She says when I go away now I am to marry a rich
wife with plenty of money, and if she dies on me I am to come back
here and marry herself for my second wife.
I have never heard talk so simple and so attractive as the talk of
these people. This evening they began disputing about their wives,
and it appeared that the greatest merit they see in a woman is that
she should be fruitful and bring them many children. As no money can
be earned by children on the island this one attitude shows the
immense difference between these people and the people of Paris.
The direct sexual instincts are not weak on the island, but they are
so subordinated to the instincts of the family that they rarely lead
to irregularity. The life here is still at an almost patriarchal
stage, and the people are nearly as far from the romantic moods of
love as they are from the impulsive life of the savage.
The wind was so high this morning that there was some doubt whether
the steamer would arrive, and I spent half the day wandering about
with Michael watching the horizon.
At last, when we had given her up, she came in sight far away to the
north, where she had gone to have the wind with her where the sea
was at its highest.
I got my baggage from the cottage and set off for the slip with
Michael and the old man, turning into a cottage here and there to
say good-bye.
In spite of the wind outside, the sea at the slip was as calm as a
pool. The men who were standing about while the steamer was at the
south island wondered for the last time whether I would be married
when I came back to see them. Then we pulled out and took our place
in the line. As the tide was running hard the steamer stopped a
certain distance from the shore, and gave us a long race for good
places at her side. In the struggle we did not come off well, so I
had to clamber across two curaghs, twisting and fumbling with the
roll, in order to get on board.
It seemed strange to see the curaghs full of well-known faces
turning back to the slip without me, but the roll in the sound soon
took off my attention. Some men were on board whom I had seen on the
south island, and a good many Kilronan people on their way home from
Galway, who told me that in one part of their passage in the morning
they had come in for heavy seas.
As is usual on Saturday, the steamer had a large cargo of flour and
porter to discharge at Kilronan, and, as it was nearly four o'clock
before the tide could float her at the pier, I felt some doubt about
our passage to Galway.
The wind increased as the afternoon went on, and when I came down in
the twilight I found that the cargo was not yet all unladen, and
that the captain feared to face the gale that was rising. It was
some time before he came to a final decision, and we walked
backwards and forwards from the village with heavy clouds flying
overhead and the wind howling in the walls. At last he telegraphed
to Galway to know if he was wanted the next day, and we went into a
public-house to wait for the reply.
The kitchen was filled with men sitting closely on long forms ranged
in lines at each side of the fire. A wild-looking but beautiful girl
was kneeling on the hearth talking loudly to the men, and a few
natives of Inishmaan were hanging about the door, miserably drunk.
At the end of the kitchen the bar was arranged, with a sort of
alcove beside it, where some older men were playing cards. Overhead
there were the open rafters, filled with turf and tobacco smoke.
This is the haunt so much dreaded by the women of the other islands,
where the men linger with their money till they go out at last with
reeling steps and are lost in the sound. Without this background of
empty curaghs, and bodies floating naked with the tide, there would
be something almost absurd about the dissipation of this simple
place where men sit, evening after evening, drinking bad whisky and
porter, and talking with endless repetition of fishing, and kelp,
and of the sorrows of purgatory.
When we had finished our whiskey word came that the boat might
remain.
With some difficulty I got my bags out of the steamer and carried
them up through the crowd of women and donkeys that were still
struggling on the quay in an inconceivable medley of flour-bags and
cases of petroleum. When I reached the inn the old woman was in
great good humour, and I spent some time talking by the kitchen
fire. Then I groped my way back to the harbour, where, I was told,
the old net-mender, who came to see me on my first visit to the
islands, was spending the night as watchman.
It was quite dark on the pier, and a terrible gale was blowing.
There was no one in the little office where I expected to find him,
so I groped my way further on towards a figure I saw moving with a
lantern.
