Chapter 7: Vanished

We were all astir shortly after daylight on Monday morning. Dick’s foot was well enough for his walk to Knockcalltecrore, and Andy came with me to Knocknacar, as had been arranged, for I wanted his help in engaging labourers and beginning the work. We got to the shebeen about nine o’clock, and Andy having put up the mare went out to get labourers. As I was morally certain that at that hour in the morning there would be no chance of seeing my unknown on the hill-top, I went at once to the bog, taking my map with me and studying the ground where we were to commence operations.

Andy joined me in about half-an-hour with five men—all he had been able to get in the time. They were fine strapping young fellows and seemed interested in the work, so I thought the contingent would be strong enough. By this time I had the ground marked out according to the plan, and so without more ado we commenced work.

We had attacked the hill some two hundred feet lower down than the bog, where the land suddenly rose steeply from a wide sloping extent of wilderness of invincible barrenness. It was over this spot that Sutherland hoped ultimately to send the waters of the bog. We began at the foot and made a trench some four feet wide at the bottom, and with sloping walls, so that when we got in so far the drain would be twenty feet deep, the external aperture would measure about twice as much.

The soil was heavy and full of moderate-sized boulders, but was not unworkable, and amongst us we came to the conclusion that a week of solid work would, bar accidents and our coming across unforeseen difficulties, at any rate break the back of the job. The men worked in sections—one marking out the trench by cutting the surface to some foot-and-a-half deep, and the others following in succession. Andy sat on a stone hard by, filled his pipe, and endeavoured in his own cheery way to relieve the monotony of the labour of the others. After about an hour he grew tired and went away—perhaps it was that he became interested in a country car, loaded with persons, that came down the road and stopped a few minutes at the sheebeen on its way to join the main road to Carnaclif.

Things went steadily on for some time. The men worked well, and I possessed my soul in such patience as I could, and studied the map and the ground most carefully. When dinner-time came the men went off each to his own home, and as soon as the place was free from them I hurried to the top of the mountain. The prospect was the same as yesterday. There was the same stretch of wild moor and rugged coast, of clustering islands and foam-girt rocks—of blue sky laden with such masses of luminous clouds as are only found in Ireland. But all was to me dreary and desolate, for the place was empty and she was not there. I sat down to wait with what patience I could. It was dreary work at best; but at any rate there was hope—and its more immediate kinsman, expectation—and I waited. Somehow the view seemed to tranquillize me in some degree. It may have been that there was some unconscious working of the mind which told me in some imperfect way that in a region quite within my range of vision, nothing could long remain hidden or unknown. Perhaps it was the stilly silence of the place. There was hardly a sound—the country people were all within doors at dinner, and even the sounds of their toil were lacking. From the west came a very faint breeze, just enough to bring the far-off, eternal roar of the surf. There was scarcely a sign of life. The cattle far below were sheltering under trees, or in the shadows of hedges, or standing still knee-deep in the pools of the shallow streams. The only moving thing which I could see, was the car which had left so long before, and was now far off, and was each moment becoming smaller and smaller as it went into the distance.

So I sat for quite an hour with my heart half sick with longing, but she never came. Then I thought I heard a step coming up the path at the far side. My heart beat strangely. I sat silent, and did not pretend to hear. She was walking more slowly than usual, and with a firmer tread. She was coming. I heard the steps on the plateau, and a voice came:—

“Och! an’ isn’t it a purty view, yer ‘an’r?” I leaped to my feet with a feeling that was positively murderous. The revulsion was too great, and I broke into a burst of semi-hysterical laughter. There stood Andy—with ragged red head and sun-scorched face—in his garb of eternal patches, bleached and discoloured by sun and rain into a veritable coat of many colours—gazing at the view with a rapt expression, and yet with one eye half-closed in a fixed but unmistakable wink, as though taking the whole majesty of nature into his confidence.

When he heard my burst of laughter he turned to me quizzically:—

“Musha! but it’s the merry gentleman yer ‘an’r is this day. Shure the view here is the laughablest thing I ever see!” and he affected to laugh, but in such a soulless, unspontaneous way that it became a real burlesque. I waited for him to go on. I was naturally very vexed, but I was afraid to say anything lest I might cause him to interfere in this affair—the last thing on earth that I wished for.

He did go on; no one ever found Andy abashed or ill at ease:—

“Begor! but yer ‘an’r lepped like a deer when ye heerd me shpake. Did ye think I was goin’ to shoot ye? Faix! an’ I thought that ye wor about to jump from aff iv the mountain into the say, like a shtag.”

“Why, what do you know about stags, Andy? There are none in this part of the country, are there?” I thought I would drag a new subject across his path. The ruse of the red herring drawn across the scent succeeded!

“Phwhat do I know iv shtags? Faix, I know this, that there does be plinty in me Lard’s demesne beyant at Wistport. Sure wan iv thim got out last autumn an’ nigh ruined me garden. He kem in at night an’ ate up all me cabbages an’ all the vigitables I’d got. I frightened him away a lot iv times, but he kem back all the same. At last I could shtand him no longer, and I wint meself an’ complained to the Lard. He tould me he was very sorry fur the damage he done, ‘an’,’ sez he, ‘Andy, I think he’s a bankrup,’ sez he, ‘an’ we must take his body.’ ‘How is that, Me Lard?’ sez I. Sez he, ‘I give him to ye, Andy. Do what ye like wid him!’ An’ wid that I wint home an’ I med a thrap iv a clothes line wid a loop in it, an’ I put it betune two threes; and shure enough in the night I got him.”

“And what did you do with him, Andy?” said I.

“Faith, surr, I shkinned him and ate him!” He said this just in the same tone in which he would speak of the most ordinary occurrence, leaving the impression on one’s mind that the skinning and eating were matters done at the moment and quite offhand.

I fondly hoped that Andy’s mind was now in quite another state from his usual mental condition; but I hardly knew the man yet. He had the true humorist’s persistence, and before I was ready with another intellectual herring he was off on the original track.