Where the Atlantic meets the land

by H. Caldwell Lipsett

'MORE CRUEL THAN THE GRAVE'

There were four of them,—two men and two girls,—and they sat on the top of the outermost cliffs of Donegal, dangling their legs over the Atlantic. Behind them stretched Donegal Bay, with its rugged, mountainous shores and varied inlets, the sun throwing purple shadows on the steep sides of Slieve League. In this direction they could see the long lines of towering black-faced cliffs, clad in parts with honeysuckle and capped with heather, giving place as they marched inland to lowland stretches, where the sandy dunes with their tufted bent-grass sloped gradually to the water's edge, from which they were separated by strips of hard and silvery strand. Looking out westward in front of them there was nothing but the wide ocean between them and America.

'Well, and how do you find your new parish, Fairchild?' said the elder of the two men, throwing a piece of rock-slate at a passing gull, 'slightly different from anything you ever came across in England, isn't it?'

'Yes, this is an entirely new experience for me. Of course six months is a very short time to justify a wholesale opinion, but I never imagined previously that quite such a primitive people could exist anywhere in these islands.'

The speaker was a young English curate, only recently appointed to this out-of-the-way parish of Kilcross. His companion was a young ship's doctor home on leave. The two girls were the granddaughters of the vicar, one of the few clergymen in Ireland who refused to commute at the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and who now, at the advanced age of ninety, was still enjoying the fruits of his obstinacy. It could be seen from the bundles beside them that the girls were on their way to a bathe, when they had met the two men and fallen into conversation with them.

'Primitive is just the word to describe them,' replied the doctor, 'it is curious how utterly our civilization has passed them by in this remote corner of the world, and left them exactly the same as their earliest forefathers must have been generations back. A fisher folk are proverbially benighted, but shut in here between the seriousness of the barren soil on the one hand and the melancholy of the Atlantic upon the other, the inhabitants of these highland villages upon the seaboard are utterly barbarous. And they possess all the virtues and vices of uncivilized types. Hospitable, good-natured, treacherous and superstitious, they have the unreflecting cruelty common to the child and the savage—I could tell you some horrible stories about that if I liked—joined to—what shall I call it?—their want of solidarity of character.'

'I don't quite understand, though you are saying things that I have often dimly tried to puzzle out for myself,' interrupted the elder girl.

'I suppose you refer to my last phrase, Miss Ruth. I mean that there is no common element running through their natures and joining their different moods and emotions together, harmonizing them or shading them off one into the other. There is no coherence about them, no compromise, they are a mere medley of odd passions, all in the raw and without sequence, each following crudely and logically from its own peculiar premises. None of their moods ever has reference to any previous mood.'

'I suppose, Seymour,' said the clergyman thoughtfully, 'that is why I have found I could never get any grip of them. I have often thought I was progressing favorably, making an impression, and then at some sudden turn, as they express it themselves, I have "come a jundy up agin'" a blank-wall in their character, and had to confess myself baffled again.'

'Yes, that is it. I have been brought up among them and been familiar with them since childhood, and I can safely say that with the exception of Miss Ruth here, I have never known any one not of their own race and religion obtain any hold over them, or exercise the slightest effect upon their conduct in any one way, and even her influence stops short with the women. The difficulty is that there is no central point to work upon. There is no use trying to argue with them or soften them. One mood can only be exorcised by another. Their obstinacy or their superstition can only be cast out by an appeal to their cupidity or their fear. It is there that the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over them comes in. The priest has the power to excommunicate any one at any time, which means not only destruction for them in the next world, but also discomfort in this. We Protestants have no such deterrents. If you take my advice you won't remain here long. You don't sympathize enough with the people ever to understand them. They want a stern, determined, coarse-grained nature to drive them. You are too delicate and subtle for them. Your work is all thrown away here.'

'The people are not necessarily the only attraction,' returned the curate a little sullenly.

'Oh, do come and look at this wee bubbly bit,' broke in the younger girl, who, unlike her more mature and graver sister had ceased to pay any further attention to the conversation, as soon as she found that it had turned upon the 'Parish.'

'Just watch it,' she continued, pointing to a crevice in the rocks below, 'the water is ever so far away down, and then it rises gradually higher and higher until it reaches the edge with a "plop" and runs over, and then it sinks again right down until it leaves the long wrack at the sides hanging clear out of the water and dripping down into it like dead water snakes, till the next wave comes and flushes them into life again,' and she bobbed her head gravely in time with the rhythmical heave and subsidence of the recurrent surges, glinting the sunlight from her bright gold hair.

'Yes, that shows a very heavy swell. It is the distant muttering of a storm far out in the Atlantic. A bad sign for your bathe. In fact I don't think you ought to bathe at all to-day, Miss Selina. These ground-swells are very dangerous, and the sea looks angry to-day. Just notice how dirty and disturbed the water is with the sand stirred up from its depths. That fringe of seaweed too along the tidal mark is ominous.'

'Dangerous, nonsense,' replied the girl. 'Why, the sea is as calm as a mill-pond, and I never saw a lovelier day. You're becoming a perfect old woman, Dr. Seymour. I'm sure even Mr. Fairchild doesn't think it dangerous, now, do you?'

'It certainly appears calm enough to me,' said the person thus appealed to.

Seymour flushed and retorted shortly with a slight sneer.

'Fairchild doesn't know the sea well enough to be afraid of it. He speaks out of the depths of his ignorance. But a wilful woman must have her way. So I'll leave you to your bathe. Good morning!' and the two men turned away along the top of the cliff, while the girls ran gayly down the sloping path that led to the little cove below. They had not gone far before Seymour recovered from his temporary ill-humor, and halted.

'I'm not easy in my mind about those girls,' he said. 'A ground-swell like that is more treacherous than the nature of our Irish friends beyond. I think we ought to wait here within earshot of them,' and they both sat down upon the sod bank with their backs to the sea.

For a time there was a moody silence, which the clergyman broke at last, enviously, kicking his heels against the sod ditch.

'Of course I've got no chance against you. I can see that. And I think it's hardly fair.'

'Eh! why! what!' ejaculated the other, starting out of a reverie.

'That we are both in love with the same girl. And what chance have I against a man of the world like you, who has travelled and studied human nature and womankind? I think it's hardly fair,' repeated the youth with what sounded suspiciously like a snivel.

'But I thought it was the sister you were in love with.'

'Oh, nonsense. The sister's all very well in her way. But no one could look at her for a moment while the other one is by.'

'No, of course not,' assented Seymour with conviction.

'She is so beautiful, so large and gracious and serene.'

'That's not at all how I read it. Your notion of her sounds very much like the character of—hark! what's that?'

A shrill long-drawn scream came pealing towards them across the sea. They rose together and rushed tumultuously along the cliffs, towards the sound, meeting another shriller than the first as they ran. Suddenly they burst into sight of the little cove, and halted in surprise. So peaceful was the scene. The sun was smiling broadly down upon an ocean breathing the long deep respirations of a dreamless slumber—couchant like a beast of prey. In the foreground the two girls, clinging apprehensively together, were standing up to their waist in water, their figures in the clinging bathing gowns darkly silhouetted against the muddy light green of the sandy-bottomed bay.

But even as they gazed a silent treacherous undulation passed like a breath across the naked bosom of the sleeping ocean and crept stealthily up to the terrified figures. Swiftly it lapped their breasts and stole upwards about their throats. And still it rose and rose with slow remorseless volume, till it met softly above their heads, leaving a few bubbles to mark the spot where they had been. The giant swell passed on its way, and for a moment they were seen wallowing helplessly at large in the trough. Then the back surge returned upon them and swept them seawards.

'Good God, they'll be drowned,' cried Seymour, throwing off his coat. 'What are you doing? You can't swim. Run as hard as you can to the village for a boat. I'll do all that can be done here.'

'Promise to save her at all costs.'

'Ay, I swear to that, though I and the other one should tread the short road to hell.'

The clergyman turned and ran vehemently away, his coat-tails flying in the breeze.

'Bring the priest with you if you can,' shouted Seymour after him, but a summer breath caught the words and wafted them away, and though the vague echo of them reached the runner's ears, their full import did not penetrate to his brain.

Reaching the village he quickly got a boat. The crew threw themselves into it, urged on by the women to 'be sure and save Miss Ruth.'

As soon as they rounded the horn of the bay a great throb of mingled joy and anguish gripped the young man by the throat. For a dripping figure was standing upon the shore and he knew that his love was saved—saved by his rival.

Midway between the boat and the shore was a small point of rock, to which the figure of the other girl could be seen clinging; so she too was safe. Beyond that again a swimmer's head was visible in the water. Directly they opened the point upon him, Seymour saw them, and, with a wave of his hand, turned wearily shorewards. The girl's eyes were bent on her rescuer away from the boat, and her numbed senses did not perceive the sound of the approaching oars. She thought herself abandoned, and, losing hope, released her hold and slipped off into the water. With a shout the boatmen dashed to her rescue.

For a few moments the bowman groped in the water with the boathook without success, but at last it caught in the girl's bathing dress and he drew her to the surface. The other men clustered around him and began to chatter in a low tone. The stroke, a man of huge stature called 'Big Dan Murphy,' sat stolidly opposite the curate, shutting out the view. As the men still chattered and made no further move Fairchild grew uneasy. Something in the harsher notes of their voices betokened a change of mood. That momentary check had been fatal, it had allowed their enthusiasm to cool and given an opening for more calculating thoughts.

'What are you doing, men? Lift her into the boat,' he said, and rising to his feet he saw for the first time the face supported just above the surface of the water. The face was the face of Ruth—Ruth whom he had thought safe on shore. 'My God, lift her in quick,' he repeated, with a tremor in his voice.

The men muttered together, looking at him askance. One of them spoke a few words in strident Erse to the stroke.

'What does he say, Dan?' the young man demanded impatiently.

'He says,' replied the other phlegmatically, 'that she's a corp ahlready, and that it will only bring bad luck to the fishin' to take a dead body intil the boat.'

'But she's not dead,' cried Fairchild wildly, 'she was alive this minute on the rock. Make them lift her in.'

'Ye shud ha' brought the priest wid ye,' responded the giant with a neutral compassion; 'them wans is not to be druv by no man barrin' him, when they jine to take a conthrairy notion yon road.'

At this the echo of Seymour's last words returned clearly upon Fairchild's brain, and he cursed himself for his inattention. With it, too, there returned the remembrance of other words of Seymour's. He recognized that this was a crisis and braced himself to make a fight of it.

'Good God, men,' said he, 'you don't mean to say you will let a woman die before your eyes for a miserable superstition like that? Why, I can see her breathe; she's as much alive as any of us. See, she's opening her eyes. For God's sake lift her in,' he broke off, in frenzied tones. They turned indifferently away, and the hopelessness of pulling against the dead weight of their superstition settled down over his mind and enveloped it in black despair. But he continued desperately:

'If you take her in I'll give you money,—a hundred pounds a head,—five hundred pounds,—I'll give you all that I've got.' For a moment their attention was attracted and their cupidity aroused. But the sums he mentioned were so large that they defeated his own object. They conveyed no meaning to the narrow minds of the fishermen accustomed to think in pence. They sounded in their ears like promises of fairy gold. Had he offered them a new boat and nets they would have understood it and jumped at the offer. But he paid the penalty now of not knowing his ground. Once more they turned away.

Then something went snap in his temple, and he lost control over himself, and with that all chance of influencing them.

'You are not men,' he raved, the tears streaming from his eyes, 'but brutes. It is too cruel. You can't mean it. Will no one help me? I'll have you all hung for murdering her. Why haven't I got a pistol with me? and I'd shoot you all like dogs. You hounds, I'll strangle you now,' and he threw himself choked with sobs upon the stroke. But it was not more hopeless to cast his puny force against the dead wall of their superstition than against that iron chest. The giant took him in his arms like an infant, and replaced him gently upon his seat. The others laughed.

'Av the whelp doesn't quit bletherin', putt him in the wather along of his swateheart, Dan,' said one of them in an ugly tone.

The young man rose again from his seat, and tried to cast himself over the side, even though he couldn't swim, to be beside his beloved. But again he was caught and placed on the thwart, to which this time he was strapped down, so that mercifully he could not see over the gunwale of the boat.

Then the men tied a rope round the girl's arms, dropped her calmly into the water again, resumed their oars, and rowed sullenly back the mile to the village. Behind them the body spun at the end of its long rope. In the stern-sheets curses and blasphemies bubbled from the lips of a gibbering maniac.

When they reached the shore, not only was life extinct, but both the girl's arms were broken. The sea itself would have been more merciful than that.

* * * * * *

When Fairchild awoke from his long bout of brain fever his eyes fell upon Seymour.

'Why didn't you save her as you promised?' were the first words he uttered.

'Nonsense, old man, you're wandering still. Of course I saved her. You forget, it was her sister Ruth that those devils murdered.'

'Oh, it's all a horrible mistake,' groaned the invalid, as he buried his face in his hands and turned his head to the wall, moaning like a wounded thing in pain.