Part 15 (1/2)
She faced him suddenly.
”Shane, why didn't somebody do it for him?”
”I suppose they couldn't see the end, Claire-Anne. They couldn't foresee the king of France's charity, the tricked women, the wine-stained cards.
There's many the Scots gentlemen who would have--set him free.”
”But they didn't, Shane dearest. It seems--Destiny must always win.
Shane, what is that poem in Gaidhlig about the world, the verses you once said?”
”_Treasgair an saoghal, agus tigeann an garth mar smal.
Alaistir, Caesar, 's an mead do bhi d'a bpairt Ta an Theamhair na fear agas feach an Traoi mar ta_-- Life goes conquering on. The winds forever blow Alexander, Caesar, and the crash of their fighting men Tara is gra.s.s, and see how Troy is low--”
He stopped with a little shock, for her face was a mask of tears.
”Dearest, dearest, it's only an old, sad story. It has nothing to do with us. Claire-Anne--”
”Is any story old, Shane? Is any story ever new? Isn't it always the same story?”
She looked at the dagger for an instant more, and put it down with a little sob.
”Poor gentleman!”
-- 9
From his cabin below he could hear the Belfast mate roaring at the helmsman:
”What kind of steering do you call that? Look at your d.a.m.ned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and less of your d.a.m.ned luffin'.”
”Keep her full, sir!” the steersman repeated.
”Look at your foretopsail! Bouse it, blast ye! Bouse it! You Skye cutthroats!”
If the nor'easter held, Shane calculated, he could run through Biscay full, come into the Mediterranean on a broad reach, and jam her straight at Ma.r.s.eilles. About him was the tremor as she took the head seas.
Plunge! Tremble! Dash on! Overhead the squeaking of the sheets, the squeal of blocks, the _thrap-thrap-thrap_ of the lee halyards, the melancholy whining of the gulls. With luck he would be in Ma.r.s.eilles within the week. And if the wind swung westward after he left Gibraltar to port, he would nip off hours, a day even. And every hour counted until the moment he went up the dusky path and called, ”Claire-Anne!”
He had never before driven the _Ulster Lady_ as he was driving her now.
Before, he had been content to get what he could out of her, coaxing her, nursing her, as a trainer does a horse he is fond of; but now he was riding her like a jockey intent on winning a race. On deck the crew wondered what had got into the old man, as they called him, for all his twenty-eight years.
”Before, he was a sailor,” the isles crew complained. ”Is he now a merchant at last? _A Righ is truagh!_ O King, the pity!”
But it was not interest in cargoes that compelled him; it was the thought of a face like the wing of a bird, ready to soar. The dark, gracious face, with the eyes where emotion swirled like a mill-race, the parted ruddy lips-_La Mielleuse_--mouth of honey. And the word he must not say aloud, like some occult word of magic until a certain moment should come:
”Claire-Anne!” Just ”Claire-Anne!”
Before he had left Ma.r.s.eilles he had not been able to think of her, to weigh what happened, to understand. Things were too close. But at sea, and in the dusk of the Antrim glen, and in Belfast and Liverpool, he had had time to view the incident in perspective; to stand aside, as one stands back from a picture, and appreciate the color, the line, the truth; to see that that rich purple, that splash of orange, that rippling, rich silver-gray are not spots like flowers, but a definite design....
In Antrim he had remembered Dancing Town, the vision of Fiddlers' Green.