THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW

Old Dan Bride was breaking brosna for the fire when he heard a step on
the path. He paused, a bundle of saplings on his knee. Dan had looked
after his mother while the life was in her, and after her death no
other woman had crossed his threshold. Signs on it, his house had that
look. Almost everything in it he had made with his own hands in his
own way. The seats of the chairs were only slices of log, rough and
round and thick as the saw had left them, and with the rings still
plainly visible through the grime and polish that coarse
trouser-bottoms had in the course of long years imparted. Into these
Dan had rammed stout knotted ash-boughs that served alike for legs and
back. The deal table, bought in a shop, was an inheritance from his
mother and a great pride and joy to him though it rocked whenever he
touched it. On the wall, unglazed and fly-spotted, hung in mysterious
isolation a Marcus Stone print, and beside the door was a calendar
with a picture of a racehorse. Over the door hung a gun, old but good,
and in excellent condition, and before the fire was stretched an old
setter who raised his head expectantly whenever Dan rose or even
stirred.

He raised it now as the steps came nearer and when Dan, laying down
the bundle of saplings, cleaned his hands thoughtfully in the seat of
his trousers, he gave a loud bark, but this expressed no more than a
desire to show off his own watchfulness. He was half human and knew
people thought he was old and past his prime.

A man’s shadow fell across the oblong of dusty light thrown over the
half-door before Dan looked round.

“Are you alone, Dan?” asked an apologetic voice.

“Oh, come in, come in, sergeant, come in and welcome,” exclaimed the
old man, hurrying on rather uncertain feet to the door which the tall
policeman opened and pushed in. He stood there, half in sunlight, half
in shadow, and seeing him so, you would have realized how dark the
interior of the house really was. One side of his red face was turned
so as to catch the light, and behind it an ash tree raised its boughs
of airy green against the sky. Green fields, broken here and there by
clumps of red-brown rock, flowed downhill, and beyond them, stretched
all across the horizon, was the sea, flooded and almost transparent
with light. The sergeant’s face was fat and fresh, the old man’s face,
emerging from the twilight of the kitchen, had the colour of wind and
sun, while the features had been so shaped by the struggle with time
and the elements that they might as easily have been found impressed
upon the surface of a rock.

“Begor, Dan,” said the sergeant, “’tis younger you’re getting.”

“Middling I am, sergeant, middling,” agreed the old man in a voice
which seemed to accept the remark as a compliment of which politeness
would not allow him to take too much advantage. “No complaints.”

“Begor, ’tis as well because no one would believe them. And the old
dog doesn’t look a day older.”

The dog gave a low growl as though to show the sergeant that he would
remember this unmannerly reference to his age, but indeed he growled
every time he was mentioned, under the impression that people had
nothing but ill to say of him.

“And how’s yourself, sergeant?”

“Well, now, like the most of us, Dan, neither too good nor too bad. We
have our own little worries, but, thanks be to God, we have our
compensations.”

“And the wife and family?”

“Good, praise be to God, good. They were away from me for a month, the
lot of them, at the mother-in-law’s place in Clare.”

“In Clare, do you tell me?”

“In Clare. I had a fine quiet time.”

The old man looked about him and then retired to the bedroom, from
which he returned a moment later with an old shirt. With this he
solemnly wiped the seat and back of the log-chair nearest the fire.

“Sit down now, sergeant. You must be tired after the journey. "’Tis a
long old road. How did you come?”

“Teigue Leary gave me the lift. Wisha now, Dan, don’t be putting
yourself out. I won’t be stopping. I promised them I’d be back inside
an hour.”

“What hurry is on you?” asked Dan. “Look, your foot was only on the
path when I made up the fire.”

“Arrah, Dan, you’re not making tea for me?”

“I am not making it for you, indeed; I’m making it for myself, and
I’ll take it very bad of you if you won’t have a cup.”

“Dan, Dan, that I mightn’t stir, but ’tisn’t an hour since I had it at
the barracks!”

“Ah, whisht, now, whisht! Whisht, will you! I have something here to
give you an appetite.”

The old man swung the heavy kettle onto the chain over the open fire,
and the dog sat up, shaking his ears with an expression of the deepest
interest. The policeman unbuttoned his tunic, opened his belt, took a
pipe and a plug of tobacco from his breast pocket, and crossing his
legs in an easy posture, began to cut the tobacco slowly and carefully
with his pocket knife. The old man went to the dresser and took down
two handsomely decorated cups, the only cups he had, which, though
chipped and handle-less, were used at all only on very rare occasions;
for himself he preferred his tea from a basin. Happening to glance
into them, he noticed that they bore signs of disuse and had collected
a lot of the fine white turf-dust that always circulated in the little
smoky cottage. Again he thought of the shirt, and, rolling up his
sleeves with a stately gesture, he wiped them inside and out till they
shone. Then he bent and opened the cupboard. Inside was a quart bottle
of pale liquid, obviously untouched. He removed the cork and smelt the
contents, pausing for a moment in the act as though to recollect where
exactly he had noticed that particular smoky smell before. Then,
reassured, he stood up and poured out with a liberal hand.

“Try that now, sergeant,” he said with quiet pride.

The sergeant, concealing whatever qualms he might have felt at the
idea of drinking illegal whisky, looked carefully into the cup,
sniffed, and glanced up at old Dan.

“It looks good,” he commented.

“It should be good,” replied Dan with no mock modesty.

“It tastes good too,” said the sergeant.

“Ah, sha,” said Dan, not wishing to praise his own hospitality in his
own house, “’tis of no great excellence.”

“You’d be a good judge, I’d say,” said the sergeant without irony.

“Ever since things became what they are,” said Dan, carefully guarding
himself against a too-direct reference to the peculiarities of the law
administered by his guest, “liquor isn’t what it used to be.”

“I’ve heard that remark made before now, Dan,” said the sergeant
thoughtfully. “I’ve heard it said by men of wide experience that it
used to be better in the old days.”

“Liquor,” said the old man, “is a thing that takes time. There was
never a good job done in a hurry.”

“’Tis an art in itself.”

“Just so.”

“And an art takes time.”

“And knowledge,” added Dan with emphasis. “Every art has its secrets,
and the secrets of distilling are being lost the way the old songs
were lost. When I was a boy there wasn’t a man in the barony but had a
hundred songs in his head, but with people running here, there and
everywhere, the songs were lost. ... Ever since things became what
they are,” he repeated on the same guarded note, “there’s so much
running about the secrets are lost.”

“There must have been a power of them.”

“There was. Ask any man today that makes whisky do he know how to make
it out of heather.”

“And was it made of heather?” asked the policeman.

“It was.”

“You never drank it yourself?”

“I didn’t, but I knew old men that did, and they told me that no
whisky that’s made nowadays could compare with it.”

“Musha, Dan, I think sometimes ’twas a great mistake of the law to set
its hand against it.”

Dan shook his head. His eyes answered for him, but it was not in
nature for a man to criticize the occupation of a guest in his own
home.

“Maybe so, maybe not,” he said noncommittally.

“But sure, what else have the poor people?”

“Them that makes the laws have their own good reasons.”

“All the same, Dan, all the same, ’tis a hard law.”

The sergeant would not be outdone in generosity. Politeness required
him not to yield to the old man’s defence of his superiors and their
mysterious ways.

“It is the secrets I’d be sorry for,” said Dan, summing up. “Men die
and men are born, and where one man drained another will plough, but a
secret lost is lost forever.”

“True,” said the sergeant mournfully. “Lost forever.”

Dan took his cup, rinsed it in a bucket of clear water by the door and
cleaned it again with the shirt. Then he placed it carefully at the
sergeant’s elbow. From the dresser he took a jug of milk and a blue
bag containing sugar; this he followed up with a slab of country
butter and—a sure sign that he had been expecting a visitor—a round
cake of homemade bread, fresh and uncut. The kettle sang and spat and
the dog, shaking his ears, barked at it angrily.

“Go away, you brute!” growled Dan, kicking him out of his way.

He made the tea and filled the two cups. The sergeant cut himself a
large slice of bread and buttered it thickly. 

“It is just like medicines,” said the old man, resuming his theme with
the imperturbability of age. “Every secret there was is lost. And
leave no one tell me that a doctor is as good a man as one that had
the secrets of old times.”

“How could he be?” asked the sergeant with his mouth full:

“The proof of that was seen when there were doctors and wise people
there together.”

“It wasn’t to the doctors the people went, I’ll engage?”

“It was not. And why?” With a sweeping gesture the old man took in the
whole world outside his cabin. “Out there on the hillsides is the sure
cure for every disease. Because it is written”—he tapped the table
with his thumb—“it is written by the poets ‘wherever you find the
disease you will find the cure.’ But people walk up the hills and down
the hills and all they see is flowers. Flowers! As if God
Almighty—honour and praise to Him!—had nothing better to do with His
time than be making old flowers!”

“Things no doctor could cure the wise people cured,” agreed the
sergeant. ;

“Ah, musha, ’tis I know it,” said Dan bitterly. “I know it, not in my
mind but in my own four bones.”

“Have you the rheumatics at you still?” the sergeant asked in a
shocked tone.

“I have. Ah, if you were alive, Kitty O’Hara, or you, Nora Malley of
the Glen, ’tisn’t I’d be dreading the mountain wind or the sea wind;
’tisn’t I’d be creeping down with my misfortunate red ticket for the
blue and pink and yellow dribble-drabble of their ignorant
dispensary.”

“Why then indeed,” said the sergeant, “I’ll get you a bottle for
that.”

“Ah, there’s no bottle ever made will cure it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Dan. Don’t talk now till you try it. It
cured my own uncle when he was that bad he was shouting for the
carpenter to cut the two legs off him with a handsaw.”

“I’d give fifty pounds to get rid of it,” said Dan magniloquently. “I
would and five hundred.”

The sergeant finished his tea in a gulp, blessed himself and struck a
match which he then allowed to go out as he answered some question of
the old man. He did the same with a second and third, as though
titillating his appetite with delay. Finally he succeeded in getting
his pipe alight and the two men pulled round their chairs, placed
their toes side by side in the ashes, and in deep puffs, lively bursts
of conversation, and long, long silences, enjoyed their smoke.

“I hope I’m not keeping you?” said the sergeant, as though struck by
the length of his visit.

“Ah, what would you keep me from?”

“Tell me if I am. The last thing I’d like to do is waste another man’s
time.”

“Begor, you wouldn’t waste my time if you stopped all night.”

“I like a little chat myself,” confessed the policeman.

And again they became lost in conversation. The light grew thick and
coloured and, wheeling about the kitchen before it disappeared, became
tinged with gold; the kitchen itself sank into cool greyness with cold
light on the cups and basins and plates of the dresser. From the ash
tree a thrush began to sing. The open hearth gathered brightness till
its light was a warm, even splash of crimson in the twilight.

Twilight was also descending outside when the sergeant rose to go. He
fastened his belt and tunic and carefully brushed his clothes. Then he
put on his cap, tilted a little to side and back.

“Well, that was a great talk,” he said.

“’Tis a pleasure,” said Dan, “a real pleasure.”

“And I won’t forget the bottle for you.”

“Heavy handling from God to you!”

“Good-bye now, Dan.”

“Good-bye, sergeant, and good luck.”

Dan didn’t offer to accompany the sergeant beyond the door. He sat in
his old place by the fire, took out his pipe once more, blew through
it thoughtfully, and just as he leaned forward for a twig to kindle
it, heard the steps returning. It was the sergeant. He put his head a
little way over the half-door.

“Oh, Dan!” he called softly.

“Ay, sergeant?” replied Dan, looking round, but with one hand still
reaching for the twig. He couldn’t see the sergeant’s face, only hear
his voice.

“I suppose you’re not thinking of paying that little fine,
Dan?” 

There was a brief silence. Dan pulled out the lighted twig, rose
slowly and shambled towards the door, stuffing it down in the almost
empty bowl of the pipe. He leaned over the half door while the
sergeant with hands in the pockets of his trousers gazed rather in the
direction of the laneway, yet taking in a considerable portion of the
sea line.

“The way it is with me, sergeant,” replied Dan unemotionally, “I am
not.”

“I was thinking that, Dan; I was thinking you wouldn’t.”

There was a long silence during which the voice of the thrush grew
shriller and merrier. The sunken sun lit up rafts of purple cloud
moored high above the wind.

“In a way,” said the sergeant, “that was what brought me.”

“I was just thinking so, sergeant, it only struck me and you going out
the door.”

“If ’twas only the money, Dan, I’m sure there’s many would be glad to
oblige you.”

“I know that, sergeant. No, ’tisn’t the money so much as giving that
fellow the satisfaction of paying. Because he angered me, sergeant.”

The sergeant made no comment on this and another long silence ensued.

“They gave me the warrant,” the sergeant said at last, in a tone which
dissociated him from all connection with such an unneighbourly
document.

“Did they so?” exclaimed Dan, as if he was shocked by the
thoughtlessness of the authorities.

“So whenever ’twould be convenient for you—”

“Well, now you mention it,” said Dan, by way of throwing out a
suggestion for debate, “I could go with you now.”

“Ah, sha, what do you want going at this hour for?” protested the
sergeant with a wave of his hand, dismissing the notion as the tone
required.

“Or I could go tomorrow,” added Dan, warming to the issue.

“Would it be suitable for you now?” asked the sergeant, scaling up his
voice accordingly.

“But, as a matter of fact,” said the old man emphatically, “the day
that would be most convenient to me would be Friday after dinner,
because I have some messages to do in town, and I wouldn’t have the
journey for nothing.”

“Friday will do grand,” said the sergeant with relief that this
delicate matter was now practically disposed of. “If it doesn’t they
can damn well wait. You could walk in there yourself when it suits you
and tell them I sent you.”

“I’d rather have yourself there, sergeant, if it would be no
inconvenience. As it is, I’d feel a bit shy.”

“Why then, you needn’t feel shy at all. There’s a man from my own
parish there, a warder; one Whelan. Ask for him; I’ll tell him you’re
coming, and I’ll guarantee when he knows you’re a friend of mine he’ll
make you as comfortable as if you were at home.”

“I’d like that fine,” Dan said with profound satisfaction. “I’d like
to be with friends, sergeant.”

“You will be, never fear. Good-bye again now, Dan. I’ll have to
hurry.”

“Wait now, wait till I see you to the road.”

Together the two men strolled down the laneway while Dan explained how
it was that he, a respectable old man, had had the grave misfortune to
open the head of another old man in such a way as to require his
removal to hospital, and why it was that he couldn’t give the old man
in question the satisfaction of paying in cash for an injury brought
about through the victim’s own unmannerly method of argument.

“You see, sergeant,” Dan said, looking at another little cottage up
the hill, “the way it is, he’s there now, and he’s looking at us as
sure as there’s a glimmer of sight in his weak, wandering, watery
eyes, and nothing would give him more gratification than for me to
pay. But I’ll punish him. I’ll lie on bare boards for him. I’ll suffer
for him, sergeant, so that neither he nor any of his children after
him will be able to raise their heads for the shame of it.”

On the following Friday he made ready his donkey and butt and set
out. On his way he collected a number of neighbours who wished to bid
him farewell. At the top of the hill he stopped to send them back. An
old man, sitting in the sunlight, hastily made his way indoors, and a
moment later the door of his cottage was quietly closed. Having shaken
all his friends by the hand, Dan lashed the old donkey, shouted: “Hup
there!” and set out alone along the road to prison.


(1935)