Seamus O’Kelly, “The Weaver’s Grave”

Pt. III
The widow went up the road, and beyond it struck the first of the houses of the near-by town. She passed through faded streets in her quiet gait, moderately grief-stricken at the death of her weaver. She had been his fourth wife, and the widowhoods of fourth wives have not the rich abandon, the great emotional cataclysm, of first, or even second, widowhoods. It is a little chastened in its poignancy. The widow had a nice feeling that it would be out of place to give way to any of the characteristic manifestations of normal widowhood. She shrank from drawing attention to the fact that she had been a fourth wife. People’s memories become so extraordinarily acute to family history in times of death! The widow did not care to come in as a sort of dramatic surprise in the gossip of the people about the weaver’s life. She had heard snatches of such gossip at the wake the night before. She was beginning to understand why people love wakes and the intimate personalities of wakehouses. People listen to, remember, and believe what they hear at wakes. It is more precious to them than anything they ever hear in school, church, or playhouse. It is hardly because they get certain entertainment at the wake. It is more because the wake is a grand review of family ghosts. There one hears all the stories, the little flattering touches, the little unflattering bitternesses, the traditions, the astonishing records, of the clans. The woman with a memory speaking to the company from a chair beside a laid-out corpse carries more authority than the bishop allocuting from his chair. The wake is realism. The widow had heard a great deal at the wake about the clan of the weavers, and noted, without expressing any emotion, that she had come into the story not like other women, for anything personal to her own womanhood-for beauty, or high spirit, or temper, or faithfulness, or unfaithfulness - but simply because she was a fourth wife, a kind of curiosity, the back-wash of Mortimer Hehir’s romances. The widow felt a remote sense of injustice in all this. She had said to herself that widows who had, been fourth wives deserved more sympathy than widows who had been first wives, for the simple reason that fourth widows had never been, and could never be, first wives! The thought confused her a, little, and she did not pursue it, instinctively feeling that if she did accept the conventional view of her condition she would only crystallise her widowhood into a grievance that nobody would try [198] to understand, and which would, accordingly, be merely useless. And what was the good of it, anyhow? The widow smoothed her dark hair on each side of her head under her shawl.
  She had no bitter and no sweet memories of the weaver. There was nothing that was even vivid in their marriage. She had no complaints to make of Mortimer Hehir. He had not come to her in any fiery love impulse. It was the marriage of an old man with a woman years younger. She had recognised him as an old man from first to last, a man who had already been thrice through a wedded experience, and her temperament, naturally calm, had met his half stormy, half-petulant character, without suffering any sort of shock. The weaver had tried to keep up to the illusion of a perennial youth by dyeing his hair, and marrying one wife as soon as possible after another. The fourth wife had come to him late in life. She had a placid understanding that she was a mere flattery to the weaver’s truculent egoism.
  These thoughts, in some shape or other, occupied, without agitating, the mind of the widow as she passed, a dark shadowy figure through streets that were clamorous in their quietudes, painful in their lack of all the purposes for which streets have ever been created. Her only emotion was one which she knew to be quite creditable to her situation: a sincere desire to see the weaver buried in the grave which the respectability of his family and the claims of his ancient house fully and fairly entitled him to. The proceedings in Cloon na Morav had been painful, even tragical, to the widow. The weavers had always been great authorities and zealous guardians of the ancient burial place. This function had been traditional and voluntary with them. This was especially true of the last of them, Mortimer Hehir. He had been the greatest of all authorities on the burial places of the local clans. His knowledge was scientific. He had been the grand savant of Cloon na Morav. He had policed the place. Nay, he had been its tyrant. He had over and over again prevented terrible mistakes, complications that would have appalled those concerned if they were not beyond all such concerns. The widow of the weaver had often thought that in his day Mortimer Hehir had made his solicitation for the place a passion, unreasonable, almost violent. They said that all this had sprung from a fear that had come to him in his early youth that through some blunder an alien, an inferior, even an enemy, might come to find his way into the family burial place of the weavers. This fear had made him what [199] he was. And in his later years his pride in the family burial place became a worship. His trade had gone down, and his pride had gone up. The burial ground in Cloon na Morav was the grand proof of his aristocracy. That was the coat-of-arms, the estate, the mark of high breeding, in the weavers. And now the man who had minded everybody’s grave had not been able to mind his own. The widow thought that it was one of those injustices which blacken the reputation of the whole earth. She had felt, indeed, that she had been herself slack not to have learned long ago the lie of this precious grave from the weaver himself; and that he himself had been slack in not properly instructing her. But that was the way in this miserable world! In his passion for classifying the rights of others, the weaver had obscured his own. In his long and entirely successful battle in keeping alien corpses out of his own aristocratic pit he had made his own corpse alien to every pit in the place. The living high priest was the dead pariah of Cloon na Morav. Nobody could now tell except, perhaps, Malachi Roohan, the precise spot which he had defended against the blunders and confusions of the entire community, a dead - forgetting, indifferent, slack lot!
  The widow tried to recall all she had ever heard the weaver say about his grave, in the hope of getting some clue, something that might be better than the scandalous scatter-brained efforts of Meehaul Lynskey and Cahir Bowes. She remembered various detached things that the weaver, a talkative man, had said about his grave. Fifty years ago since that grave had been last opened, and it had then been opened to receive the remains of his father. It had been thirty years previous to that since it had taken in his father, that is, the newly dead weaver’s father’s father. The weavers were a long-lived lot, and there were not many males of them; one son was as much as any one of them begot to pass to the succession of the loom; if there were daughters they scattered, and their graves were continents apart. The three wives of the late weaver were buried in the new cemetery. The widow remembered that the weaver seldom spoke of them, and took no interest in their resting place. His heart was in Cloon na Morav and the sweet, dry, deep, aristocratic bed he had there in reserve for himself. But all his talk had been generalisation. He had never, that the widow could recall, said anything about the site, about the signs and measurements by which it could be identified. No doubt, it had been well known to many people, but they had all died. The weaver had never realised [200] what their slipping away might mean to himself. The position of the grave was so intimate to his own mind that it never occurred to him that it could be obscure to the minds of others. Mortimer Hehir had passed away like some learned and solitary astronomer who had discovered a new star, hugging its beauty, its exclusiveness, its possession to his heart, secretly rejoicing how its name would travel with his own through heavenly space for all time-and forgetting to mark its place among the known stars grouped upon his charts. Meehaul Lynskey and Cahir Bowes might now be two seasoned astronomers of venal knowledge looking for the star which the weaver, in his love for it, had let slip upon the mighty complexity of the skies.
  The thing that is clearest to the mind of a man is often the thing that is most opaque to the intelligence of his bosom companion. A saint may walk the earth in the simple belief that all the world beholds his glowing halo; but all the world does not; if it did the saint would be stoned. And Mortimer Hehir had been as innocently proud of his grave as a saint might be ecstatic of his halo. He believed that when the time came he would get a royal funeral-a funeral fitting to the last of the line of great Cloon na Morav weavers. Instead of that they had ‘no more idea of where to bury him than if he had been a wild tinker of the roads.
  The widow, thinking of these things in her own mind, was about to sigh when, behind a window pane, she heard the sudden bubble of a roller canary’s song. She had reached, half absent-mindedly, the home of Malachi Roohan, the cooper.

Pt. IV
The widow of the weaver approached the door of Malachi Roohan’s house with an apologetic step, pawing the threshold a little in the manner of peasant women-a mannerism picked up from shy animals-before she stooped her head and made her entrance.
 Malachi Roohan’s daughter withdrew from the fire a face which reflected the passionate soul of a cook. The face cooled as the widow disclosed her business.
 ‘I wouldn’t put it a-past my father to have knowledge of the grave’, said the daughter of the house, adding, ‘The Lord a mercy on the weaver.’ [201]
 She led the widow into the presence of the cooper.
 The room was small and low and stuffy, indifferently served with light by an unopenable window. There was the smell of old age, of decay, in the room. It brought almost a sense of faintness to the widow. She had the feeling that God had made her to move in the ways of old men-passionate, cantankerous, egoistic old men, old men for whom she was always doing something, always remembering things, from missing buttons to lost graves.
 Her eyes sought the bed of Malachi Roohan with an unemotional, quietly sceptical gaze. But she did not see anything of the cooper. The daughter leaned over the bed, listened attentively, and then very deftly turned down the clothes, revealing the bust of Malachi Roohan. The widow saw a weird face, not in the least pale or lined, but ruddy, with a mahogany bald head, a head upon which the leathery skin-for there did not seem any flesh-hardly concealed the stark outlines of the skull. From the chin there strayed a grey beard, the most shaken and whipped-looking beard that the widow had ever seen; it was, in truth, a very miracle of a beard, for one wondered how it had come there, and having come there, how it continued to hang on, for there did not seem anything to which it could claim natural allegiance. The widow was as much astonished at this beard as if she saw a plant growing in a pot without soil. Through its gaps she could see the leather of the skin, the bones of a neck, which was indeed a neck. Over this head and shoulders the cooper’s daughter bent and shouted into a crumpled ear. A little spasm of life stirred in the mummy. A low, mumbling sound came from the bed. The widow was already beginning to feel that, perhaps, she had done wrong in remembering that the cooper was still extant. But what else could she have done? If the weaver was buried in a wrong grave she did not believe that his soul would ever rest in peace. And what could be more dreadful than a soul wandering on the howling winds of the earth? The weaver would grieve, even in heaven, for his grave, grieve, maybe, as bitterly as a saint might grieve who had lost his halo. He was a passionate old man, such an old man as would have a turbulent spirit. He would surely. The widow stifled the thoughts that flashed into her mind. She was no more superstitious than the rest of us, but …. These vague and terrible fears, and her moderately decent sorrow, were alike banished from her mind by what followed. The mummy on the bed came to life. And, what was more, he did it himself. His [202] daughter looked on with the air of one whose sensibilities had become blunted by a long familiarity with the various stages of his resurrections. The widow gathered that the daughter had been well drilled; she had been taught how to keep her place. She did not tender the slightest help to her father as he drew himself together on the bed. He turned over on his side, then on his back, and stealthily began to insinuate his shoulder blades on the pillow, pushing up his weird head to the streak of light from the little window. The widow had been so long accustomed to assist the aged that she made some involuntary movement of succour. Some half-seen gesture by the daughter, a sudden lifting of the eyelids on the face of the patient, disclosing a pair of blue eyes, gave the widow instinctive pause. She remained where she was, aloof like the daughter of the house. And as she caught the blue of Malachi Roohan’s eyes it broke upon the widow that here in the essence of the cooper there lived a spirit of extraordinary independence. Here, surely, was a man who had been accustomed to look out for himself, who resented the attentions, even in these days of his flickering consciousness. Up he worked his shoulder blades, his mahogany skull, his leathery skin, his sensational eyes, his miraculous beard, to the light and to the full view of the visitor. At a certain stage of the resurrection - when the cooper had drawn two long, stringy arms from under the clothes - his daughter made a drilled movement forward, seeking something in the bed. The widow saw her discover the end of a rope, and this she placed in the hands of her indomitable father. The other end of the rope was fastened to the iron rail of the foot of the bed. The sinews of the patient’s hands clutched the rope, and slowly, wonderfully, magically, as it seemed to the widow, the cooper raised himself to a sitting posture in the bed. There was dead silence in the room except for the laboured breathing of the performer. The eyes of the widow blinked. Yes, there was that ghost of a man hoisting himself up from the dead on a length of tope reversing the usual procedure. By that length of rope did the cooper hang on to life, and the effort of life. It represented his connection with the world, the world which had forgotten him, which marched past his window outside without knowing the stupendous thing that went on his room. There he was, sitting up in the bed, restored to view by his own unaided efforts, holding his grip on life to the last. It cost him something to do it, but he did it. It would take him longer and longer every day to grip along that [203] length of rope; he would fail ell by ell, sinking back to the last helplessness on his rope, descending into eternity as a vessel is lowered on a rope into a dark, deep well. But there he was now, still able for his work, unbeholding to all, self-dependent and alive, looking a little vaguely with his blue eyes at the widow of the weaver. His daughter swiftly and quietly propped pillows at his back, and she did it with the air of one who was allowed a special privilege.
 ‘Nan!’ called the old man to his daughter.
 The widow, cool-tempered as she was, almost jumped on her feet. The voice was amazingly powerful. It was like a shout, filling the little room with vibrations. For four things did the widow ever after remember Malachi Roohan - for his rope, his blue eyes, his powerful voice, and his magic beard. They were thrown on the background of his skeleton in powerful relief.
 ‘Yes, Father’, his daughter replied, shouting into his ear. He was apparently very deaf. This infirmity came upon the widow with a shock. The cooper was full of physical surprises.
 ‘Who’s this one?’ the cooper shouted, looking at the widow. He had the belief that he was delivering an aside.
 ‘Mrs Hehir.’
 ‘Mrs Hehir-what Hehir would she be?’
 ‘The weaver’s wife.’
 ‘The weaver? Is it Mortimer Hehir?’
 ‘Yes, Father.’
 ‘In troth I know her. She’s Delia Morrissey, that married the weaver; Delia Morrissey that he followed to Munster, a raving lunatic with the dint of love.’
 A hot wave of embarrassment swept the widow. For a moment she thought the mind of the cooper was wandering. Then she’ remembered that the maiden name of the weaver’s first wife was, indeed, Delia Morrissey. She had heard it, by chance, once or twice.
 ‘Isn’t it Delia Morrissey herself we have in it?’ the old man asked.
 The widow whispered to the daughter.
 ‘Leave it so.’
 She shrank from a difficult discussion with the spectre on the bed on the family history of the weaver. A sense of shame came to her that she could be the wife to a contemporary of this astonishing old man holding on to the life rope.
 ‘I’m out!’ shouted Malachi Roohan, his blue eyes lighting [205] suddenly. ‘Delia Morrissey died. She was one day eating her dinner and a bone stuck in her throat. The weaver clapped her on the back, but it was all to no good. She choked to death before his eyes on the floor. I remember that. And the weaver himself near died of grief after. But he married secondly. Who’s this he married secondly, Nan?’
 Nan did not know. She turned to the widow for enlightenment. The widow moistened her lips. She had to concentrate her thoughts on a subject which, for her own peace of mind, she had habitually avoided. She hated genealogy. She said a little nervously:
 ‘Sara MacCabe.’
 The cooper’s daughter shouted the name into his ear.
 ‘So you’re Sally MacCabe, from Looscaun, the one Mortimer took off the blacksmith? Well, well, that was a great business, entirely, the pair of them hot-tempered men, and your own beauty going to their heads like strong drink.’
 He looked at the widow, a half-sceptical, half-admiring expression flickering across the leathery face. It was such a look as he might have given to Devorgilla of Leinster, Deirdre of Uladh, or Helen of Troy.
 The widow was not the notorious Sara MacCabe from Looscaun; that lady had been the second wife of the weaver. It was said they had led a stormy life, made up of passionate quarrels and partings, And still more passionate reconciliations, Sara MacCabe from Looscaun not having quite forgotten or wholly neglected the blacksmith after her marriage to the weaver. But the widow again only whispered to the cooper’s daughter:
 ‘Leave it so.’
 ‘What way is Mortimer keeping?’ asked the old man.
 ‘He’s dead’, replied the daughter.
 The fingers of the old man quivered on the rope.
 ‘Dead? Mortimer Hehir dead?’ he cried. ‘What in the name of God happened him?’
 Nan did not know what happened him. She knew that the widow would not mind, so, without waiting for a prompt, she replied:
 ‘A weakness came over him, a sudden weakness.’
 ‘To think of a man being whipped off all of a sudden like that!’ I led the cooper. ‘When that’s the way it was with Mortimer Hehir what one of us can be sure at all? Nan, none of us is sure! To think x)t the weaver, with his heart as strong as a bull, going off in a little [205] weakness! It’s the treacherous world we live in, the treacherous world, surely. Never another yard of tweed will he put up on his old loom! Morty, Morty, you were a good companion, a great warrant to walk the hills, whistling the tunes, pleasant in your conversation and as broad-spoken as the Bible.’
 ‘Did you know the weaver well, Father?’ the daughter asked.
 ‘Who better?’ he replied. ‘Who drank more pints with him than what myself did? And indeed it’s to his wake I’d be setting out, and it’s under his coffin my shoulder would be going, if I wasn’t confined to my rope.’
 He bowed his head for a few moments. The two women exchanged a quick, sympathetic glance.
 The breathing of the old man was the breathing of one who slept. The head sank lower.
 The widow said:
 ‘You ought to make him lie down. He’s tired.’
 The daughter made some movement of dissent; she was afraid to interfere. Maybe the cooper could be very violent if roused. After a time he raised his head again. He looked in a new mood. He was fresher, more wide-awake. His beard hung in wisps to the bedclothes.
 ‘Ask him about the grave’, the widow said.
 The daughter hesitated a moment, and in that moment the cooper looked up as if he had heard, or partially heard. He said:.,
 ‘If you wait a minute now I’ll tell you what the weaver was.’ He stared for some seconds at the little window.
 ‘Oh, we’ll wait’, said the daughter, and turning to the widow added, ‘won’t we, Mrs Hehir?’
 ‘Indeed we will wait’, said the widow.
 ‘The weaver’, said the old man suddenly, ‘was a dream.’
 He turned his head to the women to see how they had take it.
 ‘Maybe’, said the daughter, with a little touch of laughter, maybe Mrs Hehir would not give in to that.’
 The widow moved her hands uneasily under her shawl. She stared a little fearfully at the cooper. His blue eyes were clear a lake water over white sand.
 ‘Whether she gives in to it, or whether she doesn’t give in to it,, said Malachi Roohan, ‘it’s a dream Mortimer Hehir was. And his loom, and his shuttles, and his warping bars, and his bonnin, and
 [206] the threads that he put upon the shifting racks, were all a dream. And the only thing he ever wove upon his loom was a dream.’
 The old man smacked his lips, his hard gums whacking. His daughter looked at him with her head a little to one side.
 ‘And what’s more’, said the cooper, ‘every woman that ever came into his head, and every wife he married, was a dream. I’m telling you that, Nan, and I’m telling it to you of the weaver. His life was a dream, and his death is a dream. And his widow there is a dream. And all the world is a dream. Do you hear me, Nan, this world is all a dream?’
 ‘I hear you very well, Father’, the daughter sang in a piercing voice.
 The cooper raised his head with a jerk, and his beard swept forward, giving him an appearance of vivid energy. He spoke in a voice like a trumpet blast:
 ‘And I’m a dream!’
 He turned his blue eyes on the widow. An unnerving sensation came to her. The cooper was the most dreadful old man she had ever seen, and what he was saying sounded the most terrible thing she had ever listened to. He cried:
 ‘The idiot laughing in the street, the king looking at his crown, the woman turning her head to the sound of a man’s step, the bells ringing in the belfry, the man walking his land, the weaver at his loom, the cooper handling his barrel, the Pope stooping for his red slippers-they’re all a dream. And I’ll tell you why they’re a dream: because this world was meant to be a dream.’
 ‘Father’, said the daughter, ‘you’re talking too much. You’ll overreach yourself.’
 The old man gave himself a little pull on the rope. It was his gesture of energy, a demonstration of the fine fettle he was in. He said:
 ‘You’re saying that because you don’t understand me.’
 ‘I understand you very well.’
 ‘You only think you do. Listen to me now, Nan. I want you to do something for me. You won’t refuse me?’
 ‘I will not refuse you, Father; you know very well I won’t.’
 ‘You’re a good daughter to me, surely, Nan. And do what I tell you now. Shut close your eyes. Shut them fast and tight. No fluttering of the lids now.’
 ‘Very well, Father.’
 The daughter closed her eyes, throwing up her face in the attitude [207] of one blind. The widow was conscious of the woman’s strong, rough features, something good-natured in the line of the large mouth. The old man watched the face of his daughter with excitement. He asked:
 ‘What is it that you see now, Nan?’
 ‘Nothing at all, Father.’
 ‘In troth you do. Keep them closed tight and you’ll see it.’
 ‘I see nothing only -’
 ‘Only what? Why don’t you say it?’
 ‘Only darkness, Father.’
 ‘And isn’t that something to see? Isn’t it easier to see darkness than to see light? Now, Nan, look into the darkness.’
 ‘I’m looking, Father.’
 ‘And think of something-anything at all-the stool before the kitchen fire outside.’
 ‘I’m thinking of it.’
 ‘And do you remember it?’
 ‘I do well.’
 ‘And when you remember it what do you want to do-sit on it, maybe?’
 ‘No, Father.’
 ‘And why wouldn’t you want to sit on it?’
 ‘Because-because I’d like to see it first, to make sure.’
 The old man gave a little crow of delight. He cried:
 ‘There it is! You want to make sure that it is there, although you remember it well. And that is the way with everything in this world. People close their eyes and they are not sure of anything. They want to see it -again before they believe. There is Nan, now, and she does not believe in the stool before the fire, the little stool she’s looking at all her life, that her mother used to seat her on before the fire when she was a small child. She closes her eyes, and it is gone! And, listen to me now, Nan - if you had a man of your own and you: closed your eyes you wouldn’t be too sure he was the man you remembered, and you’d want to open your eyes and look at him to make sure he was the man you knew before the lids dropped on your eyes. And if you had children about you and you turned your back and closed your eyes and tried to remember them you’d want to look at them to make sure. You’d be no more sure of them than you are now of the stool in the kitchen. One flash of the eyelids and everything in this world is gone.’ [208]
 ‘I’m telling you, Father, you’re talking too much.’
 ‘I’m not talking half enough. Aren’t we all uneasy about the world, the things in the world that we can only believe in while we’re looking at them? From one season of our life to another haven’t we a kind of belief that some time we’ll waken up and find everything different? Didn’t you ever feel that, Nan? Didn’t you think things would change, that the world would be a new place altogether, and that all that was going on around us was only a business that was doing us out of something else? We put up with it while the little hankering is nibbling at the butt of our hearts for the something else! All the men there be who believe that some day The Thing will happen, that they’ll turn round the corner and waken up in the new great Street!’
 ‘And sure’, said the daughter, ‘maybe they are right, and maybe they will waken up.’
 The old man’s body was shaken with a queer spasm of laughter. It began under the clothes on the bed, worked up his trunk, ran along his stringy arms, out into the rope, and the iron foot of the bed rattled. A look of extraordinarily malicious humour lit up the vivid face of the cooper. The widow beheld him with fascination, a growing sense of alarm. He might say something. He might do anything. He might begin to sing some fearful song. He might leap out of bed.
 ‘Nan’, he said, ‘do you believe you’ll swing round the corner and waken up?’
 ‘Well’, said Nan, hesitating a little, ‘I do.’
 The cooper gave a sort of peacock crow again. He cried:
 ‘Och! Nan Roohan believes she’ll waken up! Waken up from what? From a sleep and from a dream, from this world! Well, if you believe that, Nan Roohan, it shows you know what’s what. You know what the thing around you, called the world, is. And it’s only dreamers who can hope to waken up - do you hear me, Nan; it’s only dreamers who can hope to waken up.’
 ‘I hear you’, said Nan.
 ‘The world is only a dream, and a dream is nothing at all! We all want to waken up out of the great nothingness of this world.’
 ‘And, please God, we will’, said Nan.
 ‘You can tell all the world from me’, said the cooper, ‘that it won’t.’
 ‘And why won’t we, Father?’ [209]
 ‘Because’, said the old man, ‘we ourselves are the dream. When we’re over the dream is over with us. That’s why.’
 ‘Father’, said the daughter, her head again a little to one side, ‘you know a great deal.’
 ‘I know enough’, said the cooper shortly.
 ‘And maybe you could tell us something about the weaver’s grave. Mrs Hehir wants to know.’
 ‘And amn’t I after telling you all about the weaver’s grave? Amn’t I telling you it is all a dream?’
 ‘You never said that, Father. Indeed you never did.’
 ‘I said everything in this world is a dream, and the weaver’s grave is in this world, below in Cloon na Morav.’
 ‘Where in Cloon na Morav? What part of it, Father? That is what Mrs Hehir wants to know. Can you tell her?’
 ‘I can tell her’, said Malachi Roohan. ‘I was at his father’s burial. I remember it above all burials, because that was the day the handsome girl, Honor Costello, fell over a grave and fainted. The sweat broke out on young Donohoe when he saw Honor Costello tumbling over the grave. Not a marry would he marry her after that, and he sworn to it by the kiss of her lips. "I’ll marry no woman that fell on a grave," says Donohoe. "She’d maybe have a child by me with turned-in eyes or a twisted limb." So he married a farmer’s daughter, and the same morning Honor Costello married a cattle drover. Very well, then. Donohoe’s wife had no child at all. She was a barren woman. Do you hear me, Nan? A barren woman she was. And such childer as Honor Costello had by the drover! Yellow hair they had, heavy as seaweed, the skin of them clear as the wind, and limbs as clean as a whistle! It was said the drover was of the blood of the Danes, and it broke out in Honor Costello’s family!’
 :Maybe’, said the daughter, ‘they were Vikings.’
 What are you saying?’ cried the old man testily. ‘Amn’t I telling you it’s Danes they were. Did any one ever hear a greater miracle?’
 ‘No one ever did’, said the daughter, and both women clicked their tongues to express sympathetic wonder at the tale.
 ‘And I’ll tell you what saved Honor Costello’, said the cooper. ‘When she fell in Cloon na Morav she turned her cloak inside out.’
 ‘What about the weaver’s grave, Father? Mrs Hehir wants to know.’
 The old man looked at the widow; his blue eyes searched her face [210] and her figure; the expression of satirical admiration flashed over his features. The nostrils of the nose twitched. He said:
 ‘So that’s the end of the story! Sally MacCabe, the blacksmith’s favourite, wants to know where she’ll sink the weaver out of sight! Great battles were fought in Looscaun over Sally MacCabe! The weaver thought his heart would burst, and the blacksmith damned his soul for the sake of Sally MacCabe’s idle hours.’
 ‘Father’, said the daughter of the house, ‘let the dead rest.’
 ‘Ay’, said Malachi Roohan, ‘let the foolish dead rest. The dream of Looscaun is over. And now the pale woman is looking for the black weaver’s grave. Well, good luck to her!’
 The cooper was taken with another spasm of grotesque laughter. The only difference was that this time it began by the rattling of the rail of the bed, travelled along the rope, down his stringy arms dying out somewhere in his legs in the bed. He smacked his lips, a peculiar harsh sound, as if there was not much meat to it.
 ‘Do I know where Mortimer Hehir’s grave is?’ he said ruminatingly. ‘Do I know where me rope is?’
 ‘Where is it, then?’ his daughter asked. Her patience was great.
 ‘I’ll tell you that’, said the cooper. ‘It’s under the elm tree of Cloon na Morav. That’s where it is surely. There was never a weaver yet that did not find rest under the elm tree of Cloon na Morav. There they all went as surely as the buds came on the branches. Let Sally MacCabe put poor Morty there; let her give him a tear or two in memory of the days that his heart was ready to burst for her, and believe you me no ghost will ever haunt her. No dead man ever yet came back to look upon a woman!’
 A furtive sigh escaped the widow. With her handkerchief she wiped a little perspiration from both sides of her nose. The old man wagged his head sympathetically. He thought she was the long dead Sally MacCabe lamenting the weaver! The widow’s emotion arose from relief that the mystery of the grave had at last been cleared up. Yet her dealings with old men had taught her caution. Quite suddenly the memory of the handsome dark face of the gravedigger who had followed her to the stile came back to her. She remembered that he said something about ‘the exact position of the grave’. The widow prompted yet another question:
 ‘What position under the elm tree?’
 The old man listened to the question; a strained look came into his face. [211]
 ‘Position of what?’ he asked.
 ‘Of the grave.’
 ‘Of what grave?’
 ‘The weaver’s grave.’
 Another spasm seized the old frame, but this time it came from no aged merriment. It gripped his skeleton and shook it. It was as if some invisible powerful hand had suddenly taken him by the back of the neck and shaken him. His knuckles rattled on the rope. They had an appalling sound. A horrible feeling came to the widow that the cooper would fall to pieces like a bag of bones. He turned his face to his daughter. Great tears had welled into the blue eyes, giving them an appearance of childish petulance, then of acute suffering.
 ‘What are you talking to me of graves for?’ he asked, and the powerful voice broke. ‘Why will you be tormenting me like this? It’s not going to die I am, is it? Is it going to die I am, Nan?’
 The daughter bent over him as she might bend over a child. She said:
 ‘Indeed, there’s great fear of you. Lie down and rest yourself. Fatigued out and out you are.’
 The grip slowly slacked on the rope. He sank back, quite helpless, a little whimper breaking from him. The daughter stooped lower, reaching for a pillow that had fallen in by the wall. A sudden sharp snarl sounded from the bed, and it dropped from her hand.
 ‘Don’t touch me!’ the cooper cried. The voice was again restored, powerful in its command. And to the amazement of the widow she saw him again grip along the rope and rise in the bed.
 ‘Amn’t I tired telling you not to touch me?’ he cried. ‘Have I any business talking to you at all? Is it gone my authority is in this house?’
 He glared at his daughter, his eyes red with anger, like a dog crouching in his kennel, and the daughter stepped back, a wry smile on her large mouth. The widow stepped back with her, and for a moment he held the women with their backs to the wall by his angry red eyes. Another growl and the cooper sank back inch by inch on the rope. In all her experience of old men the widow had never seen anything like this old man; his resurrections and his collapse. When he was quite down the daughter gingerly put the clothes over his shoulders and then beckoned the widow out of the room. [212]
 The widow left the house of Malachi Roohan, the cooper, with the feeling that she had discovered the grave of an old man by almost killing another.

[ Continued ]