If it's all one to me tonight, it
wasn't all one to them the next night. Yet, if it wasn't itself, not
a thing did they lose but an old back tooth ' - or some such
gibberish.
As I led him home through the paths he described to me - it is thus
we get along - lifting him at times over the low walls he is too
shaky to climb, he brought the conversation to the topic they are
never weary of - my views on marriage.
He stopped as we reached the summit of the island, with the stretch
of the Atlantic just visible behind him.
'Whisper, noble person,' he began, 'do you never be thinking on the
young girls? The time I was a young man, the devil a one of them
could I look on without wishing to marry her.'
'Ah, Mourteen,' I answered, 'it's a great wonder you'd be asking me.
What at all do you think of me yourself?'
'Bedad, noble person, I'm thinking it's soon you'll be getting
married. Listen to what I'm telling you: a man who is not married is
no better than an old jackass. He goes into his sister's house, and
into his brother's house; he eats a bit in this place and a bit in
another place, but he has no home for himself like an old jackass
straying on the rocks.'
I have left Aran. The steamer had a more than usually heavy cargo,
and it was after four o'clock when we sailed from Kilronan.
Again I saw the three low rocks sink down into the sea with a moment
of inconceivable distress. It was a clear evening, and as we came
out into the bay the sun stood like an aureole behind the cliffs of
Inishmaan. A little later a brilliant glow came over the sky,
throwing out the blue of the sea and of the hills of Connemara.
When it was quite dark, the cold became intense, and I wandered
about the lonely vessel that seemed to be making her own way across
the sea. I was the only passenger, and all the crew, except one boy
who was steering, were huddled together in the warmth of the
engine-room.
Three hours passed, and no one stirred. The slowness of the vessel
and the lamentation of the cold sea about her sides became almost
unendurable. Then the lights of Galway came in sight, and the crew
appeared as we beat up slowly to the quay.
Once on shore I had some difficulty in finding any one to carry my
baggage to the railway. When I found a man in the darkness and got
my bag on his shoulders, he turned out to be drunk, and I had
trouble to keep him from rolling from the wharf with all my
possessions. He professed to be taking me by a short cut into the
town, but when we were in the middle of a waste of broken buildings
and skeletons of ships he threw my bag on the ground and sat down on
it.
