lost in those clouds
of vaporous intellectuality."
And his Black Soul scowled at the accusing voice
of nature. It said, "Intellect is above nature. I am
above the common herd, these peasants of Rooruck. What purpose is there in being happy or in
trying to believe anything? What do I want to
tussle with the ignorant mob for?" Then a great
dark shadow passed westward from Kilmillick
over the land and sea and blotted out the sun. A
chill breeze began to blow. Shivering and depressed he descended from the ramparts and began
to walk hurriedly down the slope towards Coillnamhan to O'Daly's house. He was obeying the
voice of his Black Soul. It was the most satisfying
voice to his vanity. So it is easier to scoff at life
than to give a child an apple. But scoffing, though
sweet, leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and a child's
smile lives a long time in the memory.
The dark shadow had thickened into night before he reached the village. But he had ceased to
notice anything about him. He was deliberately
trying to persuade himself that he loved Kathleen
O'Daly, that she was his equal in intellect, that
her presence made him happy, that she had an
158




The
R3ZI-I         BLACK    SOUL (-,KR     (2 -elevating effect on his mind, and that Little Mary
had a demoralizing effect on him.
"That kind of woman would turn me into a yokel.
She would kill all refinement in me. I must pull
myself together." Then he knocked at the door
of the cottage.
O'Daly opened the door to him and asked him
to step inside in a whisper. He led him into the
kitchen on tiptoe.
"There's a crowd o' them in there," he whispered,
gripping the Stranger's right arm convulsively.
"Take this chair. That old woman of a curate and
another priest from Dublin, full of nonsense about
Republicanism and a young woman with a face
like the spine of a tinker's ass, relation o' the
curate's, says she, 'We need to enthuse the growing
generation with a passion for pure ideals, and a
clean unselfish moral life,' " and O'Daly tried
to imitate the voice of a robin whose nest has
been robbed. "They're in there in the sittingroom," he continued, breathing heavily as he
filled an extra glass from a bottle that lay on the
kitchen table. Then he handed the glass to the
Stranger and sank into a bamboo arm-chair that
cracked under his weight. "I stuck it for an hour.
Couldn't stand 'em any longer." He had obviously made an attempt to "stand it," for he was
wearing a starched shirt front and a fairly new
159




V e
black suit. But the stiff narrow base of the shirt
front was sticking out over his waistcoat that was
unbuttoned. He had torn off his tie, and the collarstud was hanging loose at his throat. His face
was as red as a beetroot with his exertions. The
poor man would have liked very much to stay in
the sitting-room and poke blasphemous fun at
the priests and the young lady with the face like
a tinker's ass's spine, but his daughter's stare told
him that he was a "disgrace," so he had to retire.
He was, after all, though "an Irish gentleman who
feared neither man nor devil," as he said himself,
afraid of his daughter and dependent on her. So
he pretended that he really disliked the company
and despised it. "It's funny," he said, filling himself a fresh glass of whisky, "but the only people I
feel like talking to are the peasants. They're more
human than these bastards that pretend to know
everything, and know nothing. Eh? Isn't that
right?"
"Absolutely," said the Stranger, swallowing his
whisky. "I quite agree with you," he repeated
with gusto, though an hour before he had told
himself exactly the opposite. "I feel as if I never
wanted to leave Rooruck again. "
"Proper order," said O'Daly, and he swallowed
another glass. "By God, this talk about pure ideals
gives me the colic. None o' that in my time.
16o




)19      ) BLACK     SOUL(   Lg%    )
Fellahs 'd be ashamed to talk like that. May the
devil swallow them and their ideals. Begob, yer a
poor drinker. Hold yer glass over here. Woa, I'm
spilling it, 'the precious fluid,' as old Father
Mulligan used to say, God rest his soul."
Now and again a subdued laugh came to them
from the sitting-room as they drank. O'Daly,
already half-drunk, had forgotten all about the
party in the sitting-room, but the Stranger listened
to every sound eagerly. It was as if he was eavesdropping on the civilized life that he once knew.
He had forgotten about his pretended love for
Kathleen. She again took her proper position in
his mind, merely as a symbol of the life after which
he hankered. And as usual, when he was listening
to the voice of civilization, he told himself that he
didn't want it. In fact, he pitied O'Daly, who
was forced to live in such surroundings, and he
kept drinking eagerly. Then the guests went
away.
Kathleen came into the kitchen looking for her
father. She was about to begin to scold him when
she saw the Stranger and she stopped short.
"Hallo! my treasure," said O'Daly, "ye got-ehrid of them at last."
Kathleen stared at the two of them blinking
with drunkenness, and then she turned on her
heel and went out.
161               L




Vhe
RAVRKR!ZBLACK          S 0 U L 6N
"Huh!" said O'Daly. Then he laughed and fell
asleep in his chair.
The Stranger jumped to his feet and ran into
the hall, shouting, "Miss O'Daly, Miss O'Daly."
"'Yes," she said sharply, coming up to him in the
hall.
Under the influence of the whisky he felt quite
brave and gallant.
"I hope I have done nothing to irritate you," he
said; "I can assure you that-"
"Oh, it's quite all right," she said coldly; "I don't
like to see men make beasts of themselves in my
presence. Good night," and she walked into the
sitting-room.
"Oh, good Lord, what a razor tongue!" he murmured, going down the road. "Now I see what
she's like. My word, wasn't I lucky to have found
her out. I bet Little Mary is as bad. But they
won't catch me. I'm going to live my life freely."
Then he felt sure that all the women in the world
were engaged in a conspiracy to trap him. He
thrust out his chest and drew deep breaths and
swung his arms very proud of himself. He felt
his muscles as he walked along and patted his
thighs. His body was strong and supple after
the wind of spring, good food and healthy living.
His bodily strength made him feel independent
and selfish. But on the top of these discoveries
162




rhe
R 5NRZBLACK         SOUL(^        |(
he suddenly felt a desire for Kathleen and he
stopped in the road vexed with himself.
"I'm becoming coarse," he muttered disgustedly.
"After all, my only hope is to be faithful to Little
Mary if I want to keep straight." He was passing
the Monks' Well, where all the ghosts were seen.
A stream ran across the road. They said that if a
sinner stepped in the stream that the devils would
devour him immediately. He stopped looking at
the dark rivulet. "'Wait now," he said, "I'll see
whether I'm a sinner or not," and he waded
through it. Nothing happened, and he walked on
quite cheered.
The guests were returning home noisily from
Bartly's wedding as he passed through Rooruck.
Men were singing songs and quarrelling. He
vaulted over the fence into Red John's yard, and
then he* heard screams coming from the cabin.
He stood still, looking at the curtained kitchen
window where a candle was flickering. Then he
heard RedJohn yell and a banging sound followed
the yell, as of something being hurled against the
door. Then Little Mary's shriek reached him.
He rushed to the door and tried to open it. It
was bolted on the inside.
"Hey there, hey there, open the door," he shouted.
There was a moment's silence and then Little
Mary screamed "Help, help!"
163




rhe
He thrust his shoulder against the door. The
wooden bolt smashed, the door swung open with
a bang and he stumbled into the kitchen.
For a few moments he was dazed by the light
and the excitement. Then he saw Red John standing near the fire, clothed only in his trousers and
a strip of his woollen shirt on his right shoulder.
There was froth on his red beard. He grinned
savagely and gripped a tongs in his left hand.
Little Mary was crouching in the corner by the
back door, barefooted, with a red frieze petticoat
thrown over her shift about her shoulders. Her
teeth chattered with fright and shame.
Red John had come back from the wedding mad
with whisky, and had attempted to embrace her.
He sat by the fire mumbling that he would no
longer let her treat him like a dog, trying to screw
up his courage to take her. At one moment he
feared her strength. At the next moment he
forgot everything in his passion. Then he went
into her room. She was asleep. He rushed to the
bed and seized her. She jumped up with a scream
and clawed at him. He drew back snarling. But
when she saw his face, her strength and courage
deserted her. Catching up her petticoat she fled
into the kitchen. Seeing that she was afraid of
him he pursued her 'and caught her in his arms
as she was entering the Stranger's room. They
164




The
R!ZM__K2Z!    BLAC K    SOUL 5N
struggled. She tore at his clothes and beard while
he tried to embrace her, growling like a dog.
Then she broke from him and he fell on his back
on the floor. She crouched at the back door,
unable to escape in her terror. He got to his feet
and hurled a sod of turf at her. Then he had
grabbed the tongs from the hearth when the
Stranger came to the door.
The Stranger and he looked at one another in
silence. They both trembled with passion, yet
each feared the other. The Stranger felt that he
was guilty of having stolen Red John's wife, and
on the other hand felt that he must defend Little
Mary. Red John was afraid that he had committed a crime by assaulting his wife, and yet he
was enraged against the Stranger, whom he suspected of having seduced her. So they stood facing one another, each afraid to attack. They each
tried to terrify the other. They curled up their
lips. They expanded their chests and clenched
their fists. They stepped about the floor threatening one another with their heads. Then the Stranger suddenly realized that the situation was ludicrous. He told himself that he was afraid of Red
John and that he was in the wrong. Red John saw
him hesitate and rushed at him. Then the Stranger forgot his reasoning, and shot out his hands to
preserve himself. He was just in time to prevent
i65




4e
0BLACK       SOULG)
the tongs from smashing his skull. Then he closed
with Red John. Their faces were close together
as they strained against each other. Then Red
John thrust his head forward and tried to grip the
Stranger's throat with his teeth. He missed the
throat and tore at the coat lapel. Letting go his
hands from the Stranger's waist he gripped at the
throat like a dog. Then the Stranger terrified into
an equal fury, swung out blindly with both hands
at Red John's head. Red John began to scream
with pain. Gradually he let go his hold and then
tried to stagger away. Another blow sent him
down to the floor in a heap. "Let me alone, let
me alone," he gasped, "don't kill me, I didn't
mean any-uh-harm to anybody." And the Stranger, feeling disgusted with himself for having hurt
the poor fellow after stealing his wife, staggered
to a stool in the hearth corner, and hiding his face
in his hands he wept.
He fell into a kind of thoughtless stupor. He
heard Little Mary put Red John to bed. Red
John was still whining "Leave me alone, leave me
alone, I'm not hurting anybody." Then he felt
Little Mary's arms about his waist and her lips to
his cheek. "My darling," she kept saying as she
pressed him to her bosom.


166




SUMMER








Summer
NVERARA LAY IN THE BOSOM OF THE SEA LIKE A
maiden sleeping in the arms of her lover. As
the sun rose each morning, the night mists
rolled away before it to the West in pale blue
columns. They rolled up the steep slope of Coillnamhan Fort, and then banked along the high
ridge that runs athwart Inverara from south to
north between Rooruck and Coillnamhan. They
lay there at dawn, a pale blue wall dividing the
east from the west. Then the sun rose clear above
the Head of Crom, and they vanished into space
as it shone through them.
A million rays then danced on every crag. The
tall clover grass in the fields beneath the crags
sparkled, each blade an emerald. The roof of the
old church at Coillnamhan could be seen for miles,
a pool of light lit up by the sun. The trees behind
O'Daly's cottage were in bloom, an oasis in a treeless desert. Each tilled field was big with crops.
The dark green potato stalks were covered with
pink and white and red blossoms and tall poppies
and sunflowers waved above the stalks, scattered
here and there like soldiers on sentry. Each glen
169




The
along the south of Inverara was a flower garden.
Sheltered by the ivy-covered hills where the sparrows chirped, the valleys were covered with pure
simple little flowers, primroses, bluebells, daisies
and buttercups. On the cliff-tops over the sea
where the salt air smelt like an elixir from a fairyland other flowers grew, whose names nobody
knew. They were tender little flowers; they grew
in a night and died in a day. They were as delicate
to the touch as a butterfly's wing, and as multicoloured as a rockbird's egg. Down in the crevices
among the crags where the wind never came, and
where the sun was only reflected by slanting dim
shadows, the maidenhair ferns grew from the black
earth. Their roots were moistened by water from
the very heart of Inverara. Their green heads
stood silent and beautiful like living poems.
All over Inverara the air was heavy with sweet
smells. The wind, making slow sensuous music as
it drifted slowly in from the calm sea, mixed all the
smells together. It blew so tenderly that the bluebells hardly waved their heads under its caress.
Around Inverara the sea lay calm and vast like a
great thought. The waves rolled slowly in on the
sands at Coillnamhan. They rolled sleepily, playfully making deep channels in the sand. Then they
crept back again murmuring, "Summer, summer,
summer." There was not one speck of seaweed
I 70




V e
B)~            BLACK     SOU    L L 5
along the whole stretch of sand. It was clean and
spotlessly white, like the seagulls that strutted
about it, with their heads stuck low on their shoulders, or scratching their breasts with their beaks.
The sea stretched around Inverara, its back silvered by the sun, the waves so small that they
seemed to be strokes drawn by a child's finger.
Beneath the cliffs on the south there was never a
wave at all. The sea there was a mirror reflecting
the colours of the cliffs, yellow and black and grey.
Round rocks stuck from its bosom near the cliffs
and shoals of birds scurried around in it, teaching
their young how to catch fish.
The sweet languorous odour of summer permeated every living thing in Inverara. The cows
standing knee-deep in the brackish pools in the
meadows above the beach at Coillnamhan, chewed
their cud with half-closed eyes, their tails whisking
at the gadflies. Horses stood in the shade of the
fences, their tails to the sun, their heads drooping
and a hind leg limp, dozing through the day. The
men watched their crops growing. Lying in the
shade, they stretched themselves languidly and
said, "Laziness is a devilish thing."
Nowhere in Inverara had summer so changed
the face of nature as at Rooruck, and nowhere was
summer so beautiful. It appealed more to the
mind than to the senses, because even summer's
1'71




VTe
200~2          BLACK SOUL5N~
beauty was wild and fierce at Rooruck. It was the
colour of a snake, with the snake's ferocity. The
great broad crag that stretched west and south
from the village to the sea was so uniformly grey
that at a distance Red John's black sheep, licking
salt from the dried shallow pools at the summit of
the Hill of Fate, looked grey too. Rooruck was
like the back of a giant tortoise lying in the sea.
Beneath it were the tilled fields, square and oblong,
and triangular patches of green potato stalks and
whitening rye, surrounded by grey stone fences.
While around its shores the sea swept even in
summer with mighty motion. It swept in vast
hollows and unbroken smooth ridges from north
to south and from south to north with the tides.
Like a great work of art, wrought with a few strong
strokes, it lay tremendous and beautiful. It was
fierce even in its languorous silence, as if it might
rise any moment without warning and lash into a
fury, like a caged lion that dreams suddenly of a
vast forest.
In Rooruck the leap from cold gritty spring into
languorous summer was the change from northern
winter to southern skies. It filled the strong with
lusty force. It made the weak melancholy. When
the heat came, and the cuckoo's spits were lying
of a morning on the green blackberry bushes and
the starlings were scurrying about with their
172




The
k~(l %K      ) B LACCK  SO UL (k   R   (2
young, Red John withdrew more and more into
himself. His outburst of passion, the night of
Bartly's wedding, seemed to have robbed him of
strength. He did not weed his crops. He left his
pony without water or grass in a bare scorched
field among the crags, until the poor animal, mad
with hunger and thirst, tried to jump the fence and
broke its neck. One of his sheep died eaten by
maggots. Donkeys broke into his rye field and
trampled the growing rye. The neighbours shook
their heads and said, "It's that woman has brought
a curse on him. What did I tell you in the beginning?" The whole village noticed him going about
talking to himself, but neither the Stranger nor
Little Mary paid any attention to him. Little
Mary was growing irritable. She felt that life in
Rooruck was becoming unbearable to her. Every
day when she awoke she hoped that somehow the
evening would see her flying to the mainland with
her lover. The drear black crags maddened her.
The cheerless monotony of always doing the same
things, and of having her idiot husband near her,
set her nerves jangling. And instead of deliverance approaching it seemed to recede.;For the
Stranger with the coming of summer seemed to be
getting cooler towards her. She saw him smile at
young peasant women in the village. When he
embraced her he did so without passion. He
173




hardly ever stayed in the house, but spent the day
wandering around, bathing and lying in the sun.
And she would sit on a stool in front of her door,
knitting with furrowed brows, wondering whether
he had ceased to love her. Every time she passed
a young woman of the village she would look into
her face angrily, suspecting that some one of them
had taken away her lover. Her sleep became
troubled. She had weird dreams in which she saw
her lover parted from her. And she would wake up
in the middle of the night stricken with horror,
thinking herself pregnant and deserted.
Every morning she intended to talk to the Stranger seriously, but now Red John would sit by the
fire until the Stranger went out after his breakfast.
He would do the same at dinner-time, and in the
evening, when the languorous fragrance of summer
was in her blood, Little Mary felt too overcome by
her love to take her lover to task even when he
casually embraced her. Then one morning she
awoke more vexed than usual. " I will talk to him
to-day," she said to herself, "to-day or never. I
can't go on like this. He must take me away from
here or I will drown myself." Red John had
already gone out when she got up. He always got
up at dawn now, since the spring tide came, and
rambled about, nobody knew where or why. But
when she had kindled the fire, and smoke began to
I74




The
RVR(IKRD B LACCK        S O.UL L ^      (
rise in a curling blue column from the cabin chimney, and she had gone to the little field below the
house to milk the cow, Red John sneaked in again
and sat by the fire. When she came in, he was
drinking tea from a tin mug and eating a piece of
oaten bread that crackled when he chewed it.
While she was preparing the Stranger's breakfast,
she could see him picking the crumbs from the
yellow long teeth in his upper jaw, and swallowing
something in his throat. The apple in his throat,
covered with greyish red hair, protruded and
receded over the ivory button at the neck of his
blue frieze shirt. She would pause in the middle of
the floor passing from the table to the dresser, and
look at him with hatred. The ashy colour of his
cheeks instead of arousing pity in her breast almost
made her sick with disgust. She called the Stranger to his breakfast. She heard his answering
grunt, and then the water splashing in the basin as
he washed his face. She became very excited, feeling certain that something definite was going to
happen that day. Perhaps it was the spring tide in
her blood too. The Stranger came into the kitchen,
sleepily murmured "Good morning" to both of
them, went to the door yawning and looked out.
Then he sat down to his breakfast. Red John was
toying with one of his teeth that was loose, moving
it from side to side, with his eyes staring vacantly
'75




R!Z79MB L AC K SO0U L (gk2j~
at the fire, but he was saying to himself cunningly,
"I'll spoil their little pass-the-time-away." At last,
when the Stranger had finished breakfast and was
rising from the table, she could contain herself no
longer. She turned on her husband furiously.
"You lazy, idle lout," she said, "why don't you go
out and do something? Am I to do everything in
this house? Get out and fill the water-tub for the
cow before the sun splits its sides and the lathes
fall off it. Get out, you vagabond, and weed your
potatoes."
But she stopped, shivering and miserable. Red
John had taken no notice. He was still toying
with his tooth, and the Stranger had gone out
shrugging his shoulders. Then Red John with a
foolish laugh got up and followed him. He leaned
over the fence watching the Stranger going westwards towards the shore. Then he chuckled,
and taking his fishing basket and his line he
went up the crags to the Hill of Slaughter to
fish.
The Stranger had forgotten about them when he
paused at the stile leading from the end of the
road to the shore. The hot sun stood high in the
heavens. The tide was out and in front of him the
broad-bladed seaweed growing on the outer stretch
of the Jagged Reef glistened in the sun. With his
foot on the stile he swelled out his chest and drew
176




hhe
in a deep breath. Spring had put flesh on his
bones. The hollows in his cheeks had filled. They
were ruddy with health after the manner of people
living in Inverara. His eyes were clear and farseeing. His full-grown brown beard was glossy
and smooth. The muscles of his thigh, as his foot
rested on the stile, showed big through his clothes.
He looked around him breathing delightedly,
revelling in his good health. Then he threw his
arms over his head, uttered a. low cry and jumped
the stile on to the shore. He skipped along the
crags out towards the sea. He didn't stop until he
reached the wet slippery seaweed on the Jagged
Reef, and the sea swayed blue and mysterious at
his feet. He looked down into it, his eyes wondering with a child's wonder, sleepily, as men do when
they are healthy and their minds sleep. Then suddenly, sleepily, he began to think. His eyes stood
still. His body relaxed, and he let one foot go limp
like a horse resting. He felt the sun beating on
every muscle of his body through his clothes,
warming and loosening the joints. His lungs were
full of the invigorating smell of the sea, that itself
was a mixture of many smells, seaweed, salt, and
spices perhaps wafted by the breeze from distant
lands where the sun always shone as in summer at
Rooruck. He expanded his nostrils to drink in the
scent and sat down on a high saddle of rock that
177               M




The
R~kKRM B BLACK SO U L
was already dried by the sun. He thought that he
had been transported into another world where
sorrow was unknown, where the brain was a clear
crystal reflecting the absolute beauty of nature,
where the body was a perfect organism impervious
to disease, reacting only to joy, where the voice was
only capable of song and laughter, where...
And then just as suddenly his train of thought
snapped like a cord that is pulled too taut. His
happiness was shattered as his Black Soul began to
smile scornfully at his thoughts. As soon as he
tried to abandon himself to nature his cynical intellect jeered at him. He stared at the sea, listening to
its languorous deep sounds that were so silent.
"What a cursed thing is intellect!" he groaned.
He put his head between his hands and bit the
little finger of his right hand. Intellect not content
with the present must peer into the unfathomable
future. Not content with enjoying the surface of
nature or the beauty of a woman, it must look
down into the depths beneath the fair surface,
probing the depths with futile shafts of thought,
discovering nothing, blinded by the chaos it causes
and which it cannot control.
His brain became hot and wearied with these
thoughts. Little binding red lights came before
his closed eyes. His body twitched. It was degrading to be feeble and neurasthenic on that beach,
178




4Te
in the presence of that cold fierce strength, that
enthralling beauty! He clasped his hands together
and said, "I must do something." Activity would
banish thought.
He looked down into a round pool at his feet,
that was half-filled with smooth stones and growing seaweed. He set himself to examine the forms
of life that grew there, as if he were a natural-history student on an outing with his professor. Limpets clung to its sides, their serrated pale grey
shells like cones, their yellow flat faces dimly visible
as the shells rose from the rock now and again.
Scores of little fishes scurried hither and thither.
They would stand for a moment, sniffing and wagging their tails. Then without apparent cause they
would dart under a plant of seaweed with only
their watching snouts visible. Soft blue fatty
lumps grew on the sides of the pool near the bottom in little circular cups cut into the rock. Long
threads waved from their mouths, trying to catch
food. Then a crabfish tumbled along slowly from
the far corner. It walked sideways and stopped
now and again to roll its eyes around. The
Stranger watched it half asleep, so calm had
he become watching nature. Then the crab disappeared under a stone and he began to think
again.
How futile life was! Here was he, a man, with a
179




lhe
RZ1]KR!Z BLACK SOUL Ln~
brain capable of wonderful thought, and yet he
knew nothing definite about anything. The fishes
and those soft jellies and the crab clung to life just
as eagerly. Men, crabs, limpets, jellies, were all
the same. There was no sense or purpose in any
form of life more than in another. All life was
futile. Cities and books and armies and religions
were of as little importance as one of those limpets
that heaved wearily trying to live. They were of as
much importance as the tortuous and stupid march
of the crab from one end of the pool to the other.
They were searching for something just as the
crab was. "What was he seeking, I wonder?" he
said aloud. Bending down, he raised the stone
under which the crab had disappeared. The crab
had found a mate. They lay in a ball. They never
moved when he touched them with a sprig of seaweed. They were in a love-swoon, careless of their
lives. "So that is love," he said.
Then he said "Je-sus Christ" as he looked back
at the world from that lonely shore at Rooruck.
Two crabs lost in a love-swoon made him look at
love from an altogether different angle. He had
often argued during his university days, when he
was very young and very sure of himself, that love
was purely sensnal. In Irish fashion he had argued
with equal conviction at other times that it was
purely spiritual, and at other times that it was a
180




T e
_M0(     BLA BLACK      SOUL              "R
combination of both. Now he understood that his
arguments had been nonsensical, "like all argument." He had talked like everybody else who
discusses insoluble questions, just to hear himself
talk, like a priest explaining a mystery. "Quite
so," he said, "people are very fond of explaining
anything they themselves cannot understand."
He felt contemptuous of the civilized attitude
towards love. "Conceit and hypocrisy! Deifying a natural form of life, crucifying men on its
account, making laws to rob it of impurities, taking it out of the natural scheme of things and making it moral and immoral, giving it a purpose, as if
nature had a purpose! What the devil is there
behind the embrace of those crabs? And Little
Mary? Was his love for her no different, or her
love for him? Lascivious Summer answered, 'No.'
'Love,' said Summer seductively, 'is but an expression of life, the desire to keep living, to make
other things live with you, to protect you against,
against, against..' " And the thought faded
away into emptiness as he remembered that he had
heard it somewhere a very long time ago, and that
it was ridiculous and meaningless. It died in a
singing sound that wafted itself out of his brain,
away over the sea. It ended in the back-wash of a
wave that was flopping back into the sea from the
edge of the Reef. He felt weak and helpless.




T e
RM 40 lyr' BLACK S 0 U L MgR!ZM21
"Damn women," he said, feeling it necessary to
blame something tangible for his inability to reason
things out to a conclusion.
He looked down again at the crabs. They were
locked in an embrace. The sight did not repel
him. They looked natural there. They were a
part of nature. "But damn it, I am different," he
said. "But how? Now tell me that, how am I different?" His intellect hungered after the meaning
of things. He wanted to find something tremendous and binding, whose meaning he would be
afraid to question, something that he could accept
blindly like Catholics accepted the Pope. But he
had nothing. Religion was too gross and puerile.
Of love he had had formerly only sickly visions:
and love was based on self-deceit and fear of
reality. And of his life in Inverara there were only
memories of his spring lust. Now summer made
things look different. Little Mary appeared different. In summer one had time to examine
critically. He pictured all her defects, the pimple
on her neck, the repulsive softness of her lips as
she lay in his arms, the stupid look in her eyes
when he said something that she did not understand. And her husband Red John! Good God,
she had lain with him. She had felt his tobaccostained lips against hers. She must have done so
since he was her husband. It was like loving a
182




The
RM(3ýj   kz BLACK SOUL QgRM(Jg
prostitute. Faugh! He blew out his breath and
jumped to his feet.
He walked down to the brink of the Reef, gripping the seaweed with his feet. He stood on the
brink looking out into the sea. The thought of
suicide came to him now seriously, as the result of
the hopelessness of thought. It came not from the
brain but from the heart that could not find anything to love or reverence. It permeated his whole
body without touching his brain. His brain
seemed to stand aside, indifferent. Down below
him the sea waited, luring him. Behind him lay
the world repelling him. It appeared to be full of
strange shapes, and each shape was trying to grasp
him. He could not possibly escape from those
shapes other than by plunging into the sea. And
yet they were all illusory. That was the worst of it.
If he could only catch them and argue with them
he would have no fear. But they were monstrous
and intangible. There was nothing real in the
cavern of his experiences. Life had been a nightmare. Now, presently, when he disappeared beneath the waves, he would awake in the reality of
death.
There in front was forgetfulness. He began to
bend his body forward from the hips to plunge, but
as soon as he tried to move, his brain became
active. He straightened himself again and his toes
183




V e
RM5!9R!B        BLACK    SOUL
itched with fear. "I wonder what it is like?" he
said, assuming a tragic posture. He clasped his
hands across his breast and looked out wildly. His
nostrils dilated: his forehead furrowed. He was
seized with such a terror of the sea and of death
that he could not even scream. The sea seemed to
draw him down towards its bosom. He wanted to
fly, but he was numb with fright. Then his anger
swelled against it. It was a siren trying to lure him,
an accursed siren that devoured men and ships
ravenously, a ravisher that sucked into its lustful
bowels toothless old hags and beautiful young
women indiscriminately, a mad giant that devours
its own offspring the earth. The eternal motion of
it awed him. He wanted to strike it. But where
could he strike it? Where was its heart? Where
its bowels? Where its head? It was the same everywhere. It resisted nowhere to the touch, like a
vast mass of protoplasm. It was so confident of its
power that it opened every pore of its vast face,
and ships, rocks and whole continents could sink
into it, down to its inmost depths, and yet it moved
on sardonically. It always moved. It moved. It
moved. It moved. "Stop," he cried suddenly,
"stop, sea!" He had stretched out his hands, but
they fell back again by his sides, as the sea took no
notice of him. And he felt particles of the salt air
clinging to the insides of his lips, and an empty
184




RD19R2z BLACK SOUL Lj~
feeling at the roof of his mouth, caused by the
hunger-inspiring smell of the sea.
Hunger drove away his anger and his desire for
death. How could he die while the sea moved that
way, taking no notice of him? There was nobody
to take any notice of him. The world would never
hear of him. Then why die if the world never
heard of his death? It would be no revenge on the
world. It would be different if he shot himself with
a revolver in O'Connell Street in Dublin. But even
then he would be forgotten in a week, especially in
that city where a dog-fight is more interesting than
a score of suicides or murders. Even Little Mary
would forget him and embrace the next man she
met who aroused her passion, just as he had seen
the crabs do. Ah! There was nothing eternal but
the sea. "Ah, beautiful fierce sea," he cried aloud,
as if he were speaking to a mistress, "you are immortal. You have real life, unchanging life." And
just as one morning in Canada when he had seen
the reflection of a vast pine forest at dawn in the
eastern sky, he had stood in awe, his imagination
staggered, thinking that a new world had suddenly been born before his eyes, so now, looking
at the sea, the meaning of life suddenly flickered
across his mind. It flashed and then vanished,
leaving wonder and awe behind it.
He sat down looking at the sea. His eyes roamed
185




VTe
RT(2NR7C       BLACK SOUL QRRýý-R
out over it, from the hollows beneath him by the
Jagged Reef, southwards along its glistening back
beneath the Hill of Fate, then westwards where it
grew bluer and vaster with silvery streaks of sunlight on it, until it joined the pale rim of the sky.
He looked back again to his feet. He could see
tiny ridges on every patch of water, like the muscles
on the body of a giant, who was doing an eternal
task, for ever without purpose. "Oh, to have
strength like the sea," he thought. "Just to go
on fearlessly until one dropped. To be ruthless.
Damn conscience, honour, everything! Nothing
is worth while but ruthless strength. Happiness is
for the strong. I wonder did anybody ever say
that?" And he jumped to his feet.
He turned his back to the sea and kicked at the
seaweed that grew at his feet on the rock. A starfish skidded from his foot and fell on its back on a
little bunch of yellow moss. A piece of periwinkleshell fell on top of it, in the centre where its four
legs joined. It looked so funny and helpless that
he had to laugh. It was like a compass with millions of little whitish legs sticking from its surface.
It lay still for a moment stunned by the fall. Then
the little legs began to bend towards the piece of
periwinkle. They gripped it. Their movement
was as slow and calculated as that of hired labourers
working in a State factory. Then the periwinkle
186




The
began to move. The little legs appeared so minute
and futile that the periwinkle seemed to crawl of its
own accord. The legs like ants were passing it
from one to another. Scores of them united to
move it an eighth of an inch. At last they brought
it to the brink of a leg, and a hundred or so gave
it a final push over the side. It lay still immediately like a vast rock heaved on a level plain by a
thousand men. Then the legs lay still again.
"Just so the Egyptians built the Pyramids," he
mused. "Shivering, senseless life! Men, starfish,
crabs, motion without purpose. But it is motion.
Nothing wants to die. It is cowardly to want to
die." He pushed the starfish back into the pool
with his foot and walked up the shore elated and
gloomy. For the life of him now he could not
understand why he wanted to die. But of course
his scheme of values had been all wrong. It was
clear to him now that the only real thing in the
universe was life itself, the act of living. Nothing
else mattered. No particular expression of life was
important but life itself. All expressions of life
were transitional and ephemeral, like the starfish
fighting the periwinkle, or the embrace of the crabfish, or the building of the Pyramids, or the death
of Christ, or the conquest of Gaul by Caesar. The
struggle of the Greeks against the Persians at
Marathon was of no more importance to life than
187




rhe
f~iBBLACK               SOUL L~23
the struggle of the starfish against the periwinkle,
The expression of life was important only to. the
individual since... "Oh, that's all rot," he cried,
snapping his fingers, just at the climax of his chain
of reasoning. "What's the matter with me? I feel
fit. The sun shines. Why worry about the world?
Eh? The world is all right."
He began to swing his arms as he reached the
sun-baked flat limestone crags above the wet shore.
He struck the ground fiercely with the sole of his
hard rawhide shoes. It was a pleasure even to
tread the earth in his exuberant joy at having conquered his melancholy and being satisfied with life
again. Then he thought of Little Mary and
stopped short. "I want her," he thought, "but
how am I going to get her? There's Red John."
A snail was crawling across a dried-up shallow pool
in the crag at his feet. It left a shiny trail on the
spongy black bladders that grew on the black mud
at the bottom of the pool. He smiled, looking at
the snail. "Yes, to hell with the yokel," he said,
walking on. "Why should I let a miserable peasant stand in my way? A strong man would let
nothing stand in his way." Yet Red John still
troubled him. He remembered now having seen
Red John look at him a few mornings ago with
murder in his eyes. He had paid no heed to it at
the time, but now he remembered with a shudder
188




The
RMI]Riz BL A CK         SO0U L
that it was a cunning murderous look, the look of a
madman.
He was still worrying about that look when he
entered the cabin. Little Mary was sitting on a
stool within the door, carding wool. A little
pile of carded wool lay beside her on a mat. Her
hands were covered with grease, scraping the wool
between the cards. The sunshine coming in the
door made an oblong shadow on the floor across
her lap and her bent head. Countless little particles of matter shone like a fog of silver dust
through the shadow. She looked up dreamily as
he entered, and dropped her cards.
"Where is Red John?" he said, speaking aloud his
thoughts unintentionally.
Little Mary flushed and jumped to her feet.
Wiping her hands on her apron she moved towards
the hearth and beckoned to him.
"What is it?" she said excitedly. "Have you seen
him? Has anything happened to him?"
She was not feeling any anxiety about Red John,
but she wanted to break through the Stranger's
apathy.
"Why, what on earth are you talking about,
Mary?" he said anxiously, seeing the look of fear
in her eyes. "I just asked where he was casually.
Why, what's troubling you?" and he put his arms
about her.
189




The
R01]Kkz BLACK          S O U L
Little Mary shivered, and nestled her head
against his breast. "I think he's going mad," she
said, entwining her hands in the lapels of his coat.
"I'm afraid of him." She was not afraid of Red
John at that moment, not even conscious of his
existence, although she was speaking of him. But
she was afraid that her lover was no longer hers, so
she was trying this scheme to win him back again.
"Rot," he said, " he's all right. I don't notice anything the matter with him. Eh?"
"Oh, do take me away with you," she said gently,
as she darted her head backwards and looked him
in the eyes. Her eyes caught his in a flash, and
then they looked over his shoulders as if she were
ashamed of having spoken. But she was watching
him without looking at him. She watched him
with every muscle of her body that touched his.
She pressed against him seductively to arouse him.
And in the languorous silence of summer about
them, the beating of their hearts sounded loud as
she looked across his shoulder and he looked over
her head at the wall beyond, his forehead wrinkled.
"Take you with me?" he said at length. "Eh?
Where could I take you? Good Lord, you don't
know what you are talking about!" And the
thought of appearing in Dublin with a peasant
woman made him shudder.
"Yes, do take me," she said again. She purred like
I90




V e
a cat. She looked him straight in the eyes now.
Her head was thrown far back so that her long
lashes almost covered her eyes, and he could see
the insides of her half-open red lips. Then she
uttered a low cry, and hugged him closely, sweeping her hands slowly over his face and shoulders,
and pressing her cheek against his neck. "Ha,
you are ashamed of me," she whispered in his ear,
"(you think I am not good enough for you. But I
am Sir Henry Blake's daughter, do you hear? And
my grandfather was - oh, don't hurt me."
He had suddenly held her from him, gripping
her shoulders fiercely. He crushed her shoulders,
looking into her eyes savagely. "What do I care
whose daughter you are? You think it matters to
me who you are? Do you think I am a man like
that?"
She did not reply. They stared into one another's
faces in silence, and then. 0
Something mysterious happened to him. It was
different from anything that had ever happened to
him before. In fact, he had never even imagined
-anything like it before. He was stupefied by it. It
permeated his whole being. It was as if a sweet
incense were poured into the marrow of his bones,
mixed with rich wine that intoxicated instantaneously. There was the result of intoxication without its impurities. There was no heaviness in the
'9'




rhe
BLACKSOULACK            S0ULKZ,
brain. It was half-asleep like a child's brain,
watching the body throbbing and exulting in response to the mysterious feeling that had seized it.
And that feeling, starting nowhere and ending nowhere, was so powerful that the body obeyed it
without any reference to the brain.
Slowly they sank into one another's arms until
their lips met. Just before his lips touched hers,
he saw her upper lip arched like a bridge, with
numberless veins running crookedly upwards
through the red skin. Then his lips met hers, and
he forgot everything. If the world stopped at that
moment he would not have noticed it. He could
not think if he tried. All his capacity for thought
was exhausted by the intensity of his feeling. His
life seemed to have met her life, and united with it
in the embrace. His body did not unite with hers
but his life. He had lost his individual being.
Time lost its value. The past and the future
became meaningless. He had been transported
into a state which even in its duration he could not
understand, since he had lost the power of thought.
So no language has been invented to describe it,
that highest point in life, whence all life might be
seen naked and understood. People describe the
road leading up to it, full of passion and worries
and craving, and the road leading down from it,
full of sourness and disillusionment. But only a
192




kmaalc     m BLACe SOUL
god could describe the summit itself. The great,
mysterious, beautiful vision of love in its entire
purity, that vanishes into oblivion before the arms
have even tired of clasping it.
Slowly their lips parted, and they returned sighing to individual consciousness. Their eyes still
met longingly, but the dream had passed. They
were again coming down the slope. He staggered
from her arms to a stool by the wall and sat down,
his head fallen on his chest, his hands hanging
limply by his sides.
"0 God," he muttered, "it is the first time, what
is it?" And he smiled stupidly.
She followed him, knelt between his knees, and
laid her head on his breast. They lay that way for
a long time, until Little Mary looked up into his
face with a nervous look in her eyes. "Will you
take me away with you?" she said. "You must.
You must. Do you hear?" She encircled his waist
with her hands, and pressed with all her strength.
"I am your slave," he whispered, "I will do what
you like... anything."
"My darling," she said, "kiss me. Oh, I am so
happy."
So absorbed were the two of them, that they did
not notice the short midday shadow of a man crossing the square of sunlight on the floor, and then
halt, stooping at a corner of the square. It was Red
193               N




T~' e
BLACK     SOUL
John who had come noiselessly, for in summer at
Rooruck there are no noises of human feet but
shadows. He stood by the door, his left shoulder
leaning against the wall, his left foot on the wooden
threshold, the fingers of his left hand gripping his
lower lip crosswise. Then he laughed and they
jumped to their feet terrified. It was a demoniac
laugh and sounded empty, as if it had come through
an endless cavern, and were going farther. Without saying a word he sat by the fire and spat into
it. Then he began to snap the joints of his fingers
furiously.
The Stranger's first impulse at seeing Red John
was to run away, and he obeyed it. He seized his
hat and rushed from the cabin.
"Where are you going, your dinner will be ready
in a minute?" said Little Mary, pretending to be
totally unaware of the embarrassing situation in
which her husband had found them, but her words
passed him by without his comprehending them.
He walked hurriedly towards the cliffs, with the
forlorn image of Red John before his mind snapping his fingers.
"Poor man, poor man, I have done him a grievous
wrong." It was no use saying nothing mattered,
as his reason prompted. His reason suggested
closing his eyes and thinking of the delirious happiness of the embrace and the beauty of Little
I94




The
3 jfR!BLACK         SOUL (J      Q^
Mary's face, when she looked at him with love in
her moist eyes. The efforts of his cold reason were
washed away by the flood of remorse that engulfed
him. The effort merely wearied his brain, and
dissolved completely the happiness that he had
experienced but a few minutes before. Red John,
who was so inconsequent in his strength, was now
in his weakness and misery powerful. The vision
of him sitting by the fire stricken, as it seemed,
brought back the dull heavy feeling in his forehead
that he had felt in winter. And he was afraid of
that feeling. "It serves me right," he groaned;
"why, oh why, did I surrender to love, knowing
beforehand what it was? Just a delusion. In my
case a crime. Oh!"
Summer purred    about him   heedlessly. He
reached the cliffs and lay down flat on a green hillock. A grassy plot of ground sloped down to the
summit of the Hill of Fate in front of him. It
ended in a broken fringe of slatey earth, and then
there was a drop of two hundred feet. A short
slippery stretch of rabbit-eaten grass lay between
him and a headlong fall into the sea and death.
He had but to close his eyes and let himself slip,
down the grassy slope, then through the silent air,
and he would sink into the sea and forget everything. But would it end there?..
"Look here," he said to himself, and upright
'95




7le,MlXiN'!      BLACK     SOUL (2-c
ridges appeared in his forehead as he frowned. "I
must get out of here. Look at the mess I am in
now." His misfortunes overpowered him. They
towered over him. It was as if millions of people
surrounded him, yelling at him, as boys yell at a
confused and encircled rabbit, like a beautiful
Magdalen at the mercy of a jury of ugly respectable women. He was afraid both of life and of
death. He wanted some way of escape that did not
mean suffering or effort. And nature that scorned
weakness or cowardice presented none. She asked
none herself, coming from the frozen sleep of
winter through the icy grip of spring to the languorous ease of summer. And then his weakness
struck him in its entirety. He began to analyse his
difficulties and they vanished. "I have a love affair
with a peasant's wife," he laughed, "and I make a
mountain of it. I am a great big fool, a strong
healthy idler, wasting my time and..." But his
heart revolted at this profanation of the feeling
towards Little Mary which he felt to be too sacred
for mockery. Ha! It went deeper than reason.
No matter how deeply he tried to bury it under a
mound of jeers and arguments and abuse, it sang
down there within his breast, causing his being to
throb. It said, "I am here. You can't deny me. I
defy your brain. I am nature. I am beyond your
understanding. You must submit to me, or you
196




The
RSZ7~zBLACK SOVL (n-gMZ
perish. Only nature that begat me can destroy
me." And jumping to his feet he said, "To hell
with everything. I am going to enjoy myself."
That evening he sat with Little Mary by the
hearth, murmuring soft phrases, stroking her hair,
making promises, telling her how beautiful she
was. And sometimes, when his reason sneered, saying, "You can't mean what you say. It is a lie, a
lie. Love is a profanity. It is against common
sense," he smothered the sneers with a laugh. Sitting in front of the fire, where two sods of turf
smouldered silently in their yellow ashes, he talked
eloquently of their future together. He tried by
the very fury. of his words to overwhelm his Black
Soul that sat gloomily within him saying, "What
a fool you are. It's all a lie. You'll think otherwise
in a year's time, to-morrow perhaps. How are you
to know that she loves you? She only wants to use
you in order to get away from here. She is making
a tool of you, you idiot. All women are base and
deceitful." He fancied he could see his Black Soul
smirking through a fleshless skull in a cavern of
his brain. But his words coming from his heart
talked of tearing the world to pieces and refashioning it beautifully for his beloved, as beautiful as
the surface of the sea in summer, with sunbeams
gleaming' on' it. He talked looking at the ashes, his
eyes gleaming, his right hand gesticulating with
197




The
SB LACK                 SOUL L GN
the fingers outstretched like an eagle's claws, and
his left hand about her waist.
With her head leaning on his shoulder Little
Mary scarcely heard his words. The sound of
them wafted her into her own dreams. And her
dreams were of the children of her love. She cared
nothing for his dreams of greatness, but as the setting for the life that was to be, the real life of love,
a child from her womb, the living expression of her
love for him. For her he was then but the medium
of love. Her brain knew nothing of the love of
civilization. She knew but the love of nature, that
obeys nothing but the blind instinct to fulfil its
function and shatter the tool that has achieved its
purpose. And he was trying to compromise between his brain that desired to be godlike, and his
heart that talked honeyed words, stolen from the
god's brains, to entice a woman in the net of his
desire.
In the days that followed he tried to fihd that
compromise between his brains and his heart, that
level where he could love her without regret, and
he could not. Each day merged into the next
languorously, and he could decide nothing. He
swayed like the pendulum of a clock from love to
cynicism and from cynicism to love. When Little
Mary begged him to take her away he would say,
"Why rush at things? We are all right as we are
198




T e
RZ29RM        BBLACK    SOUL     -!
for the present. Something must happen shortly.
I will fix on a plan, my treasure." And all the time
he knew that the reason that he did not take her
away was because she did not satisfy his reason.
He could not abandon himself to her. He was
perpetually doubting her. He would say, "Her
loss would make no difference to me. Therefore I
don't love her. And she would never understand
me." And yet when he had her in his arms he forgot everything in his love for her. That strange
feeling of humility and purity would overmaster
him, so that he often fell down at her feet and
wanted to worship her. But as soon as he was
alone his doubts came back again, so that he was
in continual torment. For days at a stretch he
would lapse into silence, merely staring at her
coldly when she spoke to him, all the while trying
to decide what to do with her, and whether he
loved her or not, and without ever being able to
arrivNe at a decision. In fact, the more he reasoned
the more intricate the problem became. It was
beyond the power of reason.
He spent most of those days on the pier, at the
westward end of Coillnamhan harbour, where the
boatmen from the mainland were selling turf. The
pier was crowded every day by peasants buying
turf or carting it home or just loafing. In summer
it was perhaps the most beautiful spot in Inverara,
199




rhe
-ij      B    BLACK     SOUL (!MZ         -
by the harbour that ran like an azure streak through
the grey rocky shores to the white sandy beach,
with the green valley of Coillnamhan beyond, and
beyond that the grey sun-scorched crags rising in
terraces to the cliffs. He trudged down each morning along the pier, through the brown turf dust to
the farthest point. There he sat among the peasants with his legs dangling over the wall, listening
to the conversation and watching the sea. And the
time flew. At one moment it would be high tide,
with the sea reaching to the highest step of the iron
ladders that ran down the sides of the pier and
licking the base of the great rock that lay half-way
up the beach at the western end. The next moment, as it seemed, it would be low tide, and the
base of the pier was dry, and one could see the
patch of pebbles covered with yellow moss in the
centre of the strand, far out. And yet six hours
would have passed. The peasants would yarn and
say, "Oh, my God, is it that time." Then they
would lie down again with their backs against a
heap of turf and their hats over their eyes, revelling
in luxurious idleness after the fierce struggle with
spring. Sometimes they would look at the Stranger curiously and say, "They say his soul has been
bought by the devil." Another would say, "Don't
talk of him. They say he casts the Evil Eye. Did
you notice Red John lately?" Yet they talked to




The
Rik1       i B LACK SOU L (gq^
him with that peculiar contemptuous respect that
the peasants of Inverara have for strangers whom
they do not understand and despise inwardly
because they are different from themselves, and
are not known to possess land. "What is he, after
all?" they would say behind his back. "Why, I tell
you, he is a worthless fellow. His father was a
devourer of books (the peasants' nickname for a
schoolmaster), and he himself, they say, is just a
useless fellow. Why, he can neither sow nor fish.
By the Virgin, what queer people there are in the
world. By the Book, there are. There now."
The Stranger, on the other hand, looked upon
the peasants with the interest that a lazy man might
take in the horseplay of a number of puppies. On
the pier he was at rest, lulled to sleep by the languorous sound of everything about him, for in
summer there is nothing so languorous as the
sound of other people working. The turf boats
came in in the morning, sails flapped, blocks
creaked, anchor chains ran out, shaggy-breasted
men began to swear, horses galloped, and the sea
murmured dreamily. And he listened to these
sounds as if he could never again arouse himself to
take an interest in life, or make an effort. While
he was on the pier he could laugh cynically when
he thought of Little Mary, for it is only when the
mind is restless and dissatisfied that men desire
201




The
%!S)fBLA BLACK          SOUL LT
love that is more than mere sexual passion. The
sun and the sea and the unexciting companionship
of the men about him murmured, "Sleep, rest,
dream, for ever and for ever." Even O'Daly, who
came down to the pier every day, did not arouse in
him the former interest. "He is a boring fellow,"
he would think, listening to O'Daly's interminable
stories. Several times he went home with O'Daly
in the evening, and met Kathleen, and even she did
not arouse him. She was like a stranger to him
now, and he wondered what he had seen in her
before to make him desire her. "If she only had
Little Mary's beauty," he would think, as he sat
talking to her, "what a wonderful woman she
would be." And because he was indifferent to her,
he talked freely to her. But strange to say it was
when he was with her that he felt his love for
Little Mary most. And, inspired by that feeling,
he often grew enthusiastic in praise of fine feelings
and a high standard of honour and clean living,
those things that are so dear to the hearts of all
modern Irish, in discussion. For since no single
one of the three are entirely attainable, they are
ideal subjects for discussion. So absorbed was he
in the contemplation of his own difficulties and his
love, which however he would not admit to himself, that he never noticed Kathleen, or the marked
change in her attitude towards him. And what a
202




'The
R!ZM9RB        BLACK    SOUL
change! Was it the languor of summer that caused
her cheeks to flush when she heard his step
approaching? What caused her to tremble when
she touched him in passing? It was fear of herself,
of surrendering to the passion that she had always
repressed. She prayed and fasted, trying to overcome it, that love which she considered impure
because it was for another being than God. And
except for the slight occasional flush and the trembling, no one would have guessed that the proud
cold face concealed such furious passions. Least
of all the Stranger, since he no longer took any
interest in her as a woman.
Then one evening he and she were alone in the
sitting-room together. She sat playing her violin
in the niche by the window. A blackbird was singing on a rose-bush outside as if his throat would
burst. He sat near her in the black mood that
music always evoked in him, listening to the intermingling of the blackbird's voice with that of the
violin. "How impossible it is to be happy," he
mused. "Music only makes me sad. Beauty hurts
me. Beauty and the sunset. Sadness grins like an
ape grinning at the futility of life. And yet men
find joy in music. I must indeed be mad." And
covering his head in his hands he sighed. She
stopped playing. She sat waiting for him to speak
to her. At that moment she knew that she could
203




The
T~q)M9TC~z     BLACK     S O U L
not resist the evening, the sweet scent, the desire
for... life. But he made no movement. He was
thinking of himself. And at length her pride
gained the mastery, and she left the room, banging
the door behind her. The noise startled him, and
he sat up. Then with his eyes half-closed, as if td
hide his sadness, he went out by the window.


204




~2
W       HEN SUMMER HAD SOFTENED THE WILD
beauty of Inverara, so that neither the
calm sea stretching about its shores, nor the
breezes sweeping its crags, disturbed the peaceful
silence of nature by their clamour, the eye turned
by day to the majestic sun, that stood all day in
the cloudless sky and by night to the stars, that
shone forth in myriads, vast star streams with
constellations wheeling slowly over the night sea.
Inverara was no longer a gaunt rock, whose crude
strength made the mind fierce. It was a platform
from which the beauty of the heavens was visible.
The fathomless blue sky, dotted by clouds that
looked like washed wool tossed by a smooth
wind, seemed so near that men kept looking
at it with narrowed eyes, as if trying to see
insects moving on its face. The island seemed
to lie in the sea dreaming of the vastness of the
universe.
But the silence filled Red John with horror. He
had no longer anything to distract him. The crop
that he had sown in spring had withered choked
by weeds. He often looked in over the fence into
his potato gardens and laughed emptily, wondering what had possessed him to spend so much
labour to no purpose. Then he would catch up
stones from the fence and hurl them in among the
205




'The
^~(^ %     BLACK    SOUL (2ff
weeds, saying with a chuckle, "Ha, I'll settle you."
He found great satisfaction in being mischievous.
Everybody and everything inspired hatred in him.
When a man or a woman passed him he would
stare at their throats and long to draw a knife
across them. And his right hand would clench
the cloth of his waistcoat pocket. He often spent
hours at night chasing his two black sheep, until
he was lathered with sweat, his eyes blazing,
furiously desiring to kill them. But when they
stopped in the middle of the crag panting, and
each trying to hide her head under the other's
belly, he would merely claw at their wool mumbling, wondering why he had chased them. And
all the while he was unable to think. And yet it
was impossible for him not to try to think.
Each day the heat of the sun and the empty vastness of the blue sky urged him to inconceivable
tortures of aimless thinking. "What is this?" he
would say, looking at the sky and holding his head
between his hands, with the knuckles of his fingers
white with the pressure. "What is it at all, at all?
My sweet Virgin, what is it?" And the blue sky
eddied towards him in monotonous blue balls,
advancing first slowly, then with the rapidity of
thought, until everything became a blur and something commenced to sing within his skull, and the
soles of his feet itched. He would then sit down
206




The
B@L        BLACK     S 0 U L
and begin to tear up the grass and count the blades
aloud.
He shunned all grown-up people, but he would
sit among the children and play with them at
marbles or making fences with mud, chattering
foolishly. And sometimes, when they made fun
of him, he would grin evilly and try to entice them
to follow him away from the village, desiring to kill
them. That was the only persistent desire, to kill
somebody. He felt that desire especially at night
when he lay awake, breathing heavily. His hands
would grasp his own throat and crush until the
gasping of his lungs filled him with terror and he
listened anxiously for the beating of his heart.
But he pulled out all his front teeth and found
great pleasure in the pain it caused. Then he hid
them in an old mug in his barn.
He only stayed in the cabin to sleep a short while
at night and to eat his meals. He never spoke to
either his wife or the Stranger. He never looked
at them. But he twitched spasmodically, and sometimes laughed aloud suddenly. He would open
his mouth and utter a loud peal that was more like
a yell than a laugh, and then shut his mouth just as
suddenly, with a despairing look in his eyes as if
he had resigned himself to a terrible death. Both
the Stranger and Little Mary knew now that he
was mad, but they never spoke of it. It made each
207




Tle
kmkf2       D BLACK     SOUL (R]SML
of them miserable. Each pitied Red John, and
blamed the other for being the cause of his illness.
Little Mary often had fits of weeping and melancholy, when she wanted to drown herself. All sorts
of fancies oppressed her. Not even her love
offered her any solace. Instead of appealing to the
Stranger for comfort she shrank from him. Something seemed to have arisen between them that
drove them apart. It was as if the languorous
silence of nature exposed them on a wild desert,
and each hated the other for being the cause of
the exposure. And the neighbours, seeing the
state of affairs in the cabin, whispered to one another that something should be done about it.
But they did nothing but whisper, for in summer
at Rooruck nobody does anything but look at the
vast empty sky and whisper and dream about vast
things that are unfathomable.
The Stranger used to lie in his bed at night
smoking and think, "Ah, how short-lived is happiness. Now everything is lost again. The devil
take it." He felt sure now that the past few months
had been a heaven of delight, untainted by the
slightest sorrow, that he had been madly in love
with Little Mary, and that the future had been
pregnant with happiness. Now everything was
changed and he blamed Little Mary for it. "She
has driven that poor man mad," he would say to
208




The
VP     ~      BLACK SOUL 5N
the ceiling. "She is driving me mad too. What is
going to be the end of it? " And he would wander
off cataloguing all the most dreadful fates that
could befall the three of them. But each night,
before going to sleep, he would determine, with
tears at the back of his eyes, to have an explanation with Little Mary the following morning, to
get Red John to see a doctor and to go away to the
mainland with Little Mary. And yet in the morning, somehow it was impossible to speak. There
was the same sleepiness in the brain, the same irritation in the heart, the same silent downpouring
of heat from the sun without. It was impossible to
do anything with Little Mary fidgeting about,
breaking a cup one morning, sweeping the dust
from the floor in his face another morning, her
face wet with tears another morning. And Red
John always sat immovably by the hearth, twitching spasmodically and laughing at nothing.
"Ah, something terrible is going to happen," the
Stranger would say as he left the cabin. And yet,
before he had gone far, he would sink into a melancholy yet comfortable torpor, where even the most
dreadful prospect did not terrify him.
He no longer went to the pier at Coillnamhan.
He was ashamed to meet the tourists who now
crowded the pier and the beach and everywhere
along the road from Kilmurrage to Rooruck.


209


0




The
~~%a~~BLACK         SOULLj
Their happy laughter (laughter of which tourists
and priests alone are capable), their gay dress,
made him shun them. So he said they were vulgar, and in order to be alone he went along the
south to the Yellow Cliff, midway between Rooruck and Kilmurrage. It was the most deserted
spot in Inverara in summer and the most beautiful
because of its majestic solitude. There indeed the
silence was so great, and the emptiness so vast, that
one might dream of reading the meaning of the
universe, staring at the sky or looking down along
the faces of the sheer cliffs into the still sea.
At the summit of the Yellow Cliff was a niche
cut by nature during some great storm, aeons before, into the crag in the shape of a chair without
any legs. They called it Myles's chair, after a
peasant who fell down from it into the sea some
hundred years before. He sat on that chair for
hours at a time thinking, without moving a muscle. The perfect solitude, away from everything
that even suggested men and cities and civilization, made the limbs as restful as the walls of the
cliff itself. Nobody passed there excepting a solitary peasant woman who daily tended her sheep
on the crags, and she merely shaded her eyes with
her hand to look at him and went on in silence.
The cliff stretched down from his feet bulging in
the middle so that he could not see its base. A
210




VTe
kz^ff(RSi     BBLACK SOUL (Q            ^
circular bay stretched eastwards, locked by sheer
cliffs, and the cliffs were intersected by three rows
of cavernous slits, where rock-birds and seagulls
lived and other birds with long red beaks whose
names he did not know.
Sitting there his fears only made him happy. A
great wave of delicious sorrow rose up within his
breast, and he smiled and said: "Ha, it is worth
while to be alive and be here. Just to sit here for a
time and then die." And, inspired by his sorrow
with a creative frenzy, he wanted to write a great
poem about the cliffs and the sea. He felt that he
knew something that nobody else knew, that he
was scratching at the door behind which the secret
of life lay hidden. His poem would be about that,
not about the secret, but about the scratching. Nobody had ever even scratched before. He was
assured of that when he recalled all that had ever
been written about the sea or nature or life. It
appeared superficial to him. "They never felt
what I feel. I understand. I... I... I."
But then what did he understand? Looking at
the sea trying to give voice to what he understood
he found that he knew nothing. There was a pain
in his heart as if something moved within him
trying to come out and yet nothing came out. It
was impossible to write anything about the sea.
It was too immense. It would laugh at him. He
211




Trhe
BL A CK   S
could hear it laugh. And then he would cast aside
the idea of writing a great poem, saying, "Poetry
is all very well for those who do not know the sea
and nature. For those like myself, who know the
sea and nature, poetry is trivial nonsense." Shrinking from everything that oppressed him, the world,
Red John and Little Mary, he clung to nature,
humbly, as if appealing to it for protection. He
became intimate with every ledge and slit and boss
and weather-stain on the cliffs, with every wave
on the bay, with every rock that jutted from the
water, with its red wet mane of seaweed floating
around it. He even felt kinship with the fishes
prowling in the depths. He believed in the existence of the mermaids and elfs and sea-horses with
golden manes who were said to live in the caverns
at the base of the cliffs, where the waves sounded
at high tide like cargo shifting in the bowels of a
ship during a storm. The tide coming in and
going out was a living thing to him. He felt that
he was a component part of this complex life, that
he could rest in peace, that he was free from care
and danger and sorrow, that even death could not
touch him.
But when he left the stone chair and the shadows
of evening were falling, reality pressed in on him
as blinding and heavy as a dark night on a man
lost in a forest. He met groups of girls walking
212




The
B2       ) BLACK     S0OUL L
along the cliff-tops flirting with the young men
who were out fishing in their boats, calling to the
girls and singing love songs at the tops of their
voices, full of the joy of summer and of life. And
he passed along, gloomily conscious that the only
laughter of which he was capable was the harsh
laughter of sorrow. A shapeless cloud gathered
around his mind, and he became again conscious
of the cabin and Little Mary and Red John who
was mad. It seemed so insoluble and dry and
parching that problem that lay before him in the
cabin. There were three lives so intricately bound
together that there was no conceivable way of
arranging things. And the fear that something
dreadful was going to happen grew more vivid
every evening. As he came within earshot of the
cabin he always expected to hear the sound of wild
weeping. And when he entered the dim kitchen
and heard nothing in the silence he wished that
he could blow it up with dynamite and finish the
torture. It was terrible, waiting for he knew not
what.
Then one evening, as he was coming along the
cliffs wrapped in melancholy, he suddenly came
upon Kathleen O'Daly, just at the foot of the
slope, where the Hill of Fate dropped to the shore
at Rooruck. She was sitting on a rock, reading a
book, while her father lay on his belly some hun213




The
%S(^     %B    BLACK     SOUL (ffR!5(2
dreds of yards to the west just at the western angle
of the island, shooting cormorants. She sat up
when she heard his rawhide shoes swishing along
the short slippery grass coming down the slope.
"Hallo," she said. He stopped dead and saw her.
She was the last person on earth that he wanted to
meet just then, when he felt sure -that everybody
could read in his face the sordid and disgraceful
story of his life in the cabin. But looking into her
face for a fleeting moment as he replied to her
salutation he saw an expression in it that made him
forget the cabin in a still greater horror. Her
cheeks were flushed. The muscles of her neck,
her whole body, in fact, trembled slightly. And
her eyes stared steadily, softly into his without
wavering. She wanted him. It flashed on his
mind that she did, and for a moment he began to
wonder what had he done to her to make her look
at him like that. A violent repulsion seized him.
He looked around as if seeking some means of
escape, and he saw her father lying out on the
extremity of the rock. He started perceptibly.
"Sit down," she said slowly. He sat down, wondering what had come over her, or whether she
was really Kathleen O'Daly, or whether he was
suffering from a delusion. Surely she would not... He looked at her as if to reassure himself.
And just then O'Daly fired at a cormorant. They
214




Vte
3        ~    BLAC K   S 0 U L
both started and stared westwards at the little
column of smoke that was rising vertically on the
still air. They kept looking at it in silence until
it vanished. Another five minutes and more they
sat without speaking. Then Kathleen suddenly
flung her book on the ground and stamped on it.
"Oh, go away," she said, without looking at him.
He walked away in silence with his hands behind
his back. "Now everybody has deserted me," he
mumbled. "Now I'm alone. Good God, have I
a friend nowhere! Nobody wants me for myself,
but to satisfy curiosity or passion or something.
I am accursed." A cold breeze was blowing from
the sea, bearing with it the smell of wet seaweed.
It seemed to him to be like the smell of the balm
that Egyptians rubbed into dead bodies, although
he was totally ignorant of what that smell was.
But death seemed to be in the air, stalking in
front of him. He could smell it and feel it and
fear it, but he could not see it. A horrible feeling
of being utterly alone and deserted on the eve of a
great danger grew intensely until it numbed his
desire to live and he felt very weak. The sun was
setting, and he sat on a hillock just above the village to watch it. The sun had begun to sink into
the sea to the west. He could look into its red face
without blinking. Then across the sea towards
Inverara the sun shadow swept in a silvery streak.
215




7k e
20    1B      BLACK    SOUL
It touched land and became red for a moment,
then blue as it reached the tilled fields, then ending on the crags in a blaze of light that was all
the colours of the rainbow. Then, as if the sun
made a last dying struggle to keep back the approaching night, a flood of light poured out from
it, carried on myriads of bright shafts, like the
bristles of a hedgehog. The whole of Inverara
and of the sea, and the flanks of the mountains
on the mainland gleamed for a minute in the
staggering light, and then slowly dimmed again as
the light crept away westwards towards the sinking sun, and the shadows of night pursued them
and the sun sank lower and lower. The air became
cooler. The wind began to make dark ripples on
the sea. Stars tottered out. Then the sun disappeared.
And looking at the point where it disappeared, he
shuddered and thought that somebody who had
been sick for a long time within his breast had
died.?z 6




NGAUTUMN








"Autumn


~1
T   HEY WE'E OPENING THE BOWELS OF INVERARA.
The potato stalks, once green flower-decked
and beautiful, were withered. They crackled as
the women tore them from the ridges. The men
rooted up the earth avariciously with their spades
to gather the fruit that had matured in its womb
during the heat of summer. Rain-bleached potatoes lay in rows on the flattened ridges. There
were only bristles left in the rye-fields. Inverara
was being stripped naked.
The horses, carrying home the crops, no longer
galloped as they did in spring. They moved
slowly with downcast heads, their baskets creaking
on the canvas of their straddles. There was a
melancholy silence in Inverara, broken only by
the bleak whine of the autumn wind, chanting
the death song of the year. Cattle were driven
southwards each day from the parched plains to
the long hill grass in the valley between the crags.
The flowers were dead. And the blackberries had
ripened, the enchanted fruit that were eaten by the
black devils that rode on the storm of winter.
Inverara was like an old man groaning with his
219




T7e
BLACK     SOUL
years and talking of death. Rain fell each day,
drowning summer. The air was damp, and heavy
mists hung by day and by night over the ridge of
Coillnamhan. Sometimes the mists shut out the
sea, and only its sad murmur could be heard, coming through the fog like the wheezing of an old
man sick with pleurisy. The shore at Rooruck
was strewn with offal, rotting timber, torn seaweed, heads of dogfishes, worthless refuse after
the joyous debauch of summer. The broad grey
crag of Rooruck shone sombrely, washed by the
ceaseless rain mist. And water gushed from the
crevices in the faces of the cliffs, falling with sad
sounds in zigzag courses down the cliffs to the
sea, as though autumn were washing Inverara.
The sun shone dimly through the dun clouds on
Rooruck, dimly as if it perpetually frowned.
Hosts of shadows continually flitted along the
Jagged Reef southwards towards the cliffs, like
spirits shielding something that fled. The men
working in the harvest fields often stood erect,
caressing their sore backs and cursing the laggard sun, for work that was joyous in spring
was now painful and the time dragged slowly,
like a dying man's breath. For time is a measure
of pain.
Suddenly through the autumn fog a noise came
to Red John's ears. It came to him in the early
220




V e
RM&RMBLLA CK SO0U L~~
morning. He was sitting by the fire, waiting for
Little Mary to come in from the cow with the
milk. The flood tide had just made. There was a
fever in the air. The sea was fermenting. The
noise buzzed in his ears and he got up and left the
cabin. It was as if somebody had uttered a command and he had to obey it. He walked swiftly
without thinking, quite calmly, down to the shore,
just south of the jagged Reef. He threw out his
right hand in front of his face as he walked, with
the fingers extended and making signs at some
invisible thing in the air. His red and white gums
were bared in a grin. -He was amused because he
had suddenly felt that he must wash his feet in
the sea and that if he did not do so he would die
before night. He sat by a pool of sea-water and
washed his feet in it without taking off his shoes
and stockings. Then he walked back again to
the cabin calmly as if he had just done a daily
task.
The cabin was still empty. The Stranger slept.
Little Mary was at the cow. He sat by the fire
and tried to sink back into his usual idiot's dreams.
But he could not. Again the buzzing came into
his ears and then a pain shot across from his ears
to his eyes, so that he had to jump to his feet with
his eyes closed and stagger around the floor, clawing the air with his hands like a man suddenly
221




The
RZIýKRS BLACK SOUL (IgRf                 ag
stricken with blindness. Then he opened his eyes
and there was nothing the matter with them. And
the buzzing had stopped. But his head was very
heavy and the backs of his calves were perspiring
with weakness. He began to take off his clothes
as if to relieve his body of their weight. There
was, too, a peculiar irritation all over his skin. But
he had ceased thinking. His head was too heavy
for thought.
It was not until he had stripped himself naked
that he began again to think. He shut his mouth
with a snap and his whole body went stiff. Then
something began to gurgle, going down from his
throat to his bowels. "Ohe, ohe," he muttered,
laughing. "Oh, Red John, the son of Stephen,
what are you doing now?" Looking down at himself, he saw the bones sticking through his hips
like spear-points and his thighs as narrow as a
consumptive's wrists, and he shuddered. His body
suddenly appeared to him to be shrinking and
falling to pieces. He kept drawing in his breath,
trying to keep it together until he almost burst.
And when he allowed his breath to rush out again
he began to tremble violently so that he kept
jumping from leg to leg as if the floor were hot.
Visions now began to crowd his brain pell-mell,
in chaotic disorder, until at last he seized his head
between his hands and crushed it, trying to keep
222




rhe
k'M&K)RM) BLACK         S O U L  ^
his brain steady. He held his breath too. Gradually the whirling within his skull ceased and he
became conscious of a desire that grew greater and
greater, until he had to say aloud, "I'll kill the
Stranger." Then he was calm again. At least he
thought so himself, but his arms and his legs
below the knees were totally beyond his control
and kept jerking and twitching as if they had
separate lives and were engaged on some mysterious occupation of their own. But his mind was
calm, determined to kill the Stranger. He stood
with his back to the wall behind the door of the
Stranger's room waiting until he should come out.
But soon the silence and the tension of waiting
drove the thought of killing the Stranger out of
his brain and he wanted to run away. But it was
impossible for him to run. He had lost the use of
his limbs. He was seized with terror. He thought
that he was hiding from the Stranger, that the
Stranger was mad and was looking for him with a
gun. He tried to stretch out his right foot in an
effort to get to his clothes, but the foot did not
move. It would not obey his will. Even his face
was creased in a foolish grin in spite of the terror
in his brain. And the sweat that stood in swelling
drops on his forehead looked white against the
ashy greyness of his skin. He began to knock
the back of his head against the wall, keeping time
223




The
RDRIMM        BLACK    SOUL(,          L
with the alarum clock that ticked on the dresser
beside him.
The Stranger had arisen and was putting on his
boots when he heard the knocking. He went to
the door hurriedly and shouted: "Why don't you
stop that noise? Who is making that noise, I say?"
Red John heard and tried to stop his head from
banging against the wall, but could not do so.
His head too was beyond his control. The Stranger dashed out of his room in a fury and had just
begun to shout abuse when he saw Red John
standing naked by the wall. He stood with wideopen mouth and staring eyes. His face got cold
and then turned white. His nostrils distended.
He stared into Red John's eyes and Red John
stared into his.
He was not afraid of physical hurt from Red
John. He was not startled by seeing him standing
naked against the wall. It was not that made him
horror-stricken. It was a sudden thought that
flashed across his brain when he looked into Red
John's insane eyes. It was the thought that there
was a kinship between his own soul and that of
Red John, that he himself was mad like Red John.
It was like seeing a photograph of himself taken
during a nightmare. Now the terrors and excitements of the past years, since the night in France
when the shells falling about his ears filled his
224




The
XMIRRM^ BBLACK S OUL LS                 ^
head with red demons, gathered together with a
lightning rush and formed into a word that he
read, horrified, "Insanity." "I am insane," he
muttered. And he was seized with a frenzy that
made him stiffen against the grinning idiot opposite him, who had torn this devilish secret from
his breast. He raised his hands and hissed, about
to grasp Red John by the throat.
Then Red John yelled and tore his jaws wide
open to the utmost with his two hands, as if trying
to vomit his fear in the intensity of the yell. He
drew up his right leg to his buttock and struck
at the wall with its sole. "Go away," he screamed,
clawing the air, "go away; you are going to kill
me. Help me! help me! he's going to kill me!"
He yelled again and was seized with a convulsive
fit of trembling. His body hopped against the
wall as if it were on springs. The Stranger recovered himself at the yell. His brain cleared and
he drew a deep sigh of relief. His heart throbbed
loudly; he had stood on the brink of a vast abyss
staggering, and had only just by accident been
hurled back to sanity, by a madman's yell. Another moment and he had been tearing at Red
John's throat, a madman.
Choking with the horror of his situation he ran
out into the yard to draw breath. He stood for
fully half a minute in the yard, breathing in gasps.
225               P




Ehe
g  g   g  BLACK     S OUL
Then again he remembered Red John. He must
get help. "Help, help!" he shouted. "Red John
is mad." He listened. A peasant thrust out his
head from the door of a cabin to the right. The
Stranger looking at him dazedly noticed that
his beard was the same colour exactly as his
own.
"Ohs," cried the peasant. "What is it?"
"Red John is mad," shouted the Stranger as if
he were repeating a formula, thinking that a dark
beard would suit him better. The peasant crossed
himself and disappeared. The Stranger kept on
shouting "Help! Red John is mad," until he completely forgot all about Red John and help and
the peasants and everything. He was staring at
the ground with a fixed stare wondering whether
primitive men had beards, or what was the origin
of the beard, since it did not seem to serve any
purpose and was dangerous in battle. Wrapt in
his meditation, he walked into the kitchen, but
stopped with a scream, as the tongs flew past him
within an inch of his jaw and rattled against the
open door. He fell to the ground in terror. Red
John flew out over his body carrying his clothes in
his hands. He looked up to see Red John vaulting naked over the fence of the yard on to the
road. There was a black patch of dirt on his left
shoulder and his backbone stood out clear under
226




The
kD       2    B LAC K  So0UL UL
his skin as his body bent in jumping. Then he disappeared around the corner running southwards
towards the crags.
The peasants, men, women and children, rushed
to the cabin. The Stranger stood at the door
babbling disconnectedly, describing to each as
he came up how Red John stood by the wall,
threw the tongs and ran out. Then when the first
excitement wore off he began to notice the silence
ofthe peasants. They stood about saying nothing,
looking at him as if they suspected him of being
the cause of Red John's madness. So it seemed
to him, though nothing of the kind was in the
minds of the peasants. They were silent and openmouthed merely because they were trying to
realize what had happened and endeavouring to
derive as much satisfaction as possible from the
excitement. Their crude, undeveloped intelligence, unable to understand that one of themselves
had lost his reason, surrendered itself to enjoyment and fear, like women listening to a tale
about pirates or malignant ghosts. And he, unable
to understand that their silence was born of stupidity, thought they were accusing him and became
afraid of them. Their very number awed him.
He could have fawned on them for sympathy.
And his mind was vexed, for even then his Black
Soul seemed to stand apart, scoffing at him for his
227




/z e
BLACK     SOUL     gR    J
lack of courage, his lack of being able to stand
alone. His Black Soul, like a dying aristocrat,
beset by revolutionaries whom he had oppressed,
fumed scornfully, desiring to maintain his pride
to the last. His heart wanted to move up close to
the simple peasants and gape with them in horror
at the unknown, to babble with them and gesticulate and be vulgar. He felt there was a wonderful comfort in being vulgar, in jumping off the
pedestal of cold aristocratic intellectuality and
plastering himself with the mud and dirt of the
loud-mouthed mass. And he jumped down. A
loose-limbed man, with far-seeing and tender blue
eyes, stood beside him. They called him Big
Dick. He turned to him and said:
"What are we to do? Hadn't we better go after
him?"
The peasant spat and shrugged his shoulders.
"What is, is," he said, "and must be."
"Aye," said another, crossing himself, "there is a
cure in death, so there is."
For madness to them was a sacred thing, a
mysterious manifestation of the power of the
ancient gods long forgotten, but who still roamed
the air and the sea malevolently playing with the
people who had forsaken them for the mighty
promises of the Christian heaven.
"Let what's to be done be done," cried Big Dick;
228




4he
R!Z(22TR~z BLACK       SOU L
"get yourselves ready." And they all went away
to their cabins.
The Stranger went into the- cabin and sat by the
fire wringing his hands. He thought this was the
end of everything. He wanted to hide somewhere
where no one could find him. He was stripped
now of everything, of even the self-respect that
his Black Soul had still kept glimmering within
him. Now he had even lost his Black Soul. He
was defeated. He had even lost the power of
despising himself. And then through his stupor
came the noise of women shouting outside. For
a moment he listened carelessly, thinking that the
mob were coming to lynch him for having driven
Red John mad. "Let them come," he muttered,
"it is the end."
But then a woman shrieked in a shrill voice,
"Little Mary, you whore, it was you drove him
mad. Let us tear her eyes out, the evil one."
He jumped up, just as Little Mary dashed into
the kitchen. She staggered against the door exhausted as if she had run a long way from death.
Her light shawl thrown over her shoulders was
torn at the edge where somebody had grasped it.
Yet looking at her it seemed to him that he had
never seen anything so beautiful as her eyes that
looked at him startled and beseeching.
"Mary," he gasped and opened his arms.
229




Vhe
RZ3!iKR~z     BLACK     SO U L C^^D^
"Protect me," she cried and staggered to him,
dropping the can she held in her hand. It fell on
its side and the milk from it streamed along the
earthen floor under their feet as they embraced.
And as soon as he felt his arms about her he lost
all fear. The problem of life became suddenly
simplified. She had made a demand of him that
had caused some new cell in his brain to come to
life. It gave him a wonderfully clean sensation,
the desire to protect her.
Then the women appeared at the door pushing
one another and threatening. He rushed at them
with a yell and they fled. Then he came back to
Little Mary and began to console her. She sobbed
without tears in his arms. They both at last felt
the calmness of love without its passion, the solidarity of love. The last barrier was broken down
between them, the barrier of his intellectual pride.
He was in need of somebody on whom to lean for
support. She needed some one to protect her.
They leaned one against the other. And they
looked into one another's eyes, they pledged their
lives together in silence. They had found the
enduring love of mutual necessity.
They left the cabin together to join in the search
for Red John. The whole village had gathered for
it, but even then they were still arguing as to
whether a man should be sent for the police or
230




The
not. Then at last Big Dick ordered a man to go to
Kilmurrage for the police and they started off for
the beach. The people set off after him, saying,
"In the name of God let us go," all in as great an
excitement as if they were setting out on a campaign against a desperate enemy. They advanced
in a long straggling line to the shore with the
women coming behind. They talked in whispers
and walked as slowly as possible, stopping now
and again to look about them carefully, their faces
set in a stare of respectful sympathy, but their
eyes gleamed with suppressed pleasure and with
intense fear and dread when anything stirred on
the crags or a bird shrieked suddenly over their
heads.
When they reached the shore they halted for
another consultation. Several men spoke at the
same time at the top of their voices, but nothing
came of the talk. They seemed in fact to be debating plans for the mere purpose of dragging the
affair out to the greatest possible length. Then
three boys who had gone on ahead down to the
rocky beach beneath the Hill of Fate came running back screaming, "We saw him, we saw him."
They had seen Red John clothed in his shirt and
his rawhide shoes going along the boulders towards the Hill of Fate. "Ha!" they cried, "he's
making for the caves." But nobody moved. They
231




Vhe
20@~20 LACK SOUL~~
began to talk again and gesticulate. They were
incapable of taking any action in face of the phenomenon they did not understand. Any one of
them would have risked his life in the wildest
storm. Yet now they were stricken with fear of
Red John, whom the day before they despised as a
weakling. Just as if some ancient tradition forbade them to interfere with a fellow-man who had
become suddenly possessed of a strange and
magical spirit. Then, still talking, they moved
along to the juncture of the shore and the Hill of
Fate. The shore, strewn with small boulders,
stretched to the west. To the east the Hill of Fate
began to rise gradually in massive layers of rock
and slate. It ran southwards for about fifty yards,
and then curved sharply eastwards, shooting up
to a majestic summit beyond the curve. At the
curve the sea lapped its base, but there was a
passage eastwards across its face, about fifty feet
above the sea level. Huge boulders, some of them
five hundred tons weight, lay in a chaotic mass westwards of the curve in the angle of the cliff. They
formed immense and tangled caverns, and the sea,
running in on the flat cracked rock on which they
rested, roared dismally in the dark caverns even
on a calm day.
Red John had disappeared among these caverns,
and the peasants stood facing them, listening to
232




The
M      Q   BBLACK      SOUL 6N
the savage murmuring of the sea among them,
like the barbaric welcome of a horde of pythons
to a returned fellow. The Stranger now came up
with Little Mary. He had followed the crowd,
drawn by the same force that was outside of himself, some instinct that forced him to join the herd
in pursuit of a lost one. He had followed it mechanically, only half conscious of what was happening, not daring to think of what was going to
happen to himself and to Little Mary. And Little
Mary walking beside him followed him without
thinking, in perfect confidence that all would be
well with her as long as he was there to protect
her. It was as if they were rushing headlong to
the summit of a ridge unable to stop themselves,
ignorant of what lay beyond, -whether a deep
chasm leading to death or a level plain to safety.
And then when he reached the crowd and saw
them standing chattering stupidly he underwent
another change, like a man who has been a long
time cooped up in a jail and is let loose on a mountain-side where the clean wind is blowing among
heather and across dark lakes and through rocky
passes, filling the heart with courage and the limbs
with energy and the mind with daring. He came
up close to them and looked at them. In their
excitement and fear their ape likeness was apparent. He lost all fear of them. Their mouths were
233




rhe
^~Se ~BLACK SOUL @^%X(
open, as if their weak minds had fled through
their mouths in awe of the unexplainable. Their
strong bodies were like crippled machines without
a motive power. They were like wild beasts in a
cage. "Ha!" he thought, "I am superior to them.
I have a brain." And for the first time in his life
he understood the real value of his intellect. And
immediately he took command without speaking.
He just moved forward and they looked at him
without speaking, as if they had been waiting all
that time for him to come and give them orders.
He felt a delicious thrill at having men suddenly
look to him for guidance, to him, a wreck. The
feeling of having power over his fellows seemed
to expand him to twice his size.
He beckoned to them to follow him with a wave
of his hand, as he moved forward towards the
boulders. He was not conscious of any emotion
but elation at having these men follow him at his
command. The power to make them move at his
bidding shut out the consciousness of everything,
of Red John, of his own position, even of Little
Mary waiting behind, waiting in dull submission
for whatever fate and her lover pleased to do for
her.
The tide was coming in. The waves simmered
around the bases of the boulders in the black pools
that countless tides had worn into the rock. And
234




The
B0@         ~ ) BLACK   SOUL (ZgR!(j
along the wide ragged reef that dipped into the
deep sea afar out, advancing and retreating waves
in confused echelons flitted endlessly, their white
manes looking grey through the rain mist that
fell slantwise, westwards on the breeze. The
breeze was hardly audible. The sky was covered
with black clouds banked in headlong confusion,
so closely that the mist seemed to be perspiration
oozing from their crushed bodies. There was no
sound but the dreary mumbling of the sea among
the boulders, the slow fall of the breakers on the
Jagged Reef to the south-west and the hoarse
cackling of a flock of seagulls who had discovered
the carcase of a sheep floating in a mat of seaweed
away out to the south.
They went in among the boulders crawling on
their hands and feet. They shouted to give themselves courage. The cliff towered above them
now, rising sheerer and higher as they approached
the curve. The black layer of slate in the cliff face
shot out through the mist, like a vast cincture
around its loins. The Stranger kept in the lead
until they reached the base of the cliff. Still there
was no sign of Red John. "Search the caverns,"
shouted the Stranger. "Yes, search them you,"
everybody cried to his neighbours, but nobody
moved. All feared to go down into the dark
abysses on that bleak misty day, with a madman
235




'rT e
7C  @~20      BLACK     SOUL
prowling in their depths. The huge masses of
limestone, blackened by the mist, their sides
covered with limpets, looked like living monsters
sprawling on top of one another, slimy monsters
that had been born thousands of years before. The
peasants began to shout and babble, but they did
not descend.
Then somebody shouted, "There he is. Look
out!" Red John had sprung up in front of them
just by the curve in the cliff. He was running
along the ledge that led eastwards. As he was
about to turn out of sight he halted and looked
back over his shoulder. His grey flannel shirt was
torn at the back so that his spine and thighs were
bare. One of his feet was clad in a rawhide shoe.
The rest of him was naked except for the strip of
shirt. There was a bloody gash on his left thigh
above the knee. In his right hand he held a knife.
He waved the knife and his face contorted. "Haa-a-aw!" he yelled. Then he turned his head and
stooped to pass eastwards on the narrow ledge.
The sea lay about a hundred feet beneath him.
The ledge was about eight inches wide at the
curve. And the belly of the cliff swelled out almost over it. But he ran along it carelessly and
disappeared. "He is going to drown himself,"
whispered the peasants. They gaped and crossed
themselves. The women in the rear began to weep
236




V4e
RD     ]kSP!B BLACK     SOUL     ^   ~^
aloud. Red John's uncle's wife threw herself flat
on a boulder with her shawl over her head and
began to chant the death dirge. The men stood
in silence looking at the Stranger. Little Mary sat
on a boulder and covered her face with her hands.
"He is going to drown himself." The Stranger,
watching the spot where Red John had disappeared, heard the sentence repeated again and
again, and it seemed that each repetition was a
blow struck at the elation he had just experienced,
of commanding men. That Red John was going
to kill himself struck into his consciousness like a
heinous sin remembered after an opium dream.
If Red John killed himself it was because of...
"I'd be a murderer," he thought. And the thought
shot him forward towards the curve before he had
time to judge the reason of his action. "Where
are you going?" yelled the peasants. "You will
get killed as sure as Christ was crucified," roared
another in his ear, as if he were a mile away in
a storm. The Stranger brushed him aside and
advanced.
He saw in front of him the narrow ledge of grey
limestone, shining with moisture, as slippery as a
glass floor. A fossil stuck up from a boss on the
ledge just at the curve. It showed yellowishly
through the mist. And above, the cliff towered
with such tremendous strength that without
237




Ti e
IN,(SkiC&Ji) BLACK SOUL?"' S)(2
touching it he felt its contact, thrusting him outwards. And he looked from it to the sea, that
murmured fiercely beneath; he could see lines of
white foam through the mist crawling about like
snakes. For a moment the horror of the danger
that lay in front of him, crossing that ledge, almost petrified him, just as that little yellowish
figure on the ledge had been petrified. He shuddered. But his mind was firmly set on going
across the ledge. He did not know why he was
going across. As he took off his shoes he remembered that Red John was a very miserable fellow,
utterly worthless, that his death was a matter of
absolutely no importance to the world, and that
he himself in cold reason was in no palpable way
responsible for that death. Then why go across
that ledge, to almost certain death, in a foolish
attempt to save an idiotic yokel who was better
dead than alive?
As he put his trousers inside his socks lest the
ends might catch in a spur of the cliff he recalled
the obvious fact that even if he were responsible
for Red John's death and even if Red John were a
genius and of importance to society, his death
would be of no consequence, since nothing in the
universe mattered but life itself, purposeless
motion. It was perfectly futile to save life. It
would not even be saving life. One might as well
238




The
B L LACK  SOUL (1g!
talk of saving death. Death was just as positive,
more positive in fact, than life. Ha! But then
death in each case was just as positive. It was as
positive in his own case as in the case of Red John.
Ah! but why seek it? Why seek anything? What
was the use of any effort?
Hle finished arranging his trousers and stood up,
looking in front of him at the ledge. Then through
the intricate maze of his reasoning his mind again
grasped in horror the reality of his position. He
cast a fleeting glance at the peasants behind and
she aw only the figure of Little Mary huddled on
the boulder afraid to look up, dumb and spellbound with the accumulation of horror, until even
the news that her lover was going to cross the
ledge only touched her brain as a needle pricks a
limb that is frozen. In the moment that his eyes
swept back to her and then forward to the ledge,
he took in every single detail of her figure, as if
his brain were lashed by terror to a speed equal to
that of light. She was leaning on her right hand
against a boulder. Her dark hair strayed down
over her left cheek that was towards him. He
could see by the straining of her white bare throat
that her eyes were shut. And her body was indistinct under the outline of her heavy cashmere
shawl, as if she had crumbled up struck by sorrow.
His love for her made him so dizzy that he was
239




Tle
BLACK     SOUL G(unable to obey the impulse to fly back to her until
it had passed, exhausted by its own force, and he
was reasoning again.
He moved a step forward, gripping the slippery
rock carefully with his toes. Going back would
mean losing his self-respect. There was no reason
for going ahead, but to go back would mean a
return to his rudderless floating in a sea of ridiculous theories about life. Instinct urged him
forward. Why? It was neither because of honour, morals, principles, religion, or sense of duty.
It was merely instinct that said, "Go ahead and
you will feel clean. Go back and you will have
to keep arguing all your life in order to prove
that you are not dirty." He took three steps in
rapid succession and then swayed slightly as his
right foot skidded three inches and he grasped
the face of the cliff with both hands. His heart
began to beat audibly, although his breath was
coming regularly. Still he moved forward towards the curve.
The ledge grew narrower. He could no longer
put forward his left leg that was nearest to the
cliff. He had to grip the cliff and shuffle forward
with his right leg in front. His spine seemed to
be melting. He was afraid to look down at the
sea. He shut his eyes and stood still. Suddenly
the thought struck him that Red John was waiting
240




XB             BLACK     SOUL'
around the curve with a knife to kill him, even
if he succeeded in escaping the fall to death. Before his closed eyes the knife appeared menacing
and he was unable to escape. He opened his eyes
to see whether it really was there and he saw
nothing but the protruding belt of slate, swelling
like a black ulcer from the cliff in front of him.
Fear ate at his bowels, giving him the feeling that
he had not eaten for a week. "I had better turn
back," he muttered aloud. But he made no attempt to move backwards. In fact he leaned
jauntily against the cliff and took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead, as if he were quite
at his ease. And as he wiped his forehead he
thought that there was no chance whatever of
saving Red John and that he was bound to go back
to Little Mary, as a point of honour. But just
then he heard a peasant shout, "Ah, God of the
thousand battles, what a brave man!" "Yes, I am
a brave man," he murmured, crumbling the handkerchief in a ball. He grasped the cliff again to
move forward.
Stupefied with fear he lurched around the curve
carelessly in three strides, that made the cliff and
the sea turn a somersault three times before his
eyes. He scraped his left ankle to the bone. He
gashed his left temple. As he was drawing his
right leg up after the third stride, it tripped over


241I


Q




f'he
VP      Un    S BLCK   SOUL( L^
a boss of the rock and he hurtled forward stumbling along the brink of the cliff between the earth
and sea like a willow rod blown by a sudden squall.
And then as if by magic he righted himself and
walked calmly on to a broad plateau, that stretched
eastwards, a triangular notch cut midway into the
cliff. "Safe," he sighed breathlessly.
He sat down on the plateau exhausted and content at having performed a feat of such daring.
But in a moment he remembered Red John and
he jumped to his feet again. He had come to save
Red John. He looked about him. Red John was
nowhere to be seen. "I hope he is dead," he
murmured. Voices reached him from the summit
of the cliff overhead. Peasants had run up the
slope from the shore and were now gesticulating
above the plateau, pointing to three large boulders
that leaned against the cliff at the eastern edge of
the plateau, just where the plateau sank into the
cliff. "Ha!" he muttered, "there's where he is
waiting for me with his knife." He wanted to
raise his hands and ask them to take him away.
But he was ashamed to do so in spite of his fear.
They looked upon him as a brave man. He must
keep up the pretence. "What difference does it
make if I get killed by Red John? People would
look upon me as a hero. Eh? And I'll have to die
some day. Everybody dies. Don't they?" He
242




2!(;!2S) BBLACK         SOUL' 2]C2       ^k
began to walk towards the boulders mechanically,
but his efforts at stoicism did not prevent his body
from trembling and smarting. Every muscle was
uttering an inarticulate whine of terror. His
limbs, although thrust forward by his will, moved
with the ponderous slowness of an immense engine
making its first hesitating revolution. Though
his will tried to force his legs to move quickly,
like the legs of a determined courageous man, the
legs pretended to be exhausted with weariness.
It seemed that the knee-cap of the right leg had
jumped off and that blood was gushing from the
wound, but when he grasped the knee he found
it was a delusion. The knee was perfectly fit.
But although he knew it was perfectly fit, he let
it go limp and dragged it after him. That gave
him a plausible excuse for going slowly. And the
slower he went the more the folly of his action
grew before his mind. The fear of death grew
greater. He doubted the reality of his environment. (He thought that Red John and the peasants on the cliff-top were a delusion and that he
himself was going to commit suicide, impelled by
the consciousness of a monstrous crime. He had a
fleeting vision of things like a cliff pressing into
his forehead so close to his eyes that the atoms in
its face appeared as big as universes. But while
his mind conjured with these delusions his body,
243




The
R!(&KR!Z B LAC K        so5UL ag3?M(2!
his desire to live, were grappling with realities.
He had dropped on his belly and was crawling
sideways up to the mouth of the cavern between
the boulders in order to see inside it without being seen. And when his right shoulder brushed
against the slimy black boulder and he saw the
dim interior of the cavern through a corner of his
left eye his senses became so acute that his trembling fear left him and he experienced the kind
of morbid enthusiasm and coolness that the soldier
feels when he is about to draw the trigger from a
concealed position on an advancing enemy. "Red
John, Red John," he called out loudly, "what the
hell are you hiding in there for? It's only the
Stranger out here who has come to save you. Come
out, man, and don't be making a fool of yourself.
Nobody has got anything against you. Come out."
He listened, panting slightly, but for a moment
or two he heard nothing. Then he heard something move, with the sound a duck makes walking on slippery wet flags. Then there came the
sound of teeth chattering violently, and the kind
of horrid mumbling a dumb man makes when in
a rage. These sounds irritated without terrifying
him and he struggled to a kneeling position and
drew himself up to the entrance of the cavern.
He stared in. His face was within three inches of
Red John's.
244




The
B L BLACK  SOUL
He lay crouching on his hands and knees, spellbound. Red John crouched facing him, kneeling
on his right knee, his left hand, palm downward,
embedded in the yellow sea-moss that grew on the
side of a tiny pool. His right hand holding the
open knife was stretched in front of him, with the
point of the knife resting against the face of the
cliff. Large drops of water pattered from the cliff
on his naked back. And through the opening at
the far end of the cavern, the sea, half hidden by
the mist, loomed up like an undulating plain that
is set in imaginary motion by the shadows of a
winter dawn. He looked like an uncouth monster
risen from the black sea. His bloodshot eyes
seemed to have been thrust out from their sockets
by a violent shock that had jammed their mechanism and prevented them from getting back into
their natural position. And when he breathed his
whole body contracted, so that the skin lay in
loose wrinkles between the ribs. His mouth and
throat contorted violently, as he tried to speak.
And the Stranger stared at him for several moments speechless. Then he said in a low voice, as
if afraid to hear himself, "Come on, Red John,
follow me. You'll catch cold there." And he began to edge backwards, keeping his eyes fixed on
Red John's face.
But he had barely moved when Red John roared
245




The
%~3^tI BLACK            SOUL (^
and flung himself upon him. He fell in a heap
over the Stranger's shoulders and the two of them
rolled out into the open plateau. The peasants
watching on the cliff-top yelled. "The knife, the
knife! he'll kill him with the knife," came a scream
from a woman, as Red John tore his right hand
free and lunged at the Stranger's chest. But the
Stranger twisted around and struck Red John's
arm with his fist. Then he closed with Red John,
grasping Red John's body about the shoulders,
so that he was only able to move his legs below the
knees. The Stranger pressed with all his might
and Red John struck out with his feet and snapped
with his teeth, trying to bite the Stranger's left ear.
Then suddenly his body stiffened. He planted his
heels on the rock and raised his hips, so that his
body rested on his shoulders and his heels. The
Stranger, fearing that he planned a fresh attack,
moved and threw his legs over him in order to
crush him with his weight. But as his eyes came
in line with Red John's throat he drew back. The
throat was shivering like the gills of a dying fish.
The whole body had gone limp. The eyes were
glassy. The lower jaw had dropped. Red John
was dead. His heart had burst in the last effort of
his madness.


246




~2
0 N AND ON I WANDER ENDLESSLY. I AM THE LORD.of nature. I heal and kill heedlessly. I drive
men to a frenzy and soothe others with the same
roar of my anger. I am the sadness of joy. I am
the ferocity of beauty." So murmured the sea, as
the Stranger crouching astride the stiffening corpse
of Red John held his hands aloft to the peasants
on the cliff-top and mumbled cries for help. Then
the sea seemed to take a short leap forward and
struck the cliffs noisily. Gullies of wind eddied
westwards from the Fort of Coillnamhan, whirling
in and out under the cliffs like swallows. The
mist rose before the wind and a cloud-racked sky
appeared. The sun stared through a flimsy white
cloud that had just parted in the middle. Advancing breakers buffeted by the wind began to turn
somersaults. Sea-birds roused by the sudden
squall soared  aloft screaming. The peasants
crossed themselves and said "God save us, it is
the magic wind." And the Stranger, listening to
the chorus of sounds from nature that had a few
minutes before been wrapped in mist and silence,
started as he had been awakened from a nightmare by a bugle call. He looked at the corpse
between his legs and a sense of the reality of life,
of his surroundings, of himself, became so vivid
that it wiped out his fear of the death of which a
247




zre
3RS(KR0sZ BLACK         SOUL (S^^^)@^
few moments before he had accused himself in
terror. Instead of fear of the future, of what men
would say of him or do to him, because of the
death of Red John, he experienced a feeling of
anger that was born of a sudden access of strength.
Instead of maudlin pity for the corpse beneath
him he looked upon it in anger, meaningless anger.
Whence that anger? Perhaps it came from the
sudden rush of the sea and wind to his assistance.
Perhaps the presence of death made him lust for
life. He stood up, exultantly watching Big Dick
descend the cliff on a rope to his assistance, and he
thought of nothing but his fierce desire to get to
the cliff-top and fly with Little Mary to safety.
He doubted no more. The nightmares that had
haunted his soul had vanished. He feared life no
more. He longed for it, with its ferocity of endeavour, of suffering and of happiness. Life as
he had learned to understand it in Inverara, to the
sound of the sea, strong like the hailstones that
pattered on the crags, like the roar of the storm
wind, like the lashing of the breakers against
the cliffs. Inverara had rubbed the balm   of
her fierce strength into his marrows. She had
purified his blood with her bitter winds. She
had filled his exhausted lungs with the smell of
her sea. And it was at that moment, when he
came face to face with the reality of death, that
248




VAe
0BL BLACK SOUL0 L
the reality of life assumed a meaning for him.
Big Dick reached the plateau, and advanced towards the Stranger and the corpse, the legs of
his yellow oilskin trousers clashing one against
the other with a shuffling sound. "Mother of
God!" he said, crossing himself, "he's dead."
And he looked from the corpse to the Stranger
with awe and fear.
They hoisted the corpse to the cliff-top and then
the Stranger put the noose under his armpits and
was hoisted up. As he ascended the cliff, he felt a
wonderful exhilaration as if he were being raised
aloft into a heaven of happiness. And for the first
time since he had rounded the dangerous curve he
thought of Little Mary. And with the thought of
her, he felt a fiercer anger than before, like an
animal whose mate is in danger. And then he felt
hands about his shoulders and he scrambled to the
cliff-top into Little Mary's arms.
For half a minute they lay clasped in an embrace
that made them unconscious of their surroundings, of the angry mutterings of the men, arguing
with O'Daly, who had arrived just then, of the
screaming of the women, of the corpse of Red
John, lying ghastly and naked against a green
mound; unconscious of the wind that now tore
up over the cliff-top with a savage roar. Red
John's uncle's wife rushed at Little Mary scream249




The
R019R!3        B LBLAC K  SO U L
ing, "She killed him, she's enchanted, down with
her, the whore!" and the Stranger jumped to his
feet, with Little Mary clinging to his waist. He
had raised his arm to strike the woman, when
O'Daly rushed in between them and pushed him
back. "Go, run for your lives," he whispered;
"run." "Keep back there," he shouted to the
peasants, "or I'll get every one of you shot." And
as the Stranger and Little Mary hurried away
from the cliff towards the village, the men cursed
and threatened them and the women gathered
around the corpse screaming and wailing the
death dirge. And Red John's livid face frowned
sardonically in death, as if he were conscious that
he who in life was despised and persecuted were
now in his death the centre of all interest.
O'Daly overtook them near the cabin. "Hurry!
Get your things and come with me," he panted.
"You want to leave the island immediately. Be
quick. I'll give you an address in Dublin... see
you right... I'll fix up everything here...
magistrate, parish priest doesn't want a scandal.   all... everything, d'ye see?... all right."
The Stranger grasped his hand and said, "O'Daly,
you're a friend indeed. I'll never forget you."
The old man muttered an oath under his breath
and shouted gruffly to hide his embarrassment.
"Come on, damn it, there's no time to waste."
250




The
%^(S^B       BL BAACK  SOUL 0,U3L
When they entered Rooruck, it was deserted
like a place suddenly stricken with a plague, and
the Stranger darted into the cabin to get his money
and his clothes, as if every moment he had to
spend in the place were a torture to him. Rushing
about the cabin he started at every sight, at the
bitch that lay curled carelessly on the hearth, with
the wind coming down the chimney blowing the
yellow ashes about her snout, at Red John's
waistcoat lying by the stool where he had dropped
it, at the upturned milk-can, and the stains of the
spilt milk licked dry by the dog. But when he
was passing through the kitchen on his way out,
dressed in his wrinkled blue suit, with a suit-case
in each hand, he looked around and heaved a sigh.
For it is sad to look at even hateful places for the
last time. Then he rushed out and they walked
away hurriedly towards Coillnamhan. "I'll get
you some clothes from my daughter's wardrobe,"
O'Daly was saying to Little Mary; "now for
God's sake keep your heart up. Everything is all
right. I'll see to everything. You have life in
front of you." And as they reached the brow of
the hill east of Rooruck, a weird song was carried
to them on the wind from the south-west. They
paused and looked back. The peasants, carrying
the dead body of Red John on their shoulders,
were coming in a straggling procession from the
251




The
~3T(IfOL      BLACK     SOUL (j!(2
cliff, the men in front, the women behind, their
shawls thrown back over their shoulders, their
frieze petticoats waving in the breeze against the
black sky, their hair dishevelled, their voices rising
and falling mournfully through the changing
rush of the wind. And behind the corpse the
white-haired wife of Red John's uncle staggered,
rending her hair, and her voice came distinct over
the din, chanting the death dirge. "And the
screech heard at dawn shall be ever in my ears,
ochon, ochon... my sorrow pierces the bowels
of the sea, oh my sorrow, my sorrow.."
They shuddered and sped eastwards hurriedly.


252




HAT EVENING THE STRANGER AND LITTLE MARY
set sail in O'Daly's yacht from Coillnamhan
for the mainland. Night was falling as they scudded out under white sails. O'Daly sat at the helm
and the Stranger sat with Little Mary in the prow
looking back at Inverara. Inverara was becoming
an amorphous mass through the autumn mist, a
black smudge on the horizon. Then it disappeared, and only spectres of white breakers arising
from the deep to embrace it remained, where it
sank out of sight. Farther, and only the distant
mumble of the sea against its cliffs reached their
ears. Then that sound died in the murmur of
the wind, through the yacht's sails.
Inverara had passed out of the Stranger's life.
Tears trickled down his cheeks and he pressed
Little Mary's hand. Inverara, wild, fierce, beautiful, never-changing Inverara, child of the sea,
had vanished.


253












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10




~FG


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