There was silence for a minute; Cormac, the poor lad, was sobbing like a child. By-and-by Eileen wint on again, but her woice was failing an’ Darby could see that her cheeks were wet.
“The day’ll come when you’ll give over,” she says. “Ah, I see how it’ll all ind. Afther that you’ll visit the churchyard be stealth, so as not to make the other woman sore-hearted.”
“My, oh, my, isn’t she the far-seein’ woman?” thought Darby.
“Little childher’ll come,” she says, “an’ their soft, warm arrums will hould you away. By-and-by you’ll not go where I’m laid at all, an’ all thoughts of these few happy months we’ve spent together—Oh! Mother in Heaven, how happy they were—”
The girl started to her elbow, for, sharp an’ sudden, a wild, wailing cry just outside the windy startled the shuddering darkness. ’Twas a long cry of terror and of grief, not shrill, but piercing as a knife-thrust. Every hair on Darby’s head stood up an’ pricked him like a needle. ’Twas the banshee!
“Whist, listen!” says Eileen. “Oh, Cormac asthore, it’s come for me again!” With that, stiff with terror, she buried herself undher the pillows.
A second cry follyed the first, only this time it was longer, and rose an’ swelled into a kind of a song that broke at last into the heart-breakingest moan that ever fell on mortial ears. “Ochone!” it sobbed.
The knowledgeable man, his blood turned to ice, his legs thremblin’ like a hare’s, stood looking in spite of himself at the black windy-panes, expecting some frightful wision.
Afther that second cry the woice balanced itself up an’ down into the awful death keen. One word made the whole song, and that was the turruble worrud, “Forever!”
“Forever an’ forever, oh, forever!” swung the wild keen, until all the deep meaning of the worrud burned itself into Darby’s sowl, thin the heart-breakin’ sob, “Ochone!” inded always the varse.
Darby was just wondherin’ whether he himself wouldn’t go mad with fright, whin he gave a sudden jump at a hard, sthrained woice which spoke up at his very elbow.
“Darby O’Gill,” it said, and it was the stonecutter who spoke, “do you hear the death keen? It came last night; it’ll come tomorrow night at this same hour, and thin—oh, my God!”
Darby tried to answer, but he could only stare at the white, set face an’ the sunken eyes of the man before him.
There was, too, a kind of fierce quiet in the way McCarthy spoke that made Darby shiver.
The stonecutter wint on talkin’ the same as though he was goin’ to dhrive a bargain. “They say you’re a knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill,” he says, “an’ that on a time you spint six months with the fairies. Now I make you this fair, square offer,” he says, laying a forefinger in the palm of the other hand. “I have fifty-three pounds that Father Cassidy’s keeping for me. Fifty-three pounds,” he says agin. “An’ I have this good bit of a farm that me father was born on, an’ his father was born on, too, and the grandfather of him. An’ I have the grass of seven cows. You know that. Well, I’ll give it all to you, all, every stiver of it, if you’ll only go outside an’ dhrive away that cursed singer.” He trew his head to one side an’ looked anxious up at Darby.
The knowledgeable man racked his brains for something to speak, but all he could say was, “I’ve brought you a bit of tay from the wife, Cormac.”
McCarthy took the tay with unfeeling hands, an’ wint on talking in the same dull way. Only this time there came a hard lump in his throat now and then that he stopped to swally.
“The three cows I have go, of course, with the farm,” says he. “So does the pony an’ the five pigs. I have a good plough an’ a foine harrow; but you must lave my stone-cutting tools, so little Eileen an’ I can earn our way wherever we go, an’ it’s little the crachure ates the best of times.”
The man’s eyes were dhry an’ blazin’; no doubt his mind was cracked with grief. There was a lump in Darby’s throat, too, but for all that he spoke up scolding-like.
“Arrah, talk rayson, man,” he says, putting two hands on Cormac’s chowlders; “if I had the wit or the art to banish the banshee, wouldn’t I be happy to do it an’ not a fardin’ to pay?”
“Well, then,” says Cormac, scowling, an’ pushin’ Darby to one side, “I’ll face her myself—I’ll face her an’ choke that song in her throat if Sattin himself stood at her side.”
With those words, an’ before Darby could sthop him, the stonecutter flung open the door an’ plunged out into the night. As he did so the song outside sthopped. Suddenly a quick splashing of feet, hoarse cries, and shouts gave tidings of a chase. The half-crazed gossoon had stharted the banshee—of that there could be no manner of doubt. A raymembrance of the awful things that she might do to his friend paythrefied the heart of Darby.
Even afther these cries died away he stood listenling a full minute, the sowls of his two brogues glued to the floor. The only sounds he heard now were the deep ticking of a clock and a cricket that chirped slow an’ solemn on the hearth, an’ from somewhere outside came the sorrowful cry of a whipperwill. All at once a thought of the broken bridge an’ of the black, treacherous waters caught him like the blow of a whip, an’ for a second drove from his mind even the fear of the banshee.
In that one second, an’ before he rayalised it, the lad was out undher the dhripping trees, and running for his life toward the broken footbridge. The night was whirling an’ beating above him like the flapping of thraymendous wings, but as he ran Darby thought he heard above the rush of the water and
