Maurice Walsh: The Small Dark Man (Maurice Walsh) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

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Where Fate has touched

Thou art blind.

In toils of Fate

Rest thou resigned.

“Free am I to come and go.”

But Fate moves thee so—and so.

I

The small dark man came round the corner into the village street and halted. A group of three people stood before the doorway of the post-office, and he could not get inside to send his wire without shouldering past the tall young fellow who glanced at him with a casual and intolerant blue eye, and made no least offer to give space. The postmaster, a lank man with a bloodless face above a fringe of blue-black beard, was giving particular route directions in a soft Highland blas, and the small dark man, leaning a shoulder against the red letter-box let into the window, waited patiently.

“. . . Down the road—the only road it is, anyway—till you come to the high-cocked bridge over the Croghanmoyle, and at th’ither side of it there’ll be a nice path up through a bonnie bit birch woodie. Don’t be misled by that path. It will land ye in a corrie of screes and boulders, and fair wander ye. Keep the road another mile, till the big rock of Craigvhor—ye canna mistake it—a big humploch o’ granite standing two hundred feet up off the left of the road. At the hinner end o’ it there’ll be a path winding up and up—stiff, stiff; but at the top there’s the easy face of the mountain, and ye canna go wrong till the second cairn.”

“Thank you,” said the tall young man.

“Mind you,” said the postmaster, a forefinger raised in a restrained gesture, “this is no’ the time o’ year for climbing Cairn Ban. No’ the time at all.”

The tall young man lifted a blonde, hawk face to the serene July sky, and his well-opened eyes opened a little wider in confident disbelief, and then narrowed to slits as they failed to focus into that tremendous blue abyss.

The postmaster, Highland and wise, did not fail to notice that unbelief. “I’m tellin’ ye,” he said firmly. “From July on it is a rare day that doesn’t wrap a birl of mist round Cairn Ban of an afternoon.”

The young woman smiled at the postmaster. “I know,” she said in a pleasant voice. “But we have been climbing all the week—Cairn Dearg, Stob Mor, Ben a Mhuic—and there was never a shred of mist.” She pronounced the Gaelic names without the southern click.

“Cairn Ban is the hill for mists, young lady,” said the postmaster, a trace of protest still in his voice. “Cairn an Cludaigh Bhain, the Hill of the White Mantle—and the mantle is not snow. If ye will be risking it——”

“We will,” said the tall young man.—“Come on, Fred.” He turned abruptly, and, after a moment of hesitation, the young woman turned too. The two strode off down the village street, and the fine white dust of the road made a little mist round their brown shoon.

The postmaster shuffled a single stride into the roadway and stood looking after them, reproof in his eye. The young man, striding hugely, was tall and strongly built; his wide shoulders were high-set and rigid under heather homespun, and yet his hips and legs gave the impression of being too bulky for his shoulders, perhaps because of the baggy knickerbockers he wore and of the heavily-muscled calves above light ankles. The young woman was tall too, but slim and supple, and carried herself with a litheness to move a pulse.

“You are right,” spoke a resonant baritone voice behind the postmaster. “She has good legs on her, that one.”

The postmaster turned with remarkable quickness for his years, and there was startled surprise in his deeply blue eyes, and a trace of discomfort too. “I wasna observing her legs,” he disclaimed, but without heat.

“Maybe not, then, but I’ll wager my new hat you and I could tell the colour of her hose without another look.” The rich timbre of the deep voice was a delight, and the dark eyes, half-closed, smiled between black lashes.

The postmaster looked at him for a space of two seconds and smiled back, the clean pallor of his face crinkling about his mouth. “They are light brown stockings she’s wearing—almost cream,” he said, “and there’s a seam down the back of them—silk they would be, maybe——”

“Not to climb hills on—merino wool, more like.”

“What I was observing,” the postmaster hastened to elaborate, “was that her brogues were no’ a comfort to her, and she by way of hiding the beginning of a limp. See how she bears on her crook. That lad with her is not the sort would be noticing a small thing like thon, and she’ll have a sair bad blister when he does.”

“The blonde beast!” remarked the small man speculatively.

“No’ that exactly. A pair of honeymooners they might be.”

“Honeymooners! No. I was observing her eyes.” He was no longer speaking to the postmaster, but meditating aloud, his voice rumbling. “She has the tell-tale grey eye. She is surely in love with him and hungry. His wife, and she might still love him; but—anyway, hunger is man’s duty, and that lad has not that on him—he’s too damn sure.”

“You know them, I’m thinking?”

“Never saw them before, and never want to see them again. He and I would not get on well together, and it would be a great pity for him.”

The postmaster glanced from the small figure leaning against the letter-box to the powerful figure dwindling down the road.

“True for you,” agreed the other frankly. “He is a big lad, and I’ll never love him—or her either. I don’t like her colouring. Too fair in the hair below that wisp of silk, and her skin turns ashen under the sun. For all that, she has her looks; but I must have red hair, and a skin that freckles new farthing pieces.”

“A queer lad this,” considered the postmaster, “wherever he came out of.” And aloud he commented, “That kind can be got too.”

“But not held.” The small man jerked his leaning shoulder from the letter-box and cocked a dark eye interrogatively. “Would you have a brother, by any chance, and he a policeman in Dublin?”

“No,” answered the surprised postmaster. “Yon’s no’ a place for anyone’s brother.”

“As they have taught you. No, I suppose not. Queer thing race. It was the way you gave those two trampers directions: first telling them what to avoid. I mind once in O’Connell Street—you won’t object if I call it O’Connell Street?”

“Is that the name of it?” wondered his puzzled listener.

“Honest men used call it Sackville Street. A game we play. Anyhow, I asked a policeman the way to Mountjoy Prison—nice name for a jail, Mountjoy—where a friend of mine was at the time, and deserved to be. ‘Do you see the Parnell Monument up there?’ This was the policeman. ‘I do.’ ‘Don’t take any notice of that; but do you see the clock up above beyond it?’ ‘I do.’ ‘That’s the clock of Findlater’s Church—don’t take any notice of that either, but go straight on till you come to Dorset Street Corner.’ ‘Will I turn there?’ ‘No, No. Keep straight on till you come to the canal, and at Dunphy’s Corner there’ll be another policeman. Ask him and he’ll tell you—unless it’s Shawn Doherty that’s in it, and he won’t know. Go on, now.’ A tall black fellow he was, with a northern accent.”