"Run down to Mick Leonard's for a coal," he said in Irish to some one outside, and then proceeded with a most sound and simple exordium to the newly married pair.
In a few minutes there appeared in the open window a hand holding a live coal of turf in a bent stick. I can see it yet, the pale fire in the white ash of the sod, thrust between us and the blue sky, and the priest's hand put out to take it, but I cannot remember now what was its mission, whether to light a candle or incense.
After this came a sprinkling with holy water with something that nearly resembled a hearth-brush. A drop fell into my open mouth as I stood gaping with the detestable curiosity of my age, and its peculiar, slightly brackish flavour is always the impression that comes first when I recall that day. There was a long business of hand shakings and huggings, and the wedding party squeezed itself out of the narrow vestry doorway, with hearts fully attuned to the afternoon's entertainment.
At the gate some shaggy horses were tied up, and having clambered on to one of these, much as a man would climb a tree, the bridegroom hauled his bride up behind him, and started for home at a lumbering gallop. Shouting and whooping, the other men got on their horses and pursued, and the whole clattering, bumping cavalcade passed out of sight, leaving us transfixed in admiration of the traditional "dragging home" of the bride. For me the only remaining recollections of the day are of a surfeit in the bedroom of the bride's mother, where in gluttonous solitude I partook of hot soda-bread, half a glass of luscious port, and a boiled egg; while the less honoured guests in the kitchen outside harangued and sang songs, and drank the wine of the country in its integrity. My wedding garment was, I recollect, a Holland "waggoner," loosely girt by a shiny black belt with a brass serpent buckle. At no subsequent wedding breakfast have I been as enjoyably dressed, and, as a natural consequence, at none have I eaten as much.
As my first distinct glimpse into matrimony it stands far back and detached; after it, in the Bayeux tapestry of childhood, horses, dogs, and baffled governesses moved on in untiring confusion, for periods of unmeasured time, before the subject again presented itself.
There lives in my memory a Sunday morning in spring, when the little beech leaves were poised like pale green moths among the bare branches, and the northerly showers whipped the lambs into shelter. The servants had gone in a body to early mass, leaving the preparations for breakfast in the hands of Tom Cashen, a trusted friend and counsellor, whose ordinary business it was to attend to the affairs of the yard and its pigs.
There was soda-bread to be watched in the oven, there were saucepans and kettles resolved upon untimely boiling, there was porridge to be stirred, and there was also Tom Cashen's dog, a hungry, furtive thing, capable at any moment of clearing the table of all that was upon it. The moment came, as it comes to those who wait with complete attentiveness, and Tom Cashen's dog did not let it slip. It was during the retributions of justice that the bread burned in the oven, the coffee boiled over on the range, and the porridge adhered massively to the bottom of the saucepan.
"I'd sooner be digging the clay from morning till night," said Tom Cashen, after a long and prayerful imprecation, "than to be at this kind of work. There isn't a man in the world without getting married but he's sure to die quare, and no wonder, from the work that's within!"
Translated into our inferior English this aphorism sets forth the opinion that a bachelor who has to do his own household work is bound to end his days in a lunatic asylum. This view of matrimony had not before been heard by me, and it seemed to be wholly reasonable. For one thing, the men in the yard were always right in our eyes, and always full of just complaints against the kitchen; in any case, the Work that was Within—the arduous triflings with saucepans and sweeping-brushes—was certainly contemptible as compared with the realities and the fascinations of the stable and the hay-cart. The point of view of Mrs. Tom Cashen was not touched upon; I think I realised that she was not likely to have one.
She was described at the time of her marriage as "fine and fair and freckled, and a great warrant to fatten turkeys," and she walked two miles every day, with a basket on her back, to carry Tom Cashen's dinner to him—potatoes and boiled eggs, kept hot in a clean towel. Later on the dinner was carried by two barefooted little boys; from thenceforward, during many years, there was always a barefooted little boy or two to carry it, whereat the heart of Tom Cashen was glad, and so, in a modified degree, was the heart of Mrs. Tom Cashen, combating hourly, in a swarming cabin, with the Work that was Within.