“Gad! I’d clean forgotten that,” said The O’Mahony. “An’ now let’s git out an’ see the town.”
CHAPTER VI—THE HEREDITARY BARD.
Two hours and more of the afternoon were spent before The O’Mahony and his new companion next day reached Dunmanway.
The morning had been devoted, for the most part, to church-going, and The O’Mahony’s mind was still confused with a bewildering jumble of candles, bells and embroidered gowns; of boys in frocks swinging little kettles of smoke by long chains; of books printed on one side in English and on the other in an unknown tongue; of strange necessities for standing, kneeling, sitting all together, at different times, for no apparent reason which he could discover, and at no word of command whatever. He meditated upon it all now, as the slow train bumped its wandering way into the west, as upon some novel kind of drill, which it was obviously going to take him a long time to master. He had his moments of despondency at the prospect, until he reflected that if the poorest, least intelligent, hod-carrying Irishman alive knew it all, he ought surely to be able to learn it. This hopeful view gaining predominance at last in his thoughts, he had leisure to look out of the window.
The country through which they passed was for a long distance fairly level, with broad stretches of fair grass-fields and strips of ploughed land, the soil of which seemed richness, itself. The O’Mahony noted this, but was still more interested in the fact that stone was the only building material anywhere in sight. The few large houses, the multitude of cabins, the high fences surrounding residences, the low fences limiting farm lands, even the very gateposts—all were of gray stone, and all as identical in color and aspect as if Ireland contained but a single quarry.
The stone had come to be a very prominent feature in the natural landscape as well, before their journey by rail ended—a cold, wild, hard-featured landscape, with scant brown grass barely masking the black of the bog lands, and dying of! at the fringes of gaunt layers of rock which thrust their heads everywhere upon the vision. The O’Mahony observed with curiosity that as the land grew poorer, the population, housed all in wretched hovels, seemed to increase, and the burning fire-yellow of the furze blossoms all about made lurid mockery of the absence of crops.
Dunmanway was then the terminus of the line, which has since been pushed onward to Bantry. The two travellers got out here and stood almost alone on the stone platform with their luggage. They were, indeed, the only first-class passengers in the train.
As they glanced about them, they were approached by a diminutive man, past middle age, dressed in a costume which The O’Mahony had seen once or twice on the stage, but never before in every-day life. He was a clean-shaven, swarthy-faced little man, lean as a withered bean-pod, and clad in a long-tailed coat with brass buttons, a long waist-coat, drab corduroy knee-breeches and gray worsted stockings. On his head he wore a high silk hat of antique pattern, dulled and rusty with extreme age. He took this off as he advanced, and looked from one to the other of the twain doubtingly.