XIV. A ROYAL MARRIAGE
Michael Kane carried His Majesty’s mails from Clonmethan to the Island of Inishrua. He made the voyage twice a week in a big red boat fitted with a motor engine. He had as his partner a young man called Peter Gahan. Michael Kane was a fisherman, and had a knowledge of the ways of the strange tides which race and whirl in the channel between Inishrua and the mainland. Peter Gahan looked like an engineer. He knew something about the tides, but what he really understood was the motor engine. He was a grave and silent young man who read small books about Socialism. Michael Kane was grey-haired, much battered by the weather and rich in experience of life. He was garrulous and took a humorous view of most things, even of Peter Gahan’s Socialism.
There are, perhaps, two hundred people living on Inishrua, but they do not receive many letters. Nor do they write many. Most of them neither write nor receive any letters at all. A post twice a week is quite sufficient for their needs, and Michael Kane is not very well paid for carrying the lean letter bag. But he makes a little money by taking parcels across to the island. The people of Inishrua grow, catch or shoot most of the things they want; but they cannot produce their own tea, tobacco, sugar or flour. Michael Kane takes orders for these and other things from Mary Nally, who keeps a shop on Inishrua. He buys them in Clonmethan and conveys them to the island. In this way he earns something. He also carries passengers and makes a little out of them.
Last summer, because it was stormy and wet, was a very lean season for Michael Kane. Week after week he made his journeys to Inishrua without a single passenger. Towards the middle of August he began to give up hope altogether.
He and Peter sat together one morning on the end of the pier. The red post boat hung at her moorings outside the little harbour. The day was windless and the sea smooth save for the ocean swell which made shorewards in a long procession of round-topped waves. It was a day which might have tempted even a timid tourist to visit the island. But there was no sign of anyone approaching the pier.
“I’m thinking,” said Michael Kane, “that we may as well be starting. There’ll be no one coming with us the day.”
But he was mistaken. A passenger, an eager-looking young woman, was hurrying towards the pier while they were making up their minds to start.
Miss Ivy Clarence had prepared herself for a voyage which seemed to her something of an adventure. She wore a tight-fitting knitted cap, a long, belted, waterproof coat, meant originally to be worn by a soldier in the trenches in France. She had a thick muffler round her neck. She carried a rug, a packet of sandwiches, a small handbag and an umbrella, of all possible accoutrements the least likely to be useful in an open boat. But though she carried an umbrella, Miss Clarence did not look like a fool. She might know nothing about boats and the way to travel in them, but she had a bright, intelligent face and a self-confident decision of manner. She was by profession a journalist, and had conceived the idea of visiting Ireland and writing articles about that unfortunate country. Being an intelligent journalist she knew that articles about the state of Ireland are overdone and very tiresome. Nobody, especially during the holiday season, wants to be bored with Irish politics. But for bright, cheery descriptions of Irish life and customs, as for similar descriptions of the ways of other strange peoples, there is always a market. Miss Clarence determined to exploit it. She planned to visit five or six of the larger islands off the Irish coast. There, if anywhere, quaint customs, picturesque superstitions and primitive ways of living might still be found.
Michael greeted her as if she had been an honoured guest. He was determined to make the trip as pleasant as he could for anyone who was wise enough to leave the tennis-courts and the golf-links.