by George Moore
CHAPTER 16.
ONE DAY IN my walks in the high wood I spied a man standing on a boulder in the midst of the river, seemingly undecided whether he should jump to the next one; and knowing the pool to be deep between the boulders I tried to dissuade him.
There’s no chance of drowning, he cried to me, but if I miss my step I’ll be up to my belt. I called out that to cross the river he would be trespassing on private rights, but he did not heed my warning. He jumped again; and, laying hold of a protruding root, began to climb the bank, telling me as he made his way up that the master (the gentleman in whose house I was staying) would have nothing to say against the gathering of a few ferns along the river’s bank.
A fern-gatherer, I said, and followed him asking questions, not so much for the answers he gave as for the pleasure it was to listen to his low, musical voice, a tenor voice, in keeping, it seemed to me, with his pale, oval face; a young man who had just passed out of his first youth; an Irish peasant, but far from the typical, I said, when I left him to his search and continued my walk through the beech wood, not able to forget his spare chestnut beard, his moustache and his comely, well-knit figure. These, so it seemed to me, I had seen before and many times, but where I had seen them I could not remember, and it was not till after long soul searching it occurred to me that I had seen him in pictures. Yes, I murmured to myself, he is the Jesus that has come down to us from the fifteenth century, imagined first perhaps by Fra Angelico, and repeated ever since by many thousands of painters, inclining more and more to the feminine and epicene type, becoming a woman in Holman Hunt’s picture, The Light of the World, Miss Christina Rossetti, with a blonde beard and moustache. But, I continued, my fern-gatherer does not reproduce the fond emptiness of Jesus’s face; he is with it all a man; and there can be no doubt that I am doing him an injustice by associating him with Holman Hunt’s version of Christina Rossetti in a blonde beard. My fern-gatherer is a man and altogether himself in the life he has chosen for himself. A romantic figure, I added, one which does honour to the town of Westport.
He had already captured my imagination by dinner-time, and at the first pause in the conversation, when the girls’ narratives of the day’s doings had ceased, I related our meeting, and learnt that legends had already begun to collect about him. His name? I asked anxiously, feeling I should be disappointed if his name were among those that one wearies of in Ireland — Higgins, Walsh, O’Connor, Murphy. That it might not be Murphy I prayed inly. Alec Trusselby! It would be strange, indeed, I exclaimed, if legends had not begun to collect about a name like that, and begged that all that was known about him should be told to me at once. Everybody was willing to tell, and the biographical scraps uttered from different ends and sides of the dinner-table were in keeping with his name.
I learnt from one member of the family that Alec had been to America and had suffered from sunstroke, from another that he lived in the woods all the summer-time, bringing back beech and oak ferns to Westport and getting for them a fair share of money; and from another that his voice and manner were so winning that it was difficult not to be his customer, and as every customer became a patron, Alec had no cause for complaint. Even if he had he is not the kind of man that would complain, a girl suddenly interjected, and turning to her I asked: how is that? She replied that he was a very shy man who would remain silent for long intervals to break into speech suddenly like a bird. This seemed to me a good description, but I had not seen enough of Alec at that time to be able to vouch for its accuracy. A girl told me the report was that Alec had built himself a summer dwelling in a great tree, and I answered that what she said did not surprise me. Lying in his bed under the boughs, I said, he caught his style from the moody blackbird who fills the wood at dawn with his exalted lay; more likely still from the meditative thrush. But how does Alec live through the winter? I asked, and it was delightful to hear that in the winter he related stories about the firesides in the cottages, and that no one refused Alec bed and board if he could help it; Alec’s company was sought for by everybody; and a suspicion was abroad that to treat him ill was to bring ill luck upon oneself. Gathering ferns in the summer and telling stories in the winter, I repeated, becoming possessed in a moment of an absorbing interest in Alec Trusselby. Is he an Irish speaker? I asked, and heard that he was one of the best in the county of Mayo. But, a girl cried across the table, mind, if he suspects you of laughing at him he will run away at once, and don’t tell him you’re a Protestant, he might refuse to go into the woods with you. With a heretic? I added.
A custard pudding interrupted the conversation about Alec, but as soon as everybody had been helped it returned to him, and I learnt that the gentle winning personality that had awakened fellow-feeling in me was only one side of Alec Trusselby; there was another, and one well known to the Westport police — staunch friends of his, always ready to take his part when Alec’s less reputable associates mocked him in the street after drinking his money away in the public-house, their joke being to try to grab the
Murrigan, not an easy thing to do, for it never left his hand, and where the Murrigan was concerned Alec was resolute and strong.
The Murrigan? I interjected. He calls his blackthorn the Murrigan, one of the girls answered; but we don’t know what the word means, whether it’s an Irish word or a word invented by himself. I wonder if the police could tell me? I said. Now why should the police be bothering their heads with what Alec means when he calls his stick the Murrigan? my friend, the girls’ father, blurted out; and he laughed the short, quick, intelligent laugh whereby I remember him. Haven’t they enough to do to keep him out of jail? And he told a story how, returning home late one night, he had come upon Trusselby and the police — the sergeant and the constable engaged in trying to persuade Alec to return to his lodging. You see, Alec, you’re free to follow them if you like: the constable has let go your arm, the sergeant was saying. But if you take my advice you’ll be taking yourself and the Murrigan home like the quiet, good man that you are, the divil a better. If they insult you again we’ll let yourself and the Murrigan at them, but this time we’ll be asking you to let them pass on, for to break their skulls with the Murrigan would be conferring too much honour upon them. You see, said mine host, we have all a kindly feeling for Trusselby, myself as well as the police; to keep him out of jail takes us all our time, and we haven’t that much over to be ferreting out the meaning of all the talk that goes on between himself and his stick as he walks the roads. But he’s not half-witted? I asked, looking round the dinner-table, preferring a general to an individual opinion, and the company was agreed that Alec could not be held to be a loon. And his stories? I asked; but none at the table had felt sufficient curiosity to ask him to tell them one. I’d give a great deal, I said, to hear Trusselby tell a story, and was warned not to offer him a great deal of money, but to wait an occasion to win his confidence. If you offer him a sovereign to tell you a story you’ll frighten him; he’ll begin to suspect some evil and you’ll get nothing out of him. But I may not meet Trusselby again, and if I did, to the end of my visit is not a long time to win his confidence — I shall be leaving in a few days. You can stay as long as you like, my host and my hostess interjected, we would like to see you friends with Trusselby before you leave.
The next day one of the girls rushed into the room in which I was writing: Trusselby is coming down the hill, she said, and I bolted out after him. You sell ferns, don’t you? I asked; he answered that he did, and I asked him to get me some. He said he would and passed on, and I returned to the house disappointed. But luck was with me, and two evenings later, returning home after dining with a friend, I met Trusselby at the riverside, whirling the Murrigan and apparently in a convivial mood. Well, Alec, I said, have you come upon the royal or the hart’s tongue in your walks? You’re the gentleman I met the other day up at the old mill, aren’t you? he asked. I answered that I was, and we walked on together, myself making conversation, afraid every moment that Trusselby would sa
y: I must be wishing you good-night, sir, or I’ll be locked out. But it was unlikely that Trusselby had a latchkey, it was more probable that he contemplated spending the night out, which would be no great hardship, for the night was warm and still, and were it not that a bench is a hard bed, the most home-loving and respectable man in Westport might have liked to have lain out of doors, sooner or later to be hushed to sleep by the almost inaudible sound of water rippling past and the soft cawing of sleepy rooks. A night it was that would keep anybody out of his bed till midnight at least, except, perhaps, a dry old curmudgeon. A breathless night, full of stars, and perchance stories, I said to myself, and then aloud to Alec: yes, we met up at the old mill, but you didn’t find the ferns you were looking for? Is it the royal you’re after? Alec asked, and I answered that that was what I had in mind, and having listened to Trusselby for some time on the rarity of the fern, I broke in with the remark that I’d never seen a finer blackthorn than the one he was carrying.
He had come upon it in a brake, he said, in a thicket that often served him as a bedroom in a summer’s night when his quest for ferns had led him far from Westport. And it was one morning at sunrise that I spied her; she was no thicker that morning than one of my fingers, and I said to myself: in about three years’ time that stem will be the finest in Ireland if the top be cut at once so that it may be throwing out little knots and spikes. The knots begin almost at the top, sir, and at every knot there is three spikes. You would be lost if you started counting them, just as you might be if you were to start on the stars in the skies. It was the blessing of God that I saw the Murrigan that morning, for a year later it would have been to late to cut the top. I was only in time, and there it stayed for its three years sprouting, with three spikes coming out on every knot. You can see them, sir, all the way up. Faith, there isn’t half-an-inch of the stick without its three spikes. But if somebody had gone into the brake and seen the stick before you? I asked. I had to risk that, sir, for it takes three full years for the stick to furnish, and often I didn’t like going to the brake for fear a person might spy me and be wondering what I was after and perhaps be coming in behind me and find out the stick; but sure I had the luck all the time and nobody came. In three years to the day, your honour, I was down in the dingle cutting my stick, my heart filled with joy so furnished was it. Mind you, sir, the seasoning of a blackthorn isn’t understood by every man, for when you’ve cut your stick you must season it, and the place I was living in then had a fine old chimney with a flue inside of it on which you could rest a stick, and there the Murrigan rested seasoning. After six good months I took it down and gave it a rub with an oil rag, and I’ll tell you, mister, it was good for sore eyes to see the way it was coming up. Take a look at it yourself now and tell me, is there a bit of Spanish mahogany in the country is its equal for colour. To this I agreed, and asked: is that the reason you call it the Murrigan? Well, it isn’t, your honour. Do you see, Murrigan means “great queen” in the Irish, and my stick here is the queen of the fair this many a day. The stick knows it too, for if I’m not at the fair off goes the Murrigan without me; I look round in the morning, but not a stick can I see, so I say: the Murrigan’s gone, and she’ll be breaking the head of some poor chap out of sheer light-heartedness and divilment. That’s the way it does be, sir, for after she’s gone there’s somebody has a cracked head somewhere. No one knows who breaks it, barring the Murrigan, and she tells nobody, but just flies back unbeknownst to anybody, and finds her old place in the corner just as any creature would. And there I find her, waiting for me. Have a look at the Murrigan, sir, for you’ll never see another like her. She’s as beautifully ornamented as the Brooch of Tara itself, and she has the finest colour in Ireland or out of Ireland.
Faith and troth I never did. So the Murrigan goes to the fair by herself?
She does so, your honour, and she flies round the heads of the people, urging them on the way the old Murrigan used to do when Brian Boru was in it, waking up the spirit of fight in them. The Murrigan whirls like an eagle over the heads of the people, prodding them here and poking them there, and putting them at each other. When I’m there, and the Murrigan with me, I feel my hand rise up and my head is that elated I don’t know whether it’s me or the Murrigan is doing the deeds, and I don’t know if the stars that are in my head aren’t thicker and twice as thick than they are in the sky. All I can see is the Murrigan about me and she whirling like a bird, but never leaving me five fingers; a faithful thing the Murrigan, bless her soul, and she saved my life many a time, good luck to her!
Trusselby kissed his blackthorn and we leaned our backs against the parapet of the bridge, looking up into the sky, the town asleep, nothing to be heard about us but the ripple of the river. Trusselby seemed to have forgotten me, and I wondered of what he could be thinking, of some battle long ago, I thought, in which doubtless the Murrigan played a great part, and seeing a smile playing over his bland, almost holy face, I said: there used to be great fighting long ago? It was about fighting I was thinking, your honour, a great fair at Castlebar, when there were more two-year-olds than three-year-olds about.
To check the story that was on his lips with a question would have been fatal, so I held my peace, hoping to learn whether the fair was lacking in two-year-old bullocks or two-year-old colts and fillies.
He began again after a pause. You see, sir, in the old times when your ancestors were in it, God rest their souls, in the days of your grandfather, there was an O’Brien sold a heifer to a Fitzgerald for a two-year-old, but the heifer itself was a three-year-old; and the next fair day there was a fight between Fitzgerald and O’Brien; and at the next fair the Fitzgerald brothers and the O’Brien brothers were fighting; and the fair day after that the cousins were in the fight, and after the cousins the friends came in on one side and the other, until it was a dangerous thing to hold any fair in the country at all, so great was the fighting; after whacking with all the blackthorns in the country over all the skulls in the country for more than fifty years the war finished, and it was only at the heel of the hunt that I strolled in one fair day to Castlebar. There was a man there, and somebody made a cake of his skull with a tap of a stick. Nobody knew who did it. He said it was the policeman, and he took out a summons against the policeman. Well, I was a witness in the case, your honour, and I couldn’t see an innocent man condemned even if he was a peeler itself. When I came before the magistrate he asked if I was standing by at the time. I was, your Worship, says I; and he says: was it the policeman broke the man’s head? and I said: it was not, your Worship; the policeman didn’t hit the man that tap. A tap, you call it, said the man, Michael Joyce was his name, and he lifted up the bloody bandage that was upon his brow. ’Tis more than a tap, your Worship, says I, it’s a clout; but tap or clout, it wasn’t the policeman gave it to him. You’re on your oath, Alec Trusselby, he said. And I said: before God?, and I gave a swear that it wasn’t the policeman. Now what do you think but the magistrate was looking into Joyce’s face, and he saw three little weeney holes around his eye, and he took notice of them three little holes, and when I picked up the Murrigan and was going out of the box he said: let me have a look at your stick, Trusselby, so I gave it to him, and he said: wasn’t it you gave the man the tap? And I said: it was so, your Worship. Tell me, says he, why did you strike that blow? So I ups and I told him the story of the two-year-olds and the three-year-olds. Which was he, said the magistrate, was he a two-year-old or a three-year-old? Your Worship, says I, he was like myself, he was a two-year-old. And why did you assault and batter the man? Well, you see, your Worship, says I, there was only a few of us in that fair. We was outnumbered altogether by the three-year-olds, and Joyce yonder was saying he’d like well to see the man who’d tread on the tail of his coat, and seeing that there would be a fight in which we might be worsted I just gave him a tap to make him quiet like, and to keep him out of harm’s way.
So that’s the story of the Murrigan? It is, your honour, I’ve told you the
whole of it. A wonderful stick she is; look at her; every knob with three little spikes like the blessed shamrock that St Patrick picked so that he would be able to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagans. A beautiful stick, I said, and a very interesting story. You know many stories, Alec, and can tell them better than any man now living. It’s puffing me up with pride and goster you’d be, your honour, and after reminding him that he had promised to bring me some beech and oak ferns we parted, myself regretting that my shyness had prevented me from asking Alec to tell me a story. The night is fine, I said, and he was in the humour; he wouldn’t have refused, but I’ve missed my chance unless I fortune to meet him again before leaving Westport.
It was two days afterwards that I met Trusselby speeding down the road from the woods, his hands full of ferns, and accosting him with a pleasant good-morning and a reference to our talk by the bridge under the elm-trees I invited him to come up to the high wood with me. You may have overlooked some ferns, I said. He did not answer, but his eyes said plainly enough that he didn’t believe he had overlooked any. Well, come with me, I said. If we find some ferns so much the better, if we don’t I’ll reward you for your afternoon all the same. Well, if it will please your honour, I’ll come up with you. We found no ferns, but, as if to compensate me for my factitious disappointment, Alec proposed to go to Ilanaidi to search for the royal, and, after visiting all the moist banks and hollows of the town-land, we returned with some fine specimens of beech and oak ferns, some specimens of the hart’s tongue — a beautiful tall fern flowing out like a ribbon, Alec’s own description of it — and in our hearts the hope that on another day we might be more fortunate and come upon the royal. And to the gate of my friend’s house Alec continued to assure me that it had been heard of between Ilanaidi and Castlebar. At the wicket I gave him to understand that I was ready when he was for a day in the woods and fields. Till to-morrow, were my last words to him, and as soon as they were spoken my face changed expression, for Ilanaidi was four or five miles from Westport, and there and back would be a long way for a man of letters.
