I
When Moira O'Donnell was born, Timothy Moran was thirty-three years old, a faëry number, as he often told himself afterward. When he was forty and she was seven, another mystic number, he dedicated his life to her and she gave him back his lost kingdom of enchantment. It was on the evening of her seventh birthday that she led him to the Land of Heart's Desire he thought he had left forever in green and desolate Donegal, and her birthday fell on the seventh of October, and October is the month when the little people are busiest. He never forgot what she did for him that evening, although her part in it was so brief.
His own birthday was on the thirteenth of the month, and he often laid his sorrows to that unchancy date. On the seventh he sat on the old Round Stone, his pipes lying silent beside him, and brooded on his heavy ill. Father Delancey had just left him and had told him flatly that he had no ills at all. Hence he sat, his heart heavier than ever, drooping, under the great maple tree, the road white before him, leading away into the empty, half-translucent shadows of starlight. Father Delancey had said it was only the faëry nonsense in his head that made him miserable, and had marshaled before him the irrefutable blessings of his life. Had he not been cared for from the first minute of his landing from Ireland, a penniless piper of nineteen, as though the holy saints themselves were about him? Had he not gone direct to Father Delancey, sent by the priest in Donegal, and had not Father Delancey at once placed him in the Wilcox family, kindliest, heartiest, and most stirring of New England farmers? And had he not lived in prosperity with them ever since?
Timothy started at the faëry number. "Twinty-one years? So 'tis, Father—an' more! 'Tis twinty-one years to-day since I came, aven and true—the seventh day of October. Sure, somethin' ought to happen on such a day—oughtn't it?"
"Happen?" queried Father Delancey.
"The seventh day of October, the twinty-first year and October bein' the month for thim," said Timothy, elucidating confidently.
Father Delancey frowned and broke into an angry exclamation, "'Tis simple mad ye are, Timothy Moran, with your faëry foolishness, and I've a half a mind to take your pipes away from you as a penance for your ignorant superstition!"
"But, Father, I'm the seventh son and sure ye must admit 'tis a lonesome country, all this, that looks so like Donegal and Killarney mountains, an' is so dead-like, wi' no little people to fill up the big gap between the dead an' the livin', an' the good an' the bad. 'Tis empty, all this valley."
"Timothy Moran, that are my sister's husband's cousin's son, I'm ashamed of ye, an' I bid ye note that 'twas the hand of the Blessed Virgin herself that sent ye out o' Ireland, for if you'd 'a' stayed in th' ould country you'd 'a' been bewitched long before now—not, savin' us all th' blessed saints, that I belave in any of your nonsense!"
Timothy smiled at this with an innocent malice. "You see how 'tis, Father.
You cannot kape yourself from belivin' in thim and you a man o' God."
"I do not, Timothy! Tis but a way of speech that I learned in my childhood. An' 'tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your stubborn pipes that do naught but play faëry music. An' you a man of forty in a trifle of six days, and no wife an' childer to keep you from foolish notions. If ye had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but once a week to look after his poor motherless child. I will say for you, Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin' her so neat and clean an' all, times when Mike's not here."
Timothy did not raise his drooping head at this praise, and something about his attitude struck sharp across the priest's trained observation. The big, shambling, red-headed man looked like a guilty child. There was a moment's silence, while Father Delancey speculated, and then his experienced instinct sped him to the bull's-eye. "Timothy Moran, you're not putting your foolish notions in the head of that innocent child o' God, Moira O'Donnell, are you?"
The red head sank lower.
"Answer me, man! Are ye fillin' her mind with your sidhe[A] and your red-hatted little people an' your stories of 'gentle places' an' the leprechaun?"
[Footnote A: Pronounced shee (as in Banshee), the fairies.]
Timothy arose suddenly and flung his long arms abroad in a gesture of revolt. "I am that, Father Delancey, 'tis th' only comfort of my life, livin' it, as I do, in a dead country—a valley where folks have lived and died for two hundred years such lumps of clay that they niver had wan man sharp enough to see the counts in between heaven and earth." He lapsed again into his listless position on the Round Stone. "But ye needn't be a-fearin' for her soul, Father—her wid th' black hair an' the big gray eyes like wan that cud see thim if she wud! She's as dead a lump as anny of th' rest—as thim meat-eatin' Protestants, the Wilcoxes, heaven save the kindly bodies, for they've no souls at all, at all." From the stone he picked up a curiously shaped willow whistle with white lines carved on it in an odd criss-cross pattern. "To-day's her seventh birthday, an' I showed her how to make the cruachan whistle, an' when I'd finished she blew on it a loud note that wud ha' wakened the sidhe for miles around in Donegal. An' then she looked at me as dumb as a fish, her big gray eyes blank as a plowed field wid nothin' sown in it. She niver has a word to show that she hears me, even, when I tell o' the gentle people." He added in a whisper to himself, "But maybe she's only waiting."
"'Tis the Virgin protectin' her from yer foolishness, Tim," returned the priest, rising with a relieved air. "She'll soon be goin' to district school along with all the other hard-headed little Yankees, and then your tales can't give her notions." With which triumphant meditation he walked briskly away, leaving Timothy to sit alone with his pipes under the maple-tree, flaming with a still heat of burning autumn red, like a faëry fire.
His head sank heavily in his hands as his heart grew intolerably sad with the lack he felt in all the world, most of all in himself. He had often tried to tell himself what made the world so dully repellant, but he never could get beyond, "'Tis as though I was aslape an' yet not quite aslape—just half wakin', an' somethin' lovely is goin' on in the next room, an' I can't wake up to see what 'tis. The trouble's with th' people. They're all dead aslape here, an' there's nobody to wake me up."
"Piper Tim! Piper Tim!" was breathed close to his ear. He sprang up, with wide, startled eyes.
"Piper Tim," said the little girl gravely, "I've seen them."
The man stared at her in a breathless silence.
"A little wee woman with a red hat and kerchief around her neck, an' she
said, 'Go straight to Piper Tim an' tell him to play "The Call o' the
Sidhe" as he sits on the Round Stone, for this is th' day of the Cruachan
Whistle.'"
The child put out her hand, and drew him to the pipes, still keeping her deep eyes fixed on him, "Play, Piper Tim, an' shut your eyes an' I'll see what you should see an' tell you what 'tis."
The first notes were quavering as the man's big frame shook, but the little hands across his eyes seemed to steady him, and the final flourish was like a call of triumph. In the silence which followed the child spoke in her high little treble with a grave elation. "They're here, Piper Tim, all the river fog in the valley is full of them, dancin' and singin' so gay-like to cheer up the poor hills. An' whist! Here they come up the road, troops and troops of them, all so bright in the ferlie green; an' sure," with a little catch of merriment, "sure, they've no toes on their feet at all! They've danced them all away. And now, Piper Tim, hold your breath, for they'll be after comin' by, but all so still, so still! so you won't hear them and maybe think to open your eyes and see them—for that 'ud mean—sh! sh! Piper Tim, don't stir! They're here! They're here!"
His eyes ached with the pressure of the strong little hands across them, his ears ached with straining them into the silence which lay about them. His heart beat fast with hope and then with certainty. Yes, it was no longer the thin, dead silence of the New England woods he knew so unhappily well. It was the still that comes with activity suspended. It was like the quivering quiet of a dancer, suddenly stricken motionless to listen for the sound of intruding footsteps. There was not the faintest sound, but the silence was full of that rich consciousness of life which marks the first awakening of a profound sleeper.
The hands were withdrawn from before his eyes, but he did not open them. He reached blindly for his pipes, and played "The Song of Angus to the Stars," tears of joy running from between his closed eyelids, to recognize in his own music the quality he had been starving for; the sense of the futile, poignant beauty, of the lovely and harmless tragedy, of the sweet, moving, gay sad meaning of things.
When he looked about him he was quite alone. Moira was gone, and the road lay white and still before him.