XX
THE LAND OF THE EVENING CALM
It is difficult to think this morning that it was only last evening I left London. Lying on one's back on a soft carpet of pine spirules on the slope of the hill, the deep green of the water in the harbour shows through the pine branches. There is a plumage of bracken around wonderful green feathers, that are rising on their slender stems from the thick brown carpet of nature's plush, which hushes one's footsteps through the wood and makes them noiseless, except when one treads on a crisp tory top. There is a delightful hush under this cool roof pillared by the brown tree-trunks, but it is not silence. There is a soft hum that comes ceaselessly to one's ear, sometimes anear, sometimes afar, from one knows not where, from bees, perhaps, busy amongst the hurts or honeysuckle just below. Up above a wood-pigeon keeps cooing that ceaseless question, or is it a question, or the plaint call of his pigeon heart for love? or has he lost his love, and croons a mourning for her? Distinct from and louder than the murmur of the bees is a rustling of the water from below where the outgoing tide from the river meets the water of the harbour; and mingled with that, one can just faintly catch the hushed sound of an occasional wave on the rocks. It is a holiday with the breakers, and the sea moves its fringe as gently as if fanning itself to sleep. The river winds around below, and down to its edge the hills are tree-covered—not there altogether with pines, but with rounded luxurious clumps of dark trees, recalling Doré's idea of a forest—they are exactly Doré's trees. It does not look from here as if the river went up farther, but around that bend is the deep green water called Drake's Pool. It was there that Admiral Drake, outnumbered and chased along the Irish coast by the Spanish fleet, hid from them. The Spaniards came into the harbour and searched around, but never thought there was an opening through the trees. And there Drake waited with his high-pooped ships until they went away. Close to the trees that grow around the steep margin of the pool and always darken the green water, even in daytime, fishermen who go there at night to fish for conger tell that when the moon has been clouded at midnight they have seen the shapes of queer-looking ships, and on their high sterns the forms of men in outlandish costumes, sitting around drinking.
Right on the summit of this hill which commands the harbour is the Giant's Grave; and à propos of commanding the harbour, Napoleon I. knew of it, and had a plan for the invasion of Ireland, in which was included the idea of occupying this hill, from which he could command from the rear the forts at the harbour's mouth. He would have planted his guns on the Giant's Grave. We know little of the history of that giant, except that he carried off the wife of another giant who lived on the Great Island opposite, and held her here in his fastness amid the pine trees against all efforts to wrest her from him. A huge rock that he hurled back in one of these fights is still to be seen on the shore of Spike Island.
A twittering flutter of white and grey below me a few yards away. It is a rabbit—and now another. Their ears are cocked, but they do not appear to notice me in the least. They hop about quite noiselessly on the brown carpet. The crowing of a cock in the distance seems almost musical, and there is some insect in the tree above me that appears to be trying to give an imitation of a telegraph instrument. I wonder what these rabbits are saying to each other. They seem very alert and interested. Now a third appears on the scene. Two of them are beginning to play, at least I thought so at first—and I feel in this peaceful wood I should have left it at that, but having to recollect the heading of these chapters I have to record the fact that they are fighting. I never saw rabbits fight before, but they are fighting like mad. I now see, in fact, the origin of the expression making "the fur fly." The third is just skipping around watching intently with big round eyes and its ears erect—perhaps the third is timekeeper, or perhaps it is the story of the giants over again. The new-comer was getting the best of it. I am sorry now that I could not resist the temptation of taking a shot at them with my fountain pen. They fled instantly. Perhaps the little rabbit lady is glad—she may be licking the wounds of her Lancelot in their burrow a few yards away while he is telling her that he would have beaten the other fellow all right in the end if that darned fool hadn't thrown his fountain pen, while she agrees, as she works her little rabbit tongue soothingly, although privately she has her "doots."
How interesting it would be to be able to study the lives of all these little people in this wood! There are terrible weasels here who wage a sanguinary warfare against the rabbits—a guerilla war that no war correspondent I know of has yet got his pass for. The seagulls are beginning to talk now in a New York pitch of voice, and one can get an occasional gleam of their wings through the blue-green pine branches. I think it is their dinner-time when the tide goes out and spreads a table-strip of slob for them on the shore.
How thankful we ought to be to have such dear stupid neighbours as the English, who don't come in hordes of tourists to desecrate this delightful land! Those who love it with intimacy of knowledge—this wild coast with its rock fingers stretching into the Atlantic and harbours around which the trees nestle for shelter from the winter storms—the ruined castles with empty "magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn"—own it still for their pleasure, moss-grown with history as vivid as the lichens on its rocks or ruins.
Perhaps from a sense of justice, our neighbours think the invasion of Cromwell's army was enough, and that we ought to be spared from something worse, so that the hordes rush off perspiring over the Continent and elsewhere, and just a few nice people come and come again to the South of Ireland, and say they like that cordial greeting that always is waiting for the Englishman personally, who only in the abstract is disliked. Then the Irish railways and hotel-keepers act in a very nice and gentlemanly fashion; the former do not force on the notice of the tourist hordes that a train leaves Euston or Paddington every evening which would land them here at 10.30 in the morning for a few shillings. The latter are quite content with the knowledge they have themselves that they possess now as comfortable and well-fitted-up hotels as any in the world.
A little old Irish lady was reduced to selling apples in the street. "Fresh apples, fresh apples!" she would call out; then, to herself, "I hope no one will hear me."
I do not know, indeed, whether we have to thank most our kind neighbours or the railway and hotel people for the blessing we enjoy in this Land of the Evening Calm that still keeps