Be a narrow throw of light from McCarthy’s side windy our thraveller could see the maddened wather sthrivin’ an’ tearing to pull with it the props of the little footbridge; an’ the boards shook an’ the centre swayed undher his feet as he passed over. “Bedad, I’ll not cross this way goin’ home, at any rate,” he says, looking back at it.
The worruds were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a crack, an’ the middle of the footbridge lifted in the air, twishted round for a second, an then hurled itself into the sthrame, laving the two inds still standing in their place on the banks.
“Tunder an’ turf!” he cried, “I mustn’t forget to tell the people within of this, for if ever there was a thrap set by evil spirits to drownd a poor, unwary mortial, there it stands. Oh, ain’t the ghosts turrible wicious on Halloween!”
He stood dhrippin’ a minute on the threshold, listening; thin, without knockin’, lifted the latch an’ stepped softly into the house.
II
Two candles burned above the blue and white chiney dishes on the table, a bright fire blazed on the hearth, an’ over in the corner where the low bed was set the stonecutter was on his knees beside it.
Eileen lay on her side, her shining hair sthrealed out on the pillow. Her purty, flushed face was turned to Cormac, who knelt with his forehead hid on the bedcovers. The colleen’s two little hands were clasped about the great fist of her husband, an’ she was talking low, but so airnest that her whole life was in every worrud.
“God save all here!” said Darby, takin’ off his hat, but there was no answer. So deep were Cormac an’ Eileen in some conwersation they were having together that they didn’t hear his coming. The knowledgeable man didn’t know what to do. He raylised that a husband and wife about to part forever were lookin’ into aich other’s hearts, for maybe the last time. So he just sthood shifting from one foot to the other, watching thim, unable to daypart, an’ not wishin’ to obtrude.
“Oh, it isn’t death at all that I fear,” Eileen was saying. “No, no, Cormac asthore, ’tis not that I’m misdoubtful of; but, ochone mavrone, ’tis you I fear!”
The kneelin’ man gave one swift upward glance, and dhrew his face nearer to the sick wife. She wint on, thin, spakin’ tindher an’ half smiling an’ sthrckin’ his hand:
“I know, darlint, I know well, so you needn’t tell me, that if I were to live with you a thousand years you’d never sthray in mind or thought to any other woman, but it’s when I’m gone—when the lonesome avenings folly aich other through days an’ months, an’ maybe years, an’ you sitting here at this fireside without one to speak to, an’ you so handsome an’ gran’, an’ with the penny or two we’ve put away—”
“Oh, asthore machree, why can’t ye banish thim black thoughts!” says the stonecutter. “Maybe,” he says, “the banshee will not come again. Ain’t all the counthry-side prayin’ for ye this night, an’ didn’t Father Cassidy himself bid you to hope? The saints in Heaven couldn’t be so crool!” says he.
But the colleen wint on as though she hadn’t heard him, or as if he hadn’t intherrupted her:
“An’ listen,” says she; “they’ll come urging ye, the neighbours, an’ raysonin’ with you. You’re own flesh an’ blood’ll come, an’, no doubt, me own with them, an’ they all sthriving to push me out of your heart, an’ to put another woman there in my place. I’ll know it all, but I won’t be able to call to you, Cormac machree, for I’ll be lying silent undher the grass, or undher the snow up behind the church.”
While she was sayin’ thim last worruds, although Darby’s heart was meltin’ for Eileen, his mind began running over the colleens of that townland to pick out the one who’d be most likely to marry Cormac in the ind. You know how farseeing an’ quick-minded was the knowledgeable man. He settled sudden on the Hanlon girl, an’ daycided at once that she’d have Cormac before the year was out. The ondaycency of such a thing made him furious at her.
He says to himself, half crying, “Why, then, bad cess to you for a shameless, red-haired, forward baggage, Bridget Hanlon, to be runnin’ afther the man, an’ throwing yourself in his way, an’ Eileen not yet cowld in her grave!” he says.
While he was saying them things to himself, McCarthy had been whuspering fierce to his wife, but what it was the stonecutter said the friend of the fairies couldn’t hear. Eileen herself spoke clean enough in answer, for the faver gave her onnatural strength.
“Don’t think,” she says, “that it’s the first time this thought has come to me. Two months ago, whin I was sthrong an’ well an’ sittin’ happy as a meadowlark at your side, the same black shadow dhrifted over me heart. The worst of it an’ the hardest to bear of all is that they’ll be in the right, for what good can I do for you when I’m undher the clay,” says she.
“It’s different with a woman. If you were taken an’ I left I’d wear your face in my heart through all me life, an’ ax for no sweeter company.”
“Eileen,” says Cormac, liftin’ his hand, an’ his woice was hoarse as the roar of the say, “I swear to you on me bendid knees—”
With her hand on his lips, she sthopped him. “There’ll come on ye by daygrees a great cravin’ for sympathy, a hunger an’ a longing for affection, an’ you’ll have only the shadow of my poor, wanished face to comfort you, an’ a recollection of a woice that is gone forever. A new, warm face’ll keep pushin’ itself betwixt us—”
“Bad luck to that redheaded hussy!” mutthered Darby, looking around disthressed. “I’ll warn father Cassidy of her an’ of her
