The Project Gutenberg eBook of By beach and bog-land
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: By beach and bog-land
Some Irish stories
Author: Jane Barlow
Illustrator: Paul Henry
Release date: April 8, 2025 [eBook #75823]
Language: English
Original publication: London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905
Credits: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY BEACH AND BOG-LAND ***
BY BEACH AND BOG-LAND
SOME IRISH NOVELS
Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s.
THE WIZARD’S KNOT. By WILLIAM BARRY.
THE LOST LAND. By JULIA M. CROTTIE.
NEIGHBOURS: Being Annals of a Dull Town. By JULIA M. CROTTIE.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
[Illustration]
BY BEACH AND
BOG-LAND
_SOME IRISH STORIES_
BY
JANE BARLOW
_With a Frontispiece by_ PAUL HENRY
[Illustration]
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
Paternoster Square
MCMV
_All Rights Reserved_
“Westward on the low sweet strand
Where songs are sung of the old green Irish land,
And the sky loves it, and the sea loves best,
And as a bird is taken to man’s breast
The sweet-souled land where sorrow sweetest sings
Is wrapt round with them as with hands and wings
And taken to the sea’s heart as a flower”
SWINBURNE.
CONTENTS
PAGE
IN THE WINDING WALK 1
A MONEY-CROP AT LISCONNEL 31
THE HIGH TIDE AND THE MAN-TRAPPERS 55
THE FOOT-STICKS OF SLUGHNATRAIGH 73
OLD ISAAC’S BIGGEST HAUL 101
THE WRONG TURNING 117
CRAZY MICK 141
WIDOW FARRELL’S WONDERFUL AGE 149
THE HINS’ HOUSEKEEPER 175
TWO PAIR OF TRUANTS 189
THEIR NEW UMBRELLAS 209
A SMALL PRACTICE 225
A LINGERING GUEST 247
LOUGHNAGLEE 261
MORIARTY’S MEADOW 269
DELAYED IN TRANSMISSION 285
FOR COMPANY 295
By Beach and Bog-land
IN THE WINDING WALK
I
When people go away from Clonmalroan, they go away, as a rule, very
thoroughly. Their absence is an absence more complete than that of
other persons from other places less out of the world and behind the
times. Once any traveller’s departing form has been beheld pass round
the turn in the deep-banked boreen, or watched dwindle into a speck on
the straight road streaking the wide bog-land, the chances are that
little news of him will reach his former neighbours, till some day
that same speck is espied growing into human shape again along that
same road, and acquaintances remark to each other in the course of
conversation: “And so big Pat Byrne”--to put case--“is afther comin’
home wid himself.”
For Clonmalroan is but meagrely provided with the means of
communication, and its inhabitants are mostly ill able to make use
even of those which it possesses. It is as yet untouched by the
wonderful thread of wire, which has put a running-string through
the web of human lives--puckered up in a moment from Hong Kong to
Cambridge--and the shining metals with their rush and roar, still
halting many miles short of it, are lamely prolonged by the wheel
tracks of the jiggeting side-car with a slenderly filled mail-bag on
the well. The letters it brings are commonly brief and obscure, the
difficult product of certainly no excessive ease in composition. They
convey little more than an intimation of continued existence led among
surroundings only mistily imagined by readers whose own journeying has
lain within the radius of a day’s tramp. Beyond that limit everything
is vague and dim, a mysterious region from whence the absentee seems
not so very much more likely to reappear than do those who have been
seen off with a wake and a keen. Not that such returns even as these
are by any means unheard of at Clonmalroan. Would the friends of
Michael Larissy, who duly waked and buried him three years ago, aver
that they have never set eyes on him since? Or ask anybody, almost,
in the parish, why he wouldn’t take half a crown to be crossing after
nightfall that bridge over the Rosbride River near Sallinbeg, where
a poor tinker-woman was swept away and drowned in a flood some few
autumns back. Then, everybody knows that several of the Denny family
have “walked.” Therefore the assertion: “It was himself or his ghost,”
is not regarded as containing a very unequally balanced hypothesis,
especially if “himself” has been supposed away sojourning in those
unknown and imperfectly reported lands.
But there came one autumn when far and far away from Clonmalroan began
to happen events which had such a heart-burning interest for many of
its people that some news of them did penetrate the densest barriers
of ignorant resourcelessness. Mere sparks, perhaps, as it were blown
from some huge conflagration, whose distant flames make only a sullen
glare behind a smothering smoke-fog. Yet a spark may blacken a body’s
home over her head, or sear the sight out of her eyes. A great war
was thundering and lightening across wide seas, under alien skies: a
war which in no way behoved Clonmalroan, and which might have stormed
itself out, little heeded there, had it not been for the circumstance
that Pat and Micky and their brethren are “terrible lads for goin’ an’
listin’,” and that the regiment they had for the most part joined was
understood to be “up at the forefront of everythin’.”
After a while, moreover, it was not those wild, irresponsible boys
alone that this lurid cloud engulfed in threatening glooms. The
reserves were called out, people said, at first without any clear
notion of what the phrase might signify, but soon perceiving too
plainly how it meant that men whose soldiering days were long past and
nearly forgotten, except just the little pension, must now break the
ties they had peaceably formed and once more set forth campaigning.
Murtagh O’Connor, of Naracor, had to leave a wife and five children on
his bit of a holding “in a quare distraction,” his friends reported,
“for when he was killed, what could happen them but the Union?” And
many another household on that countryside had to consider the same
woeful question.
So all round and about Clonmalroan there came to be an intense craving
for the latest war intelligence. Never had newspapers been in such
request. At Donnelly’s bar the _Freeman_ and the _Independent_ were
as badly tattered as strips of ill-preserved papyri by the end of an
evening’s reading. The Widdy Gallaher “would be walkin’ wild about
the country the len’th of the day,” folk said, “for the sight of a
one. Be raison,” they added, “of her two sons.” And another illiterate
and sceptical old Mrs Linders for similar reasons “was tormintin’
everybody to read her out every word there would be on the paper,
even if they tould her ’twas only the market prices.” The elders,
indeed, were often at a disadvantage in this way, owing to the inferior
educational arrangements under which their generation had risen. Big
Brian O’Flaherty, who had an independent and ambitious spirit, demeaned
himself to set about learning the alphabet from that little spalpeen,
Larry M‘Crilly, in hopes of subsequently reading his news “and no
thanks to anybody.” But Larry was impatient and sarcastic, and Big
Brian slow-witted and irascible, so the course of lessons one day
ended abruptly with “a clout on the head” to the taunting teacher.
With more modest aspirations old John Connellan got the schoolmaster
to print for him, “the way it would be on the paper,” the name of
Private Patrick Connellan; and he might be seen on many a cold day
sitting out on the rimy grass bank before his dark door, for the sake
of the light, and comparing with this scrap the unintelligible lines of
the _Independent_. It was very slow, puzzling work, since the columns
were many and lengthy, and his eyes none of the best. Old John seldom
could retain the loan of the wide sheets long enough to assure himself
completely that his grandson’s name was happily absent from them.
For no news was certainly the best that could be looked for from the
papers. What, indeed, was likely to happen a lad save one of those
casualties which were so briefly recorded. “Och, woman dear, they’re
sayin’ at Donnelly’s that there’s a terrible sight of officers kilt on
the _Freeman_ to-day, so there’ll prisently be a cruel big list of the
rank and file. God be good to us all, woman dear--and poor Micky and
the rest. I’m wonderin’ will they be apt to print it to-morra.”
Thus the winter, always at Clonmalroan a season when cares and losses
are rife, was beyond its wont harassed and haunted by fear and sorrow.
The calling away on active service of the Captain from the Big House
was one of its incidents that tended to deepen the general depression.
His stalwart form and sturdy stride and off-hand greeting were missed
going to and fro, and much commiseration was directed to “poor Lady
Winifred, and she not so long married, the crathur, left all alone by
herself up at the Big House.”
II
It was only comparatively speaking a big house at all, though it made
some architectural pretensions with its pillared front and porch and
balustraded roof. Its lower windows looked out of a spacious hall, and
a few ill-proportioned sitting-rooms; upstairs rambling passages and
wide-floored lobbies cramped the uncomfortable bedchambers. Disrepair
prevailed within and without, ranging from the rough work of wind and
weather to the minuter operations of mouse and moth. Even at its best,
all had been ugly and inconvenient enough. Nevertheless to become
mistress thereof Lady Winifred had not merely left a far statelier
and more luxurious establishment, but had quitted it under a cloud of
disapproval, with an assurance that she was taking a long step down in
the world. For her Captain was a person so impecunious and impossible,
with such an unsuccessful past career, and such unsatisfactory future
prospects, that nobody could imagine what she saw in him, and everybody
thought the worse of her for seeing it, whatever it might be. The
marriage was just not discountenanced and forbidden outright, but most
austere visages were turned upon it, and the wedding, Lady Astermount’s
maid declared, “couldn’t have been quieter if an affliction had
occurred in the family only the previous week.”
Notwithstanding that inauspicious send-off, however, Captain and Lady
Winifred O’Reilly passed a surprisingly pleasant year at this shabby
old house of his among the bog-lands. Lonesome and monotonous are the
bog-lands, and creep up very close to the Big House; but it stands set
in a miniature glen of its own, with a wreath of shrubberies around
it, and during the months after they arrived the O’Reillys busied
themselves much about additional trees and evergreens, wherewith
to screen their domain more effectually from the dreary outlook
and roughly sweeping winds in the years that were to come. Many
improvements, too, had to be made in neglected plots of garden ground,
where the Captain looked at geraniums and pansies and carnations
through another person’s eyes, until at last he saw something in them
himself, and learned with extreme pride to call them by their proper
names. This lore gave him more pleasure on the whole than he had ever
derived from his familiarity with the colours worn by jockeys or
stamped on playing cards, studies which had hitherto engrossed a larger
share of his attention. His wife and he diversified their gardening
with long rides together on steeds not expensively high bred.
Clonmalroan opinion waxed somewhat critical when the pair came trotting
by. Her ladyship, they said, didn’t look the size of a wren perched on
that big, rawny baste of a chestnut, with an ugly, coarse gob of a head
on him too, and the brown mare was something slight for his Honour, who
must ride well up to fourteen stone. But the riders themselves were
satisfied with their mounts.
Their contentment had showed no signs of waning in that mild November
weather, with its pearl-white mists and wafted odour of burning weeds,
when the likelihood of his going out loomed up suddenly on their
horizon. The certain news came one morning, while they were working
away near the back gate, where their small bog stream flows under
steep banks, on which they had designed a plantation of rhododendrons.
In the black peat soil these thrive amain, and by next June would
have lit a many-hued glow in the shadowy little glen. Lady Winifred
tried hard not to see that this interruption of their labours was to
the Captain scarcely such an unmitigated calamity as to herself. Her
recognition of the fact made her feel doubly desolate; not that there
was more difference in their sentiments than had to be in the nature
of things, or than left him otherwise than miserable at their parting.
She tried further to go on with the plantation, as he would no doubt
return in time to see it in blossom; but she was relieved when a spell
of bad weather presently set in and let her stay indoors. Yet indoors
it seemed as if the whole solitude of the great bog had pressed into
the empty house. All day it said, wherever she went, upstairs or
downstairs, one word to vex her: _Gone_. But at night she had various
fortunes in dreams good and evil.
And every morning at breakfast, in the low, broad-windowed bookroom,
she sat opposite to the Captain’s place, just as usual, except that
the place was empty. She chose that seat because from it she could
watch for old Christy Denny coming by from Salinbeg post-office with
the mail-bag. That window looked out on a small lawn, bounded by a
shrubbery through which a path ran leading round a corner of the house
to the front door. The laurel bushes straggled into frequent gaps,
so that between them the approach of a passer-by could be fitfully
descried. And any morning might bring the letter for her, the foreign
letter. To think of how it was perhaps in those very moments journeying
towards her in the battered old brown bag made her so hungry and
thirsty that she sometimes forgot to pour out her tea, or cut the
over-large loaf. Nor was she always disappointed. Every now and then a
letter did come, and in its re-reading she would find a refuge through
the terrors of the day, as in a flattering dream by night. All the
while, indeed, she knew that she was in a fool’s paradise: that, being
so many weeks old, it could give her no assurance of its writer’s
safety. The hands that had folded its sheets might ere now have grown
cold beside some far-off stream, where geysers of deadly hail broke
out rattling on the hills, and the wide air was as full of murderous
stings as a swamp of sweltering venom. She might more rationally rely
upon the newspapers with their flashed tidings. But these she never
dared open herself, and she could not forbear to hang her hopes upon
that delusive correspondence.
One midwinter morning she came down to breakfast with her heart set
more than ever eagerly upon the arrival of old Christy. Partly because
she had not had a letter for longer than usual, and partly because it
was Saturday, and on Sunday no mail comes in Salinbeg. This last was of
course no reason at all for expecting a letter; but it did seem to her
almost improbable that Fate could intend such harshness as to make her
wait two whole days and nights before she could begin hoping again. So
she looked out of the window with shining eyes, and set about crumbling
the bread on her plate before she had tasted a bit, and thought Christy
was late before he had well started on his two-mile trudge. It was hard
weather, and on the corner of lawn she looked into lay a sprinkling of
frozen snow; only a sprinkling; she had seen it whiter last June with
daisies spread to the sun. But the frost was keen, as she would have
felt by the air blowing through the open window if she had been at
leisure to consider anything except the possibility of their bringing
the sound of footsteps on the hardened path.
Old Christy was late really, and she listened in vain. When at length
he did come, she saw him first, a shadow moving along within the still
shadow of the laurels. Just opposite to the window a gap in them made
a ragged arch, and Lady Winifred knew that if Christy had anything
special for her he would come through the opening and straight across
the grass to her, instead of following the path round the house to the
hall door. For a minute, a half-happy minute of doubt, she watched him
nearing the fateful place, fearful, hopeful, blindly impatient, and
then--stunned. Old Christy had gone past the gap, hurrying a little it
seemed, as if he wished to get out of sight. This in fact he did. “Sure
now, the mistress’s face is all eyes these times,” he said to Mrs Keogh
in the kitchen, “and lookin’ at me they do be like as if she thought
bad of me not bringin’ her aught. But bedad if she could see to the
bottom of me heart, she’d know it’s sorry I am I haven’t got somethin’
for her at the bottom of th’ ould bag. Troth would she so;” and Mrs
Keogh replied: “Ah, sure it’s frettin’ she is; goodness may pity the
crathur, she’s frettin’. And doesn’t ait what would fatten a sparrow.
It’s my belief she’ll do no good.”
The mistress did not appear to be fretting as she sat without motion,
and still gazed out over the lawn. Though its aspect was quite
unchanged, it had become a grave wherein her hope, newly slain, must
lie buried until the sun had set and risen, and again set and risen.
Even by the uncertain measure of years, the mistress was very young
yet, and otherwise younger still, so that the edges of the experiences
which make up life had not been worn smooth for her, to expedite their
slipping past. A whole day looked nearly as interminable to her as
to a small child, who gets out of bed with no clear prospect of ever
getting into it again. And now her own bedtime lay beyond more than
twelve leaden-footed hours, so early was this desolate, sunny morning.
It seemed late, however, to some of her neighbours, who were keeping
round eyes on her movements, and considered her as tardy as she had
been thinking Christy. Perhaps a chirp or a rustle may have reached
and prompted her unawares, or perhaps she merely acted from habit, but
by-and-by she got up and scattered her plateful of crumbs upon the
rimy window ledge, where they lay like a little drift of discoloured
snow. As she strewed them she said to herself bitterly towards Fate,
and ruthfully towards fellow-victims: “Why should the birds go hungry
because I have no letter?” and she was careful to shut down the window
sash, lest the sleek black cat should, according to custom, lurk
ambushed within to pounce upon a preoccupied prey. Then she stood
aside, half hidden by the faded crimson curtain, and looked out at
nothing with a cold ache in her heart.
The small birds arrived in headlong haste. Some of them were almost
pecking before the window closed. For the frost’s tyranny had made of
not a few among them desperate characters, fluttering with reckless
enterprise. Even a scutty wren ventured out of cover, and advanced
along the ledge in a dotted line of tiny hops, scarcely less smooth
than a mouse’s run. A robin redbreast alighting brought a gleam of
colour something brighter than a withered beech leaf and duller than
a poppy petal. Two tomtits in comic motley suits disputed with tragic
audacity the claims of all their _biggers_--thrushes, blackbirds,
finches and sparrows. The whole party twittered and fluttered and
wrangled together, blithe and pugnacious, but the spreader of the feast
gave no heed to any of its incidents. She smiled neither at the abrupt
gobblings of the large golden bill, nor at the absurd defiances of the
blue-and-yellow dwarfs. Her act of charity seemed to have gained her
nothing. Then all at once, at some caprice of panic, the assembled
birds whisked themselves down from the window-stool into the gravel
walk below. Each one of them bore off in his beak a breadcrumb which
looked like a little white envelope, and gave him the appearance of a
letter-carrier. The sudden movement caught Lady Winifred’s attention,
and she was struck by the fantastic resemblance. But at the same moment
she remembered keenly how she had been reft of her hope for that day
and the next; and immediately, as if the frost at her heart were broken
up, she saw the mock letters through a rain of tears. She had not
foregone her recompense after all.
III
Near the back gates of Lady Winifred’s Big House, the Widdy Connor’s
very little one makes a white dot on the edge of the black bog-land
that winds away towards Lisconnel. She lived in it quite alone after
her son Terence had listed on her, which he did one winter when times
were hard and work was scarce. Everybody almost concurred in the
opinion that there “wasn’t apt to be such another grand-lookin’ soldier
in the regiment as young Terry Connor, or in an army of regiments
bedad.” For Terry’s good looks and good nature and athletic prowess
were celebrated round and about Clonmalroan. Six foot three in his
stockings, and not a lad to stand up to him at the wrestling; there
wasn’t another as big a man in the parish, unless it might be the
Captain.
But, of course, it was not in the nature of things that anyone else
should equal the extravagant pride and pleasure in those pre-eminent
qualities evinced by Terry’s mother. She made a show of herself over
him, according to the view entertained by some matrons with smaller
sons; and now and then, when the widow had exceeded unusually in
vaingloriousness, one of them might be heard to predict that, “she’d
find she’d get none the better thratement from him for cockin’ him up
wid consait; little enough he’d be thinkin’ of her, or mindin’ what
she bid him.” The widow for her part always declared that “the only
thing he’d ever done agin her in his life was listin’; and that he’d
never ha’ thought of if the both of them hadn’t been widin to-morra
mornin’ of starvation.” And perhaps the affliction which that step
caused her was not so very far from being made amends for by her
exulting delight in the splendour of his martial aspect when he came
over to visit her on furlough in his scarlet with green facings
beautiful to behold. One of those carping critics declared to goodness
after Mass, that she had come into chapel with him “lookin’ as sot up
as if she was after catchin’ some sort of glittery angel flyin’ about
wild, and had a hold of him by the wing.”
But then at that time the regiment was safely quartered at Athlone, a
place no such terribly long way off, and known to have been actually
visited by ordinary people. It was a woefully different matter when
the Connemaras were sent off on active service to strange lands about
which all one’s knowledge could be summed up in the words “furrin” and
“fightin’”--words of limitless fear. Then it was that retribution might
be deemed to have lighted upon her inordinate vanity about her son’s
conspicuous stature. For this now became a source of special torment,
as threatening to make him the better mark, singling him out for
peculiar peril.
“And you’ll be plased to tell him, Mr Mulcahy,” she dictated to the
schoolmaster, who was also cobbler and scribe at Clonmalroan, “that
whatever he does he’s not to be runnin’ into the forefront of the
firin’, and he a head and shoulders higher than half of the lads. He’d
be hit first thing. God be good to us. Bid him to be croochin’ down
back of somethin’ handy. Or if there was ne’er a rock or a furze bush
on the bit of bog, he might anyway keep stooped behind the others. But
if he lets them get aimin’ straight at him, he’s lost.”
Mr Mulcahy, who was stirring up the sediment of his lately watered ink,
received these suggestions about conduct in the field with decided
disapproval. “Bedad now, Mrs Connor,” he said, “there’d be no sinse in
tellin’ him any such things. For in the first place he wouldn’t mind
a word of it, and in the next place--goodness may pity you, woman,
but sure you wouldn’t be wishful to see him comin’ back to you after
playin’ the poltroon, and behavin’ himself discreditable?”
“Troth and I would,” said Mrs Connor. “If he was twinty poltroons. All
the behavin’ I want of him’s to be bringin’ himself home. Who’s any
the betther for the killin’ and slaughterin’? The heart’s weary in me
doubtin’ will I ever get a sight of him agin. That’s all I’m thinkin’
of, tellin’ you the truth, and if I said anythin’ diff’rint it ’ud be a
lie.”
“He might bring home a trifle of honour and glory, and no harm done,”
Mr Mulcahy urged. But Mrs Connor said: “Glory be bothered”; and in the
end he only so far modified his instructions as to substitute for her
more detailed injunctions a vague general order to “be takin’ care of
himself.”
It may perhaps be considered another righteous judgment upon this most
un-Spartan mother, that while these precautions of hers were entirely
neglected, little of the honour and glory which she had flouted did
attend the fate of her Terry. He was shot through the lungs by a
rifle posted a mile or two distant from the dusty hillock on which
he dropped, and where he lay gasping and choking for what seemed to
him a vastly long time, before the night fell suddenly dark and cold,
and not to pass away. As this particular casualty was not discovered
till the next morning, his name did not appear on the list which Barny
Keogh spelled over to the Widdy Connor a few days later, and at the
end of which she said fervently: “Thanks be to the great God. There’s
no sign of himself in it.” But on the very next evening, a half line
in the _Freeman_ ran: “_Add to Killed: Private T. Connor_;” and when
Peter Egan down below at Donnell’s read it out by chance, the widdy,
listening, felt as if she had just wakened up into a dim sort of
nightmare. All the more she felt so, because everybody round her was
saying: “May the Lord have mercy on his soul,” as if anybody could
believe that Terry had really become to them a subject for such pious
ejaculations. So she hurried back through the wide spaces of the bleak
March gloaming to her little, silent house, where she shut herself
in to sleep off her dream. But it woke up with her in the grey of the
early dawning.
Lady Winifred’s Captain was killed about the same time as Terry Connor,
and, like him, without anything specially glorious in the circumstances
of his death. Rather the contrary. The occasion of it was a minor
disaster to the arms of his side--a check, a reverse--over which
it could not be but that someone had blundered. In point of fact a
highly-distinguished General, dictating a draft report of the same to
his discreet Secretary, had expressed an opinion that the regrettable
incident had been brought about by want of judgment on the part of the
commanding officer, the late Captain O’Reilly, when the younger man
coughed significantly, and casually remarked: “Ah, O’Reilly--he married
one of Lord Astermount’s daughters--the third, I think, Lady Winifred,
a little fair girl. Her people didn’t like the match at all, I believe,
but still--” His chief appeared scarcely to notice the observation: but
Captain O’Reilly’s want of judgment was not mentioned in despatches.
IV
When their world came to an end for the widow, Lady Winifred O’Reilly,
and the widow, Katty Connor, the bog-land was just beginning to turn
springwards, and everything on it stirred under the strengthening
sunshine. Round about the Big House the birds, who now despised
breadcrumbs because other food wriggled abundantly in the dewy grass,
sang much and gleefully in the fresh mornings, and through the long
golden light as it ebbed off the lawn. But Lady Winifred, looking out
no more for letters, sought a refuge from it all in the bookroom,
which was a dusky brown place in the brightest hours. There she sat
on the floor in a corner before a far-stretching row of _Annual
Registers_, and read them volume by volume. She had chosen this
course of study just as she might have chosen the top of an adjacent
rubbish heap in a suddenly surging flood. Steadily through she read
them without skipping--_History of Europe_--_Chronicle_--_State
Papers_--_Characters_--_Useful Projects_, even when they included
the specification of Dr Higgen’s patent for a newly-invented water
cement or stucco--_Poetry_, even when it was by the Laureate William
Whitehead. That is to say, her eyes travelled down and down the double
columns where the faded ink was less distinct than the damp stains
which mottled the margin. It may be doubted whether they conveyed many
thoughts to her brain, but they blocked the way to others. One of the
most definite impressions she received was a feeling of resentment
towards those persons who were recorded to have lived a hundred years
and upwards in full possession of all their faculties.
One showery afternoon in the last days of May, Lady Winifred was
interrupted in the middle of the events of the year 1783 by the
entrance of Rose Ahern, the housemaid, who came to take leave of her.
Rose, who was now summoned home to tend an invalided mother, had lived
longer at the Big House than its mistress, and often remarked these
times that “anybody’d be annoyed to see her mopin’, and the two of
them that gay and plisant together only a half twelve-month back.” On
this occasion, having repeatedly said: “So good-bye to you kindly,
me lady, and may God lave your Ladyship your health,” she continued
inconsistently to linger in her place, making small sounds and
movements designed to attract attention. But Lady Winifred had reverted
to her volume twenty-six, and was inaccessible to any save point-blank
address. At last Rose went almost to the door, and turned round to say:
“I beg your pardon, me lady--beggin’ your Ladyship’s pardon--but what
colour might the Master’s uniform be, me lady? None of us ever seen his
Honour wearin’ it, it so happens.”
“It was scarlet, I believe,” Lady Winifred said, continuing to look at
the pages. “Oh, yes, scarlet.”
“There now, didn’t I tell Thady so?” said Rose. “And he standin’ me
out ’twas blue it was, the way it couldn’t ha’ been him we seen; and
declarin’ ’twas apter to be poor Terry Connor, thinkin’ of his mother.
But sure it’s a good step to her house from where we seen him--whoever
he was--last night.”
“_Saw him last night_,” Lady Winifred said, looking up (“And indeed
now,” Rose averred afterwards, “’twas like openin’ a crack of a
window--her eyes shinin’ out of the dark corner”). “Oh, Rose, what are
you saying?”
“’Deed, then, maybe I’m talkin’ like a fool, me lady,” said Rose, “and
you’ve no call to be mindin’ me. Only when I was seein’ me brother
Thady down to the back gate last night, there was somebody in a red
coat at the far end of the Windin’ Walk, there was so, and a big man
too. And this mornin’ I heard several sayin’ there did be a soldier
seen in it this while since of an evenin’. But sorra a one’s stoppin’
anywheres next or nigh Clonmalroan. It’s the quare long step he’s apt
to have come--between us and harm. And I dunno what should be bringin’
poor Terry Connor there, instead of to his own little place; but the
poor Master always had a great wish for the Windin’ Walk. Many a time
have I seen him meself smokin’ up and down it, before ever he got
married; and last year he was a dale in it along with yourself, me
lady, lookin’ after the wee bushes plantin’--beggin’ your Ladyship’s
pardon. And all the while very belike it might ha’ been just a shadow
under the moonlight; only red it was, that’s sartin. But people do be
talkin’ foolish, your Ladyship. And may God lave your Ladyship your
health. It was as like as not to be nothin’ at all.”
“Oh, very likely,” Lady Winifred said, indifferently, “nothing at all.”
V
But that evening she left the house once more. She had intended to wait
until dusk, but its slow oncoming wore out her patience, and there were
still rich gleams and glows receding among the furthest tree trunks
when she stole forth into the open air. It breathed freshly fragrant on
her, after her many weeks in the mouldering mustiness of the bookroom,
and the blackbirds were singing with notes clear as the gathering dews
and mellow as the westering light. The season was now the late autumn
of spring, when most blossoms are falling, though the young leaves are
yet in their first luminous green. On the lawn the laburnums and thorn
bushes stood with their outlines enamelled on the grass in gold and
pearl and pink coral. Along the shaded avenue and shrubbery paths lay
softly drifts of dimmer blossoms and blossom dust, in faint ambers and
russets and crimsons. But the white plumes of the Guelder roses were
still glimmering ghostly above her head as she went by, and some of the
firs were studded all over with little pale-yellow tapers like wild
Christmas trees.
Lady Winifred was going towards the back gate, and presently came where
the Winding Walk, under a dense canopy of evergreens, runs parallel
with the avenue, on the right hand, and on the left within hearing of
the fretted, rocky stream in the bit of a glen below. Once between
the screening laurels and junipers, you could see, however, only up
and down short curves of the waving path. About midway in it was a
rustic wooden seat, niched in a recess of the shrubs, and Lady Winifred
intended to sit down there and wait and watch. But when she reached it,
she found it already occupied by someone who had also been watching, as
was clearly seen in the look that leaped forward to meet the newcomer,
and at sight recoiled again. In this tall woman, with a black shawl
over frosted dark hair, Lady Winifred recognised the Widow Connor
concerning whom, ages ago, before the days of the _Annual Registers_,
she half remembered to have heard about the loss of a soldier son.
The older widow was rising up with many apologies for the boldness of
slipping in there, never thinking any of the family would be coming
out; and she would have gone away, but the other hastened to sit down
beside her, and kept a hand on her shawl. “I won’t stay myself unless
you do,” said Lady Winifred. “I only came out because it was so warm,”
she explained, as she had been explaining to herself, “and such a fine
evening.”
“Tellin’ you the truth, me lady,” said the Widdy Connor, “me poor
Terry himself would sometimes be smokin’ a pipe in here of an evenin’
when there was nobody about. I was tellin’ him he’d a right to not be
makin’ so free--but sure, after all, he done no harm. There’s great
shelter under the shrubberies when the weather does be soft--and be
the same token, we do be gettin’ a little shower this minyit, me lady;
that’s what’s rustlin’ in the laves. So ’twould be nathural enough if
Terry was mindin’ the place. But trespassin’ or annoyin’ the family
now, he’d never be intendin’. Just comin’ of an odd evenin’ he might
be, the way he used. Anyhow Paudeen Nolan and Jim M‘Kenna was positive
’twas him they seen, and they all goin’ home from the hurley match. The
other lads said diff’rint; but that Anthony Martin’s a big stookawn,
and his brother’s as blind as the owls. Nor I wouldn’t go be what Rose
Ahern says--”
“Rose has very good sight,” said Lady Winifred.
“Ah, then you’re after hearin’ the talk, me lady?” said the widow.
“Faix now, they’d no call to be tellin’ you wrong, and bringin’ you out
under the wet for nothin’, to get your death of cold. Because Terry
it was, whatever they may say. But there’s wonderful foolishness in
people. For some of them says they wouldn’t believe any such a thing;
so what _woula_ they believe at all? And more of them says it’s a bad
sign for anybody to be walkin’ that way. And what badness is there in
it, if a lad would be takin’ a look at a place he had a likin’ for, and
where he might get a chance of seein’ his frinds? And it’s the quare
sort of unluckiness ’twould be for one of _them_ to git a sight of
him, if ’twas only goin’ by, and ne’er a word out of him. That’s what
I was sayin’ this mornin’ to ould Theresa Joyce. For says she to me:
‘It’s unlucky,’ says she. ‘And you’d do betther to be wishin’ he’d bide
paiceable wherever he is, till yourself comes along to him,’ says she.
But it’s aisy for Theresa Joyce to be talkin’, and she as ould as a
crow. She can’t be livin’ any great while longer, so I was sayin’ to
her; and it’s somethin’ else she’d be wishin’ if she’d no more age on
her than meself. Sure I was reckonin’ up, me lady, accordin’ to things
that happint, and at the most I can make it I’m short of fifty years.
That’s lavin’ a terrible long time to be contintin’ oneself in.”
“And I’m twenty,” said Lady Winifred.
“Well, now the Lord may pity you, and may goodness forgive me,” the
widow said compunctiously as if she had somehow been an accomplice of
this cruel fate, and were all at once smitten with remorse. She seemed
to ponder for a while deeply, and at last said: “If be any odd chance
it isn’t Terry after all, and only the Captain--I won’t be grudgin’ it
to her; no, the crathur, I will not.”
Thereupon silence continued long between the two watchers, and nothing
befell them except that their blackness was gradually softened into the
shadows as cobweb-coloured dusk enmeshed them.
Then there came a moment when the older woman saw the younger start,
and, quivering like a bough after it has bent to a waft of wind, look
fixedly in one direction. “In the name of God, do you see anythin’,
me lady?” Widdy Connor whispered, and as she spoke she saw too. For a
small rent in the straggling laurel on their right made a spy-hole,
which brought within view a curve of the Winding Walk near its gate
end, many yards away, and there, moving and glimpsing in the twilight,
from which it seemed to have absorbed the last lingering brightness,
went a gleam of scarlet. It was coming towards the seat, and the faces
turned that way looked as if a white moonbeam had fallen across them.
Almost immediately branches rustled close by, and out into the path
a girl hooded with a fawn-coloured shawl stepped warily on the left
hand, and stood poising herself for a swift dart past the recess,
unintercepted if not unobserved. Lady Winifred could not have noticed
the leap of an ambushed tiger; but her companion sprang up and caught
the girl by the wrist. “Norah Grehan,” said the widow. “And who at all
are you watching for this night? Me son Terry was spakin’ to ne’er a
girl, I well know. He’d have told me, so he would. Who are you lookin’
to see?”
“Och, Mrs Connor, ma’am, lave go of me,” the girl said, twisting her
arm and struggling. “And don’t let on to anybody that you seen me, or
there’ll be murdher. It’s Jack M‘Donnell that’s waitin’ for me below
there. He that listed about Christmas, and now they’re sendin’ him to
the war. He and me are spakin’ this good while back, unbeknownst,
be raison of me father makin’ up a match for me wid some other man;
I dunno who he is, but I won’t have him, not if he owned all the
bastes that ever ran on four legs. So I do be slippin’ across the
steppin’-stones of an evenin’ for to get a word with Jack, that comes
over the bog from the dear knows how far beyant Lisconnel. And if they
knew up at the farm I’d be kilt.”
“And maybe the best thing could happen you,” said the widow.
“Ah, don’t say so, woman dear. He’ll be comin’ back one of these days
for sure, a corporal maybe, or a sargint, with lave to marry. And he’s
plannin’ to conthrive for me to be livin’ wid his mother’s sisther in
Sligo till then, the way they won’t get me married on him while he’s
gone--no fear. He’ll be tellin’ me about it to-night--and bedad there
he is whistlin’ to me. Ah, let me go, Mrs Connor; but whisht, like a
good woman,” said the girl, wrenching herself free, and speeding away
between the half visible dark foliage.
Then Lady Winifred, who had heard the last part of this colloquy, got
up also and said: “I think I’ll go home now. It’s a very pleasant
evening, but the air feels rather cold.”
“’Deed now you’d a right to not be out under the rain, wid nothin’ on
the head of you, me lady, but the little muslin cap,” said the widow,
and added as Lady Winifred went: “And, troth, it’s the cruel pity to
see the likes of her wearin’ any such a thing, ay indeed is it. Nora
Grehan and Jack M‘Donnell, sure now the two of them’s at the beginnin’,
and she’s at the endin’. But there’s an endin’ in every beginnin’, and
maybe, plase God, there’s a beginnin’ in every endin’.”
Lady Winifred, meanwhile, was not pitying herself. As she walked slowly
back to her empty Big House, along paths odorous with the rain whose
drops began to pierce their leafiest roofs, she felt again a stunned
disappointment, only vaguer and more chilling than the overdue letter
had caused her. And there were no little birds about now to mock her
into keener consciousness. After all, things were just as they had been
when she set out, no worse surely, and how could they be better, except
in a dream? But a dream she might have before to-morrow came, and
brought back her long day in the brown bookroom with the companionship
of the _Annual Registers_. There were still so many unread of the dusty
volumes, clasped with blackish cob-webs, made ghastly now and then by
the shrivelled skeleton of the dead spinster. She need not yet consider
what she should do when they were all finished.
As the Widdy Connor went towards her little silent house, she was
saying to herself: “Jack M‘Donnell bedad! Sure the height of him isn’t
widin the breadth of me hand of Terry; everybody knows that. It’s my
belief ’twasn’t Jack they seen that time at all. They couldn’t ha’
mistook him for Terry, the tallest lad in this counthryside.... And
says I to Theresa Joyce: ‘The heart of me did be leppin’ up wid pride
every time I’d see him have to stoop his head, comin’ in to me at our
little low door. But it’s lower his head’s lyin’ now,’ says I, ‘low
enough it’s lyin’,’ And says she to me: ‘If ’twas ever so low, the
heart of you’ll be leppin’ up twice as high wid joy and plisure,’ says
she, ‘the next time you behould him.’ But, ah sure, it’s aisy talkin’.
I’ll see him come stoopin’ in at it no more.”
[_A dramatised version of this story will be found in the author’s
volume_: “Ghost Bereft, with Other Stories and Studies in Verse,”
published by Messrs Smith & Elder.]
A MONEY-CROP AT LISCONNEL
I
The Widow M‘Gurk flung down a black sod into the midst of the
blossom-like pink-and-white embers and ashes on her hearth with a shock
that splashed up vivid sparks in all directions, causing a pair of
long-legged, panic-stricken chickens to fly higher, far less nimbly,
and seek refuge from the startling shower among the rafters overhead.
Her action was symbolical, for as she performed it she said: “It’s
gone; there’s the whole of it. And you might as well be holdin’ your
tongue till you’ve got somethin’ raisonable to say.” As a matter of
fact, her niece, Minnie Walsh, had not been making any observations;
but Mrs M‘Gurk had some excuse for indiscriminate censoriousness just
then, seeing that she referred to the loss of nothing less than what
she called “the greatest chance ever she got in her life’s len’th.”
Perhaps that rather long length had really been not more productive
of great chances than is usual in the lives of people who dwell on
the bog-lands at Lisconnel. Yet her neighbours were disposed to
consider that she had enjoyed a somewhat full share of good luck. They
all remembered, for instance, the handsome legacy of half a dozen
half-crowns that had once come to her from the States, and some of
them would say when discussing her affairs: “And she widout a crathur
to be thinkin’ of only herself.” This latter circumstance could, of
course, be otherwise stated as the fact that “she had not a soul
belonging to her in the wide world to be doing e’er a hand’s turn for
her”; and when she was first left a childless widow, many years ago,
that view had predominated. It still prevailed among most of the older
inhabitants, whose children were grown up, and capable of lending a
helping hand, sometimes from across the western foam; but they of a
younger generation, whose long families were as yet the “burden” which
the Gaelic sorrowfully calls them, would speak of her loneliness in
a tone implying: “It’s well to be her.” In this opinion the widow’s
proudly independent spirit helped to confirm them, her habit being to
pose as a prosperous person, resentful of any sympathy which appeared
incongruous with that attitude, while she adopted an extension of the
principle: “_Tell thou never thy foe that thy foot acheth_,” in this
respect treating everyone impartially as an enemy. Here, however, was a
quite exceptional occurrence, upon the cruel unluckiness of which the
most stoical pride could scarcely be imagined to forbear exclaiming. It
came about thus.
Early in the summer, Mrs M‘Gurk’s portly yellowish hen had hatched
her a clutch of eggs with such singular success that not one of the
whole baker’s dozen failed to produce its chick, and had brought
them up so discreetly and warily that all, save the solitary victim
of a bright-eyed hawk’s swooping pounce, had come securely to a more
profitable fate, Mrs M‘Gurk, furthermore, had obtained remarkably
good prices--as much, sometimes, as eighteenpence a couple--for
them down beyond in the town, and the consequence was that, after
paying her rent at Michaelmas, and buying several parcels of tea for
distribution as well as for her own use, she found herself one day
possessed of two shillings, which she had no immediate occasion to
spend. Now it happened that she was at this time entertaining as a
guest her niece’s daughter, Minnie Walsh, who had been visiting some
relations away over beyond Moyallen, and found her great-aunt’s cabin
a convenient halting-place on her journey back to her home near the
town of Ballytrave. Her father’s cousin, Peter M‘Gonigal, had promised
to pick her up in his cart, which would be passing within a mile or
so of Lisconnel on its return from leaving a couple of calves over at
Letter-french; and Peter’s own destination being within an easy walk
of the long-car from Ardlesh to Ballytrave, Minnie’s route lay smooth
and clear. All the while she stayed at Lisconnel she kept on counting
the days until she could set off, less from impatience to rejoin
her domestic circle than because of a wonderful festival which was
in prospect at Ballytrave. It would even be grander, she had heard
tell, than the ones last autumn, and everybody had said that the like
of _them_ nobody had ever beheld--play-acting, and dancing, and the
beautiful music, with a roomful of fiddlers and pipers, and a couple
of big harps that were like a fairy wind through the trees, and the
songs that would make you wish you couldn’t tell what, and think you
were come just near to getting it somehow. And the whole of them in
Gaelic, too, the very same way, people said, that they did be in the
old ancient times. She wouldn’t miss it for anything at all.
Minnie Walsh was generally a silent, quiet girl, but when she spoke
of this _Feish_, she brightened up out of a dulness which made her
enthusiasm the more striking by contrast. Its glow was caught by
her hearers, and often gave a livelier turn to assemblies of the
neighbours, whether on the swarded edges of the bog, basking in long,
honey-coloured sunbeams, or gathered closer, on rough-hewn stools and
benches, about a less distant hearth-fire. Mention of the jigs and
_rinca-fadhas_ would set the young folk dancing, and their elders’
memories were stirred into another sort of activity, producing
fragments of half-forgotten ditties, and familiar phrases long disused.
For Lisconnel had hardly any Irish speakers in those days except Pat
Ryan’s very old mother, who so seldom said anything, that her language
might indeed be a matter of conjecture. She pricked up her ears one
evening upon hearing her son exchange certain guttural greetings
with Joe Sheridan, and she suddenly declaimed in her corner a long
Gaelic ballad, relating the adventures of a Princess, a Giant, and an
enchanted steed, which seemed but gibberish to some of her audience,
and to the rest would have seemed so, only that it being a widely
spread folk-tale, they were able to guide themselves through it by the
clues of a word or name recognised here and there. At the end of it,
Widow M‘Gurk sighed profoundly with a regretful satisfaction, and said:
“Sure now the sound of it does me heart good. It must be a matter of
fifty year since ould Kit Maher would be singin’ the very same at me
poor father’s house away in Asherclogher. But, bedad, if I got a sight
of a one of them reels, Minnie says is to be in it, I’d consait I was a
little _girsheach_ again, I would so.”
“And why wouldn’t you come see them?” said her grand-niece. “Me mother
was biddin’ me many a time to be bringing you along, and me cousin
Peter’d take the two of us just as ready as one; and he could drop you
here on his way back in a couple of days as handy as anythin’.”
“Them two shillin’s I have saved would just pay me car fare goin’ and
comin’,” said her great-aunt, “supposin’ I was fine fool enough to
think of such a thing.”
It was from this doubtful beginning that Mrs M‘Gurk’s resolve to attend
the Ballytrave _Feish_ sprang and rapidly matured. Everything helped
it on. Minnie Walsh, desirous of company on her formidable day-long
journey, coaxed and cajoled, the neighbours athirst for even vicarious
variety and excitement, encouraged and urged her, and above all her
own wishes took her by the hand. It would be one while, she said to
herself, before she got such another chance; you might think it had all
happened on purpose. Her pitaties finished lifting, and her turf well
saved, just at the time when a cart was going and coming that way, and
she so far beforehand with the world that, as she reasoned, the journey
wouldn’t cost her a penny. So the expedition was speedily determined
upon, and her plans approached the brink of accomplishment without a
check.
The possibility of the whole project, however, was for the time being
compressed into the shape of two current coins, those marvellous
seeds from which most heterogeneous crops are raised at all seasons;
and since so much hinged upon her possession of them, “Sure now Mrs
M‘Gurk was the very foolish woman”--as neighbours repeatedly pointed
out to her--“to go put her two shillings into a pocket with a hole in
it.” Yet that was exactly what she did one unlucky afternoon. She had
been in the act of transferring them from a little lustre jug on the
dresser to an old patchwork bag, when sounds of barking and bleating
made her apprehend that the Sheridans’ young collie was molesting her
kid, tethered on a grassy strip beside the bog stream. Whereupon she
had slipped the shillings into her pocket, and ran down to the rescue.
And, alas, as she was recrossing the stepping-stones, she had put her
hand into that pocket and discovered there only _one_ shilling and a
hole very amply large enough to account for the absence of the other.
From the first it seemed a sadly hopeless case. The bit of ground on
which the shilling must have been dropped was, indeed, of limited
extent, not many yards square; but the rough surface, shagged with
tangled tussocks, furzes, heather clumps, and marsh greenery, mocked
at the quest for a thing so small, and she had moreover passed the
black mouths of two or three bog-holes, which might have irretrievably
swallowed it up. Mrs M‘Gurk almost despaired on the spot, though
she groped wildly till she was too stiff for longer stooping. But
when the news of her loss spread, there was no lack of volunteers to
carry on the search. A party of them, including representatives from
nearly all the half-score houses of the hamlet, were to be seen at any
day-lit hour diligently employed. The children especially found it a
fascinating new pastime, and, fired as much by a spirit of emulation as
by several promises of a halfpenny, threw themselves into the pursuit
with ardent zeal and supple joints. Yet the widow drew little or no
comfort from the sight of their energy. She said they might all as
well be looking for it to come tumbling down out of the stars, the way
Crazy Mick was looking for his wife and childer that died on him. Her
neighbours’ other attempts at consolation were equally unsuccessful,
Mrs Doyne’s being perhaps the most complete failure. A person of
invariably dark forebodings, she now suggested that if Mrs M‘Gurk had
gone, she might have been very apt to lose her life. Them long cars
were terrible dangerous things. Or else the playhouse at Ballytrave
might be going on fire, and everybody in it burning to ashes--the Lord
have mercy on them. She was reading of that same happening on the paper
not so long ago. And it would be a deal worse than losing a shilling,
or two shillings, for that matter. Mrs M‘Gurk replied that if some she
could name lost all the sinse they ever had, it would make no great
differ; and strode indignantly away from the group of bucket-filling
women, while Judy Sheridan said apologetically: “The crathur’s annoyed.
Sure her heart was set on gettin’ the jaunt.”
The mishap had necessarily brought the whole scheme to an end. For
as she no longer possessed the price of her return fare, how would
she ever get home again to her cabin on the knock-awn’s side, her
field-fleck, her turf-stack, her few hens and her old kid--all her
worldly wealth? “’Deed then, ma’am, ’twould be like slammin’ a door wid
the handle on the wrong side of you,” Mrs Rafferty reluctantly agreed,
when talking over the disaster with her. Mrs Rafferty was to have had
the kid’s milk during Mrs M‘Gurk’s absence, in return for boiling the
few hens their bit of food, and the arrangement had seemed to her so
advantageous that she regretted its collapse on personal grounds. But
regrets, interested or otherwise, were alike futile; and now on the day
but one before she should have been starting, Mrs M‘Gurk, shaking off
the last twining tendril of withered hope, had gloomily faced the worst.
Having thus summarily mended her fire and snubbed her grand-niece, the
Widow M‘Gurk went out of doors again, in pursuit of a white chicken,
which she had espied astray at a dangerous distance when she was
fetching in her turf. It gave her a long and exasperating chase over
the bog before it would be captured, and as she tramped back heavily
with it under her shawl, she commented to herself that the only thing
she wondered at was how it had contrived not to get lost on her too.
The golden beams that slanted to her from a fiery scaffolding in the
west dazzled her sight, and made her stumble over stocks and stones,
but in her mind she beheld nothing except the eclipse of her bit of
pleasure darkening with its shadow her whole horizon. Yet at this very
moment Minnie Walsh, with sunshine and glee brightening her fair hair
and blue eyes, was watching at the house-door for its unforeseeing
mistress, whom she greeted with: “It’s found, Aunt Bridget; glory be to
goodness, it’s found.”
“Och, don’t be romancin’,” Mrs M‘Gurk said, while the chicken screeched
in her excited grasp. “Who was it?” she shouted jubilantly as she
mounted the steep little footpath.
“Ould Mr Rafferty brought it just after you goin’ out,” Minnie
explained, as they bustled in together; “he got it down below.” And,
sure enough, there on the smoke-darkened deal table gleamed a silver
shilling. Mrs M‘Gurk seized it eagerly, as if grasping a friend’s hand,
and then--dashed it down with a rap on the table again, pressed under
a wrathful thumb. “The ould liar,” she said bitterly, “the ould liar,”
and closed a mouth whose grimness was mutely very eloquent. Minnie
stared at her with a pink and white face of disappointed perplexity.
“Is it lettin’ on to you he was that this is me own shillin’ he’s after
findin’ yonder?” Mrs M‘Gurk said, “and it wid the new pattron of the
Queen on it, in the little quare crown, and 1889 on it as plain as
print, when me own one’s wore that thin an smooth, you’d say she hadn’t
a hair on her head, let alone anythin’ else, and 1861 just dyin’ off
it. It’s fools he was makin’ of you and me.... And what’s this, to
goodness?” she continued, catching sight of another coin on the table,
“a sixpenny bit it is--and where might that come from, if you plase?”
“Sure, Mrs Fahy it was come wid that a little while ago,” Minnie said
with much diffidence; “she said she was just after pickin’ it up on the
very same place where you lost the shillin’, and she had the notion it
might ha’ been two sixpennies you dropped; and says I to her I well
knew it was not. But says she to me it wasn’t hers anyway, and she’d
lave it wid you on chance. So I couldn’t forbid her.”
“The schamin’ thief,” said Mrs M‘Gurk, “and yourself was the quare
_stronseach_. Just let her wait aisy till I tell her what I think of
herself and her impidence and her dirty sixpennies.” In the meanwhile
she relieved her feelings by hurling away the white chicken from
beneath her plaid shawl, and hunting it to its roosting-place among the
rafters of the inner room, whither she followed it.
Minnie stood looking out at the front door. She was cast down by the
repudiation of the shilling, which had once more shattered her hopes
of a travelling companion, and she perceived that her great-aunt
considered her in some degree to blame for an offence whose nature she
did not clearly understand. This made her view with misgivings the
approach of another visitor, who now came quickly up the footpath.
It was no acquaintance of hers, a tall thin girl, with a baby on her
arm, and so poor-looking, even for Lisconnel, that Minnie thought her
errand would be some request. But when a slender brown hand opened to
disclose several dark “coppers,” Minnie was not much surprised to hear:
“I’m after findin’ these four pennies down below, so I thought I had a
right to be bringin’ them up here, in case it was some of the money Mrs
M‘Gurk is after losin’ out of her pocket.”
“It is not,” said Minnie, “by any manner of manes. She lost nothin’
only a shillin’. You might be takin’ them away, if you plase, and thank
you kindly, for it’s annoyed me aunt is.” She tried to intercept the
girl, who slipped past her and laid the money on the table. “Ah, now,
don’t be lavin’ them there,” said Minnie in a whisper, “she’s inside in
the room this minyit, ragin’. Or, at all events, tell her yourself,
the way she won’t be blamin’ me for lettin’ you. For she’s torminted
already wid people bringin’ her the wrong things. I’ll call her out to
you.” The girl, however, said: “Ah! not at all,” and ran swiftly away.
While Minnie stood doubting whether or no to pursue her with the
pennies, Mrs M‘Gurk’s voice came through the inner door: “What talk was
that you had wid Joanna Crehan, and what brought her trapesin’ up here?”
“She’s after findin’--” Minnie began to reply deprecatingly, but a
peremptory injunction cut her short.
“Sling it out to her then, and bid her not throuble herself to be
comin’ next or nigh my place again,” Mrs M‘Gurk shouted, with an
evident desire to be overheard.
Before Minnie could have taken any steps towards executing this
delicate commission, a little gossoon bolted into the house, and the
jingle of something in his hand was hardly needed to apprise her of
his business. “It’s entirely too bad, and so it is,” she grumbled to
herself, slipping out at the door. “I’ll just go and sit the other
side of the hill for a while, till they’ve done pickin’ up pinnies and
shillin’s down below. Plase goodness it ’ill soon be too dark now to
see a stim. But bedad there must ha’ been a quare dale of money dropped
on that one little small bit of ground. I wonder how it happened at
all.”
Minnie, whose imaginative powers were limited, could descry no probable
explanation; but she pondered over it among the furze bushes, until
the September dusk fell so greyly over their fairy golden lamps of
blossoms that she thought she might safely venture back. When she went
indoors she saw her great-aunt standing by the table, on which several
additional coins seemed to have been deposited--more pennies, and,
Minnie thought, another shilling; but the fire-light flickered on them
uncertainly, and the expression of her great-aunt’s countenance was a
warning notice to questioners. Mrs M‘Gurk surveyed them in silence for
a few moments longer, and then she swept them together with the side of
her hand, more contemptuously than if they had been potato skins. “Just
wait, me tight lads,” she said, “and I’ll larn yous to be litterin’ up
me house wid your ould thrash.”
II
Joanna Crehan, the girl who had left the four pennies, returned with
the baby, her youngest brother, to their dwelling, which is a bit down
the road on the right hand, coming into Lisconnel from Duffclane, and
was the Quigleys’ before they emigrated. It stands on a flat slab of
bare stone, which floors it evenly enough, and a low bank quilted with
heather gives it a little shelter at the back, but it fronts the widest
sweep of the bog-land just over the way. The rim of fine-textured sward
is such a frequent playing and lounging place for its tenants, that
their feet wear many equally bare brown patches, which grow rapidly
in size during the drier summer months, and shrink slowly ail the
rest of the year. They were at their largest this evening, and the
little Crehans were using one of them for a game of marbles, while Mrs
Crehan and her second eldest daughter sat knitting on a big boulder,
and her elder son lay in its long shadow neither asleep nor awake.
Joanna handed her the baby, and took from her the knitting-needles with
their dangling grey woollen leg, an exchange in which she acquiesced
half-contentedly, being divided between her wish to continue “Mike the
crathur’s” sock and to welcome “Patsy the crathur’s” greeting grin.
“Where was you off to wid him?” she said to Joanna. “I never seen sight
of you goin’.”
“I went to bring Mrs M‘Gurk me fourpence towards her shillin’,” said
Joanna. “How many stitches had I a right to keep on me back needle?”
“Your four pinnies to Mrs M‘Gurk?” said her mother, “and what in the
name of fortune bewitched you to go do such a thing as that?”
“She’s distracted losin’ it,” said Joanna, “and I’d liefer than forty
fourpinnies she had it back.”
“The divil’s cure to the both of yous then,” said Mrs Crehan, “and is
that all the nature you have in you? To be slinkin’ out of the house
wid your pinnies to her that’s nothin’ to us good or bad, and your
poor brother settin’ off to-morra to the strange place, wid ne’er a
halfpenny to put in his pocket, and yourself the only one of us that
has a brass bawbee to our names, or the dear knows it’s not begrudin’
him we’d be.”
“And I thought you and Mike was always so wonderful great,” put in
Nannie Crehan, taking up the recital of her sister’s delinquencies,
“lettin’ on you were kilt if anybody said a word agin him. And to take
and give away the fourpence from him, to ould Widdy M‘Gurk, that’s as
apt as not to throw them in your face. And I thought--”
“Did you ever by chance think that you hadn’t a great dale of wit?”
said Joanna; “not that you need throuble yourself to be tellin’
anybody.”
Mike got up and sauntered off towards a group of people at a little
distance, while silence fell on his mother and sisters, who this
evening lacked spirits for vivacious altercation. Joanna sat gazing
blankly across the vast floor of the bog, as it lifted up against the
fading fires of the west; every minute its dark rim extinguished some
bright embers. She felt intensely miserable. It was the hardest grip
of the unhappiness that had been pressing on her heart almost ever
since the moment a few days ago when she had seen Mike set his foot on
something shining silverly from under a dandelion leaf on the bog there
below the knock-awn, where they all were looking for Mrs M‘Gurk’s lost
shilling.
In obedience to his warning frown she had suppressed an ecstatic
shriek, supposing that he had some plan of his own about the method of
announcing his find, and she had presently seen him slip it secretly
into his pocket. Never would she have imagined that he did not intend
to restore it; but as time slipped by, this dreadful suspicion was
forced upon her. For Mike made no sign, and when she asked him about
it in private, at first answered evasively, but finally told her to
“hould her fool’s gab, and quit meddlin’.” The mere possibility filled
her with wrath and dismay. She had always thought so much of Mike, and
she had never heard tell of anybody belonging to them behaving in such
a manner. What made it worse was that Mike would be travelling off next
day by himself all the way to the county Roscommon, where his uncle had
got him farm work. He had never left home before, and only the strong
propulsion of adverse circumstances, including a father bedridden half
the year, would now have thrust him out. For Mike, long the only grown
son in a flock of girls, was an important and cherished possession
among the Crehans, not to be parted with lightly. Everybody agreed that
none of them made such a fool of him as his eldest sister Joanna, and
she had indeed taken his going sadly to heart. She had fretted much
over the poverty which would oblige him to start almost penniless,
as after providing him with the indispensable footgear, not a spare
farthing remained in the establishment except a dwindled remnant of
the shilling which Mary had earned last Easter by doing jobs for Mrs
O’Neill down beyond Duffclane.
But though this had been bad enough, infinitely worse was it to think
of his setting forth into the wide world laden with that guilty coin.
It was apt to bring ill-luck on him, she felt. And anyhow it was “no
thing to go do,” a phrase wherein she acknowledged the supremacy of
that law which a more philosophical mind than hers had marvelled at
under the starry heavens. Various minor ingredients helped to embitter
her distress. Wounded pride and affection, disappointment, and a sense
that she had been made in some degree an accomplice. Partly this last
consideration, and partly a vague hope that Mike might thus be shamed
into right-doing, had spurred her to the desperate step of bringing
Mrs M‘Gurk her fourpence. Now that the deed was done, however, she
found, instead of relief, fears lest it should only confirm Mike in his
felonious obduracy, or possibly draw the widow’s suspicions upon him.
So she sat out a disconsolate twilight, which lingered and loitered,
giving her time to finish Mike’s sock before she went indoors.
Mike himself had strolled on, and joined the little knot of men who
were gathered at the front of Peter Ryan’s house. But he scarcely
changed into pleasanter company, for, “Musha, good gracious,” he said
to himself, “is there nothin’ in creation for people to be talkin’
about only that one’s ould shillin’?”
“Well now, that was comical enough,” Ody Rafferty was saying to Kit
Ryan. “I didn’t see herself at all, and I bringin’ my shillin’; there
was only the niece in it, but of course she would be tellin’ the widdy.
And then you to come landin’ in a while after wid a different one, and
the same lie. You’d a right to ha’ tould me what you was intindin’,
the way we might ha’ conthrived it better. But the foolishness of some
folks would surprise the bastes of the field. Shankin’ up to her they
are wid pinnies and sixpinnies, and tellin’ her they got them all on
the one bit of ground. Sure an ould blind hin ’ud have more wit than
to believe the likes of that. Howane’er, it’s right enough, so long as
she’s contint to be lettin’ on herself, and not callin’ us all liars
and thieves of the world.”
“She kep’ the shillin’ I brought her ready enough, bedad did she,” Kit
said with a rueful complacency. “‘Is that me shillin’ you’re after
findin’?’ says she the minyit she seen it, with the look of an ould
magpie on her. ‘To be sure it is, ma’am,’ says I. ‘What else would
it be at all, unless it was another one?’ says I. ‘Yourself’s the
very cliver man entirely,’ says she to me, and wid that she grabs it
up. ‘I’ll take and lose it agin,’ says she, ‘the next time I want to
be makin’ me fortin’.’ I wouldn’t put it past her, mind you, to be
meanin’ somethin’ quare. But as for findin’ her own shillin’ among them
coarse-growin’ tussocks, a body might be breakin’ his back there till
the Day of Judgment for any chance of it.”
“Take care somebody isn’t after gettin’ it, all the while, and keepin’
it quiet,” said Ody.
“Och, I wouldn’t suppose there was any person in Lisconnel would be
doin’ such a dirty trick on the poor ould woman,” said Peter Ryan.
“She’s as rich as a Jew anyway, wid half the counthryside runnin’ off
to her wid their savin’s,” said Mike. “It’s well to be her, bedad.” He
soon sauntered on, but did not attach himself to any other party, being
irked by the prevalent topic of conversation.
The next morning rose still and softly tinted, with a deep band of
mist all round the far away horizon. Mrs M‘Gurk got up unusually early
for Sunday, and set off alone to Duffclane in time for the ten o’clock
Mass, so that she got back to Lisconnel a full hour before most of her
neighbours. They found her seated on a convenient flat-topped boulder
by the side of the road, just at the highest point of the slight rise
over which it slips down to run between the few dwellings of Lisconnel.
Here the returning congregations always halt for a final gossip, before
they break up, dispersing themselves into the shadowy door-ways of
cabins to the right and left. She descried from afar their approach
along the ribbon of road, white in the afternoon sun, and singled out
among the shawls and hoods and broad-brimmed black hats the heads of
nearly all the neighbours whom she especially wished to interview.
The Crehans, indeed, were absent, owing to Mike’s imminent departure;
however, she hoped to fall in with him and Joanna by-and-by. When
everybody had come up, and all were standing or sitting about, the
widow rose, and began what was evidently a set speech in substance, if
not in form. Her great-niece, Minnie Walsh, observed her with some
trepidation, a feeling which was more or less shared by others in her
audience.
“Ody Rafferty,” she said, selecting this small old man for the object
of her address, “I was thinkin’ just now of the way me poor grandfather
would have me annoyed somewhiles, when I was a little _girsheach_, like
Biddy Ryan there wid her mouth full of the red blackberries. For if
ever I had e’er a pinny of an odd time, he would be biddin’ me run and
plant it somewheres in the bit of garden, to see would it grow into
a money-plant for me. Ragin’ I used to be, God forgive me, thinkin’
he was only makin’ a fool of me. But sure, he was right enough, poor
man, and it’s meself was the fool; for here I am after droppin’ me
shillin’ on the ground there scarce a week past, and here’s the half
of yous coming up to me yesterday wid shillin’s, and pinnies, and all
manner, that ye got growin’ in it. Bedad ’twas terrible quick goin’
to seed--for what other way could they be there? Unless it’s makin’
a fool of me ye were, and that I know right well ye wouldn’t have
the impidence to be doin’. But ’deed now it’s not keepin’ the whole
of the crop I’d be at all, and it not even raised on me own bit of
land. So I brought your share of it along; Ody, and the other people’s
too”--she drew out a little grey plaid rag of shawl, and undid a
knotted corner--“This is your shillin’, Ody,” she said. “And here’s Kit
Ryan’s and Mrs Fahy’s sixpinny.” She moved from one to the other of her
would-be benefactors, restoring their contributions with a firmness
which obviously was not to be gainsaid. Perhaps no dramatic scene at
the Ballytrave festival could well have afforded her a more enjoyable
moment. Ody Rafferty alone ventured upon an audible remonstrance,
“Begorrah now,” he said, “if it’s not a fool you are altogether,
yourself’s the proudest-minded, stubborn, steadfast ould divil of a
headstrong ould woman from this to Cork, and maybe that comes to much
the same thing, supposin’ you had the wit to know it.” But even he did
not utter this criticism until Mrs M‘Gurk was stalking away.
She wished to find Mike Crehan, whom she conjectured to be still at
home, but before she reached the Crehans’ house, she met him coming
along the road with his red cotton travelling-bag. A troop of his
younger sisters were withdrawing against their will, having been
dissuaded by forcible arguments from accompanying him further. “It’s
follyin’ me to the end of the town they’d love to be,” he had said to
himself. “Keenin’ like a pack of ould banshees, and makin’ a show of me
before the lads.” He would have much preferred to avoid an interview
with the widow, but that seemed impossible, and he halted reluctant.
“So you’re steppin’ along, Mike,” she said. “It’s well to be the likes
of you, that has the soopleness yet in your limbs. Sure now, you might
tramp the whole of Ireland before you’ll come on an ould man’s mile,
that wants the end in the middle. And look-a, Mike, here’s the pinnies
your sister Joanna was lavin’ up at my house last night by some manner
of misapperhinsion: belike you’d ha’ room for them in your pocket, and
this shillin’ along wid them. They’re the handiest sort of luggage to
be carryin’ after all, if they’re the hardest to get a hould on.”
A mixture of motives had incited Mrs M‘Gurk to bestow this gift. There
was the need to be more than even with the Crehans on the score of
Joanna’s attempted benefaction, and the desire to get rid of a coin
the possession of which did but remind her of her disappointment,
while to these was added an impulse of genuine benevolence towards
the tall, ragged lad--in her own mind she called him “a slip of a
young bosthoon”--whom she saw faring off alone into the wide, strange
world, poorly enough provided for, she presumed, though she did not
surmise the depths of his people’s penury. As she hurried away from him
her feelings were mingled still, half-satisfied, half-regretful, and
dominated by a sense that she had here definitely put off a flattering
hope.
Mike’s feeling, on the contrary, was quite simple, and of such
unfamiliar unpleasantness that he hailed with relief the sight of his
sister Joanna waiting for him at the furze gap. He would otherwise
have reprobated her for protracting the hateful farewell scenes, but,
as it was, he hastily thrust two shillings into her hand, saying,
“Och, Hanny, run after her the quickest you can--she’s just down the
road--and be givin’ them back to her.”
Joanna looked at the shillings with eyes of puzzled wonder. “Sure it
wasn’t the both of them she lost,” said she. “Where at all did you get
the other from?”
“Herself,” said Mike. “Run like the mischief now when I bid you.”
“I will that, Mike jewel,” she said, and started forthwith. Delight at
his act of restitution, of which she had utterly despaired, although
intending to make one last appeal, superseded for the moment every
other consideration; but as she caught up Mrs M‘Gurk, climbing the
steep footpath, she became suddenly aware that she had a confession to
make, and that it might put Mike’s good name at the mercy of a third
person.
“Mrs M‘Gurk, woman dear,” she said, rushing at her perilous
explanation. “Here’s your shillin’ Mike bid me be bringin’ back to you,
and thank you kindly all the same, for he couldn’t be robbin’ you of
it, and he’s got plinty of money along wid him. And the other’s the one
you dropped on the bog, ma’am; he and I found it a day or two back, and
we just kep’ it a while be way of a joke. And I hope you won’t think
bad of it, ma’am. Mike was biddin’ me this minyit to not forgit to
bring it to you.”
“Saints above, it is me own one sure enough this time,” said Mrs
M‘Gurk. “Well, now, that was the quare luck and the quare joke. And
truth to tell you, Joanna Crehan, I’m thinkin’ yourself had neither
act nor part in it, whativer you may say.” Joanna’s face corroborated
this conjecture so disconcertedly that Mrs M‘Gurk hastened to add:
“But after all there’s no harm in a joke. Like enough I might take the
notion in me head to have a bit of a one meself. Suppose I was to be
lettin’ on to the rest of them I had the shillin’ lyin’ in the corner
of me pocket all the while, and niver seen it, nobody could tell but
that was the way it happint, and ’twouldn’t be too bad a joke at all.”
“’Twould be the greatest joke ever was, and yourself’s the rael dacint
woman for that same,” Joanna declared with an enthusiasm which said
little for her sense either of morals or of humour.
Then they went their several ways. As the widow opened her door,
all her eager plans for the morrow were in brisk motion again, like
clockwork freed from some hampering hitch. Joanna, running homeward,
felt conscious of nothing except the happiness of knowing Mike to be
safely quit of the crime with which she had feared that he would burden
himself irretrievably. She found her mother and sisters looking out
from a knoll whence the last glimpse was to be had of the dwindling
road-ribbon along which Mike would presently pass from sight. Mrs
Crehan was lamenting over the poor circumstances of her departing son.
“The crathur,” she said, “trampin’ away wid himself into the width of
the world, and ne’er a pinny to his name, any more than if he was a
baste drivin’ to a fair. Not a shillin’ in his pocket has he.”
“He has not,” Joanna said, and added indiscreetly, “Glory be to God.”
THE HIGH TIDE AND THE MAN-TRAPPERS
I
All Abbey Dowling’s neighbours thought she was the very foolish woman
to let her good-for-nothing father-in-law establish himself in her
house again after his return from America, and many of them told her so
frankly, but fruitlessly. This was not surprising, as everybody agreed
that the Dowlings were always as headstrong as mules. Everybody agreed,
too, that her poor husband’s people were none of them worth much, and
that this old Patrick Mulrane, though not without some companionable
qualities, was worth as little as any. Drinking and raising rows
had hitherto been his constant occupation, and the whole parish of
Clochranbeg knew what lives he had led his son and daughter-in-law,
until, upon the death of the former, off he had gone to the States,
whence nothing had been heard of him for the next dozen years and
more, while the young widow was struggling to keep herself and her
three sons, and her invalid sister, on their stony little bit of
land. “So now, when the boys are grown big, and able to be workin’,
back he flourishes wid the notion he’ll have them supportin’ him in
idleness, and he after lavin’ all of yous to starve, for any thanks
it was to him. Raison you’ll have to repint it, if you take him in.
Fightin’ wid the lads he’ll be, and frightenin’ poor Maggie there, and
drinkin’ their earnin’s on you, besides learnin’ them all manner of
villiny--that’s every hand’s turn he’ll be doin’ for you, ma’am, mark
my words!” Her old and respected friend, Mrs O’Hagan, tramped down a
long and rough way to exhort her thus. But the words might just as well
have been spoken to the sea-gulls skirling about Mrs Mulrane’s door.
If her neighbours’ remonstrances had any effect at all, it was merely
to make her the more proudly careful that they should seem uncalled
for; and the remoteness of her dwelling, out of the way on the
shingly strand, helped her to keep up appearances. Yet she was not so
successful but that some signs and many rumours of domestic troubles
were soon in existence. Undoubtedly old Mulrane himself was often to
be seen in various public-houses, drinking and brawling; his grandsons
looked ragged and poverty-stricken, even when they were known to have
sold a couple of beasts advantageously, or to have done not too badly
at the mackerel fishing; and their mother’s aged and harassed aspect,
her beggarly attire, and her miserable marketing, became the veriest
commonplaces of local gossip. As for reports of the old man’s violence
and intemperance, of screeches and roars heard in the vicinity of the
Mulranes’ house, and of raging warfare and patched-up truces within it,
they were rife incessantly.
Things had been going on thus, if not quite so ill as some people
declared, yet certainly quite ill enough, for six or seven years, when
one autumn afternoon the three young Mulranes were away on the shore
gathering sea-wrack. It had been washed up by a heavy ground-swell
in great rolls all along the shingle reef which spans a gap in the
cliff wall, making a rough causeway, for at the end of it next to the
Mulranes’ cabin sea-water rushes under a natural rock arch to fill a
small, land-locked basin, never empty even at the lowest ebb. To-day
a spring tide was flowing, and nearly at its height; in fact the boys
had for some time been expecting every minute to see it turn; but the
band of foam kept on seething further and further up, and their last
bundles were lifted frothy and dripping. They were heaping the dark
weed on a little low plateau, covered with rough, tussocky sward, which
just there sinks down to the water’s edge, in steep continuation of
the pasture land cresting the cliffs; and red Paddy had remarked to
his black brothers, Art and Dan, that he thought they had nearly a
boat-load in it now, when a woman came rushing straight down the grassy
slope. To judge by the silvering of her rough hair, and the intricacy
of her wrinkles, she was an old woman, but she moved with youthful
agility and vigour as she abruptly set about shovelling up the weed,
carrying and piling it, all in silent, breathless haste.
“You’ve no call to be killin’ yourself, mother,” Paddy said presently.
“We’ve got our plenty gathered, or very nigh. What kep’ you till now?”
“Nothin’ at all kep’ me,” said Mrs Mulrane, “good or bad.”
“She had to come round along by the high path,” said Art. “It’s
drownded she’d be if she was down under the cliffs.” Seldom does it
happen that one could not get thither dry-shod, over the shingle and
boulders at their base, from the cabin some quarter of a mile away. But
that short-cut was clearly impossible now, as waves were tumbling at a
height which did not leave footing for a goat. “Quare full tides there
are in it to-day,” said Art.
“Turnin’ it is the now, anyway,” said Paddy. “And we might better be
loadin’ up, or else we’ll be bothered pushin’ off th’ ould boat. It’s
runnin’ out of the channel there this last five minyits.”
“Ah hould your gab talkin’,” said Mrs Mulrane angrily, panting as she
shook down a dank armful. “We’ve a right to get a good bit more while
we’re at it, and where’s the hurry to be goin’ back there this long
while yet?” She turned away with a flounce, while her sons’ three
heads nodded together in recognition of her crossness, for which they
thought they could account as usual.
But at the same moment a creaking of oars was heard, and a small boat
darted into sight from behind a screening rock. As soon as the two men
who were rowing her saw the Mulranes, they made for the shore, shouting
loudly all the way, but the lads were prevented from listening by their
mother’s behaviour. For she instantly sprang to them, and caught hold
of Art and Paddy, hooking one arm through Dan’s, so as to include him
in the group, and dragging them all as closely together as possible,
while she adjured them in a desperate whisper: “Boys--boys dear--let
me tell yous first--it’s after findin’ him they are, and they’re come
bawlin’ it to us--bad luck to them. For the love of God, don’t be
lettin’ on I wasn’t tellin’ yous before. Ay, it’s your grandfather’s
drownded on the strand up at our place. He come in a while after yous
goin’ out, and was grabbin’ at poor Maggie’s bit of baker’s bread I had
in it, put away for her on the dresser, and when I bid him let it be,
he made at me wid the knife--troth did he--and swore he’d have me in
littler bits than the bread; mad drunk he was. So out I run, thinkin’
I’d aisy get away from him, and he took out follyin’ me, and very
prisently down he come wid his foot caught fast between two big stones;
ne’er a hit there was on him, only he could’nt wranch it out, and he
all the while cursin’ cruel.
“So says I to meself he might better be stoppin’ where he was for
a bit, till he got a trifle sinsible, the way he wouldn’t be doin’
murdher on Maggie and me, and ’twould be soon enough for yous to let
him up when ye come in to the supper. For there wasn’t a sign of the
say next or nigh him then--I swear it. But by-and-by I noticed the
unnatural height it was risin’, and I thought belike I had a right to
be callin’ yous to him, for ne’er an offer could I make by meself to be
liftin’ the weight of him or the stones; and I legged it the quickest I
could up behind the house to look was yous on the point here yet; and
’twas then I seen the big waves rollin’ widin a couple of leps of him.
“But says I to meself, they’ll be over him wild agin the lads could
git round to him, and God knows the whole of them might be swep’ away
into the deep say, and they tryin’ to raich him. And it’s foolish-like
I got wid the fright, for I hadn’t the heart in me to be stayin’ or
goin’, and I run this way and that way up there in distraction, till
I was sartin-sure I might as well hould me whist till doom’s day. So
down I come to yous, and I niver said a word. But these Behans are apt
to be seem’ me and him below on the strand; for, now that I remimber,
they were fishin’ about all day. And if ye let on I niver tould yous,
they’ll say I left him drowndin’ a purpose--”
“You did so, bedad,” said Dan, drawing his arm out of hers.
“And the best thing maybe could happen us,” said Art, pressing into
his place. Paddy stood passively, as if dumfoundered.
Time failed for further opinions, as the Behans’ boat was already
bumping on the shelving, grassy ledges, and Larry Behan’s voice
over-bore every other.
“Och, Mrs Mulrane, it’s too late you are now entirely; drowned dead
he is, poor ould Paddy. Ne’er a spark of life was left in him by the
time we come, and he lyin’ in scarce twelve inches of water; but great
work we had gettin’ the foot of him free of the stones, that had him
gripped like a rabbit in a trap. Sure we seen him wid you on the strand
a while ago, for lurkin’ up and down the bay we are since mornin’, and
some roars we heard, but we’d no notion anythin’ was amiss. And when
we seen you above on the cliff path, we knew ’twas here you’d be goin’
to, ’cause we noticed your sons workin’. But next time we drew in shore
a bit, we heard him shoutin’ woeful, so we pulled up, and near swamped
we were among the heavy rollers; and over him they were, and had the
breath choked out of him, before we found him, by the one arm crooked
up above his head. So we left Johnny Rooney wid him, and come along
straightways to tell yous--stone dead he is. There’s no use hurryin’
now. But, och to goodness, ma’am, it’s the very-little-good-for pack
them lads of yours are, that you couldn’t get them persuaded at all
to thry save their poor ould grandfather, while there was a chance.
Afraid of the rough water they were, belike, and waitin’ for the turn
of the tide--and lavin’ him there fast by the leg--the cowardly young
man-trappers.”
“For pity’s sake whist,” interrupted their mother. It was not clear to
which party she appealed; but her sons stood in silence, looking down,
as if a wave were actually passing over their heads.
And it was thus that they got the name by which they were to be known
for many a long day in Meenaclochran.
II
Even before her favourite son Dan went off to the States on her, some
of Mrs Mulrane’s neighbours had been thinking her partly _quare_ in
her head, and after that they thought so all the more, for it wasn’t
natural, they said, for any reasonable body to go about the way
she did, with ne’er a word out of her, looking fit to _swally_ any
folks she met, whether they spoke to her or let her alone. This new
misfortune did not befall her until three or four years had passed
since the tragical end of her father-in-law; and dismal years they were
for all the household in her cabin on the strand. Never a happy one at
the best of times, a heavier cloud seemed to have settled down upon
it, darkening the days for everybody, except perhaps helpless Maggie
Dowling, from whose life a recurring violent terror had vanished with
the departure of old Patrick. “Not but what the poor man was dacint and
good-natured enough, so long as he hadn’t the drink taken,” she said.
Like her sister, Mrs Mulrane, of course, found things quieter, but
that was for her a questionable benefit, because it gave her the more
leisure for thinking, and her thoughts were poisoned with bitter
self-reproaches. As time crept on, these might have been mitigated, if
they had sprung only from the manner of old Patrick’s death. She might
have argued them down in her own mind with a theory, more or less well
founded, that her share in the event was at worst merely an error of
judgment, if indeed an error at all; and having thus convinced herself,
she would not have deeply considered the neighbours’ view of her
proceedings, however unfavourable. But as it was, the panic-stricken
impulse, which had led her to cast upon her sons the responsibility for
that fatal delay, had in every way worsened her plight. For in addition
to the dubious guilt of her hesitation to rescue, she had burdened her
conscience with the indisputably criminal act of bearing false witness
against her nearest and dearest. That it was also an act of utter folly
she speedily learned by the experience which so punctually arrives
just too late. By allowing her sons to be accused she had more than
trebled her own share of affronts and mortifications; she had opened
a threefold inlet to the spears and arrows of disparaging looks and
speeches, that flew around her thick and fast.
Old Patrick Mulrane had been one of those people who, though generally
disapproved of, are not personally unpopular, and this made everybody
feel all the more strongly about the dolefulness of his fate, and the
worthlessness of those who had so disgracefully forborne any endeavours
to avert it. A tall, gaunt Debby Ashe, who spoke with some authority,
declared that it “put her heart across” to think of the poor old man
lying there, caught by the leg in the cruel big boulder-stones, and
watching the waves rolling in every minute to drown the life out of
him, and those three great lumps of grandsons of his all the while
standing within a goat’s tether of him, that wouldn’t so much as reach
a hand to help him, not though their unfortunate mother went down on
her two knees to them--there was that to be said for her. No indeed,
not a one of the whole of them would, for fear the water might take
them off their good-for-nothing feet. She wouldn’t have thought there
were the likes of three such young poltroons in the parish, and they
were no credit to it, or to whoever had the rearing of them. Many
other persons shared Debby Ashe’s opinion, and expressed it in still
stronger terms, which whoever had the rearing of these young poltroons
often overheard, sometimes by accident, but more times by design. Often
again she saw, or fancied that she saw, the shadow of such comments
on the downcast countenances of her sons, which were usually gloomy
enough to give her ample scope for conjectures of the kind. Amongst
these was predominant a fear that the lads were “thinking bad of her,”
grudging and resenting the ill-turn she had done them. Reasonable as
the apprehension might seem, there were little grounds or none for
it, except in the case of Dan, her favourite, and even he said never
a word. In fact the whole household kept an absolute silence upon the
subject.
It would be impossible to ascertain exactly how she at length became
aware that Dan was thinking of the Jim M‘Evoys’ eldest daughter Rose,
and that she wouldn’t have anything to say to him, and that, supposing
the girl would itself, her people wouldn’t let her, by reason of the
talk about him and his brothers at the time their grandfather got his
death, and the bad name it gave them among the neighbours. Perhaps
Maggie, the onlooker, may have dropped a hint and supplied her with
the key which enabled her to spell out from a cipher of trifles how
the matter stood. At any rate it came to her knowledge, and brought
keenlier home to her what a dire injury she had done Dan and his
brethren. For at this time there was nothing else in the Mulrane’s
circumstances to make him a despicable suitor for Rose M‘Evoy. Since
their grandfather had ceased to squander their earnings, they had
thriven fairly well on their bit of land, where Mrs Mulrane herself
worked desperately, and at sea, to which they now put out in a
fishing-boat of their own. They sometimes did so in “soft” or “dirty”
weather, which daunted their neighbours, whose commentary on such an
occasion often ran to the effect that, “Them young Mulranes was mighty
ready to be foolin’ off wid themselves in a gale of win’, when they
thought they had a chance of grabbin’ a few mackerl. They were a dale
more delicate if there was no talk of gettin’ anythin’ better out of
the water than a misfortunate ould drowndin’ crathur. Bedad it looked
very like as if they’d liefer he stopped where he was that time, and
let them be shut of him. Or maybe what made them so hardy now was
thinkin’ it wouldn’t be wid _drowndin’_ the likes of them were apt to
get their deaths, no matter where they took it into their heads to
streel off to. But sure it was a pity for ould Paddy that they didn’t
take up wid the notion of bein’ so venturesome a bit sooner, ay was
it--the young poltroons.”
Consequently Mrs Mulrane could not but clearly understand what was
implied by the M‘Evoys’ rejection of her son, and in her raging against
it she had to include herself. She brooded and fretted over it for
several weeks, till one gusty March morning, when the sight of Dan’s
haggard face at breakfast had sharpened her two most goading fears,
which were that he might make away with himself, or else run off to the
States, she formed a difficult resolve, and started up the cliff path
to call on Rose M‘Evoy’s grandmother.
The Dowlings and the O’Hagans were friends of very long standing, while
Mrs O’Hagan, a somewhat older contemporary, had known her all the
days of her life, and was now rather poorer than herself, facts which
made her errand less impossibly humiliating. Still, it needed a mighty
effort, for she was inwardly furious at the M‘Evoys’ impudence. “Cock
up the likes of them to look crooked at Dan,” and sorely perplexed
to imagine how she could set about effecting her purpose without
compromising the pride of the Dowlings and the Mulranes. Her own,
individually, she was prepared to let fall. For a task of the kind
her qualifications were but meagre, tact, patience and self-control
being by no means her strong points, and even the stubborn will with
which she was commonly credited seeming nothing more serviceable than
a habit of adhering blindly to any position she might have hurriedly
taken up in some access of fear or anger. So now in her interview with
Mrs O’Hagan, instead of approaching its delicate object gradually yet
steadily, as a skilful diplomatist would have done, she proceeded
in a series of abrupt advances and awkward retreats, certain to
draw upon her the very suspicions that she wished to shun. That she
notwithstanding did never blunder or venture very near to the matter in
hand will appear, however, from the part of their conversation which
most directly referred to it.
“’Deed now, I often heard an ould woman I knew passin’ the remark,”
Mrs Mulrane said, _apropos_ of a reported marriage, “that her sons
were well off to have ne’er a sister, the way there was no need to be
savin’ up for their linen chests, and bits of fortunes, and sellin’
stock for them, or givin’ it away off the land. It’s a great burden
girls do be in a family, ma’am, all the one thing wid the rates and the
rint.”
“That’s a bad word you’re sayin’ agin yourself and meself, a while
back, ma’am,” Mrs O’Hagan said, with a tinge of severity in her jesting
tone.
“Sorra the daughter I ever had, glory be,” Mrs Mulrane said, obtusely
missing the point in her preoccupation with her own moral, “and ne’er a
drawback me lads have at home, unless their poor aunt, that’s not apt
to last much longer, and that’s no great trouble or expinse at all.
She has a couple of pounds hid away somewhere this ten or twelve year
towards her buryin’, I well know, though it’s not grudgin’ her I’ve a
call to be, nor the lads wouldn’t either, if she hadn’t a pinny to her
name. We can afford to be keepin’ her. To be sure, you had a daughter
to marry, ma’am, and she has a good few _girsheachs_ growin’ up, and
two or three of them red-headed; I do be noticin’ them on a Sunday. But
Rose is a fine slip of a girl. I suppose they’ll be settlin’ her wid
somebody agin next Shrove, ma’am, anyway?”
“Och, they’re in no hurry,” said Mrs O’Hagan. “Did you happen to hear
tell what way the Widdy Hefferman’s sick heifer was this morning?”
“I did not. She and I aren’t very great. But as for the hurry, that’s
the very thing I do be sayin’ to Dan and his brothers at home. Sorra a
bit of a hurry there is on me to be seein’ a daughter-in-law comin’ in;
but, all the same, ne’er a word I’d say against it, supposin’ a one of
them took the notion in his head. And if by any chance it was a girl
out of his own parish belongin’ to very respectable people, that he
thought of makin’ up a match wid, all the better I’d be plased.”
“Me daughter wouldn’t be wishful to marry a girl of hers wid any people
livin’ down along the strand, that I know,” Mrs O’Hagan said hastily
and flurriedly, as if running out from beneath a dangerous roof, “she’d
liefer they went to some place inland. People don’t be gettin’ their
health so well, she says, livin’ on the edge of the cowld water.”
“There’s more than a few wouldn’t get their healths to suit them,
unless they could be takin’ away other people’s characters, and
puttin’ an ill name on a poor boy that never done them a hand’s turn
of harm,” Mrs Mulrane burst out with bitter emphasis, this obvious
evasion inciting her to one of her indiscreet rushes forward; but she
pulled herself up with a jerk. “I was thinkin’ of somethin’ I read on
the paper a while ago,” she explained, “about a couple of childer got
burnt to death in a house, I disremimber where. But the crathurs might
ha’ been took out safe enough, for there was them close by that would
ha’ gone through fire and water to raich them wid ne’er a thought of
drowndin’ or anythin’ else, only nobody seen the house was a-fire,
barrin’ a silly, dotin’ ould body, no better than meself, ma’am, and
she never had the wit to tell the other people till it was too late
altogether. So anythin’ that happint was no fau’t of theirs, ma’am,
whatever talk there might be afterwards.”
“Goodness pity us all,” said Mrs O’Hagan, “And was that the story she
had? Sure now, it’s the quare woman that wouldn’t be makin’ up lies to
rightify her own belongings, if she got the chance; and it’s the quare
ignorant people that would be blamin’ the crathur for it. Not that
you or me, Abbey, has any call to be considherin’ any such a thing.
And it’s like enough your son ’ill be bringin’ home a wife before any
great while. Would he be apt to think of gettin’s married up in Dublin?
Nannie Dwyer was tellin’ me her sister’s son was intindin’ he would,
because they have the name of ownin’ pigs, so it’s a heavy fee Father
Hely’nd have to be gettin’ off them. They’d do it a dale chaper in
Dublin.”
“As much as to say he’d better go look for a girl in a strange place,
where they know naught about him,” Mrs Mulrane said, whirling on her
brown shawl, and again her hostess protested: “Musha, not at all, not
at all. What ’ud ail anybody to be takin’ up that notion? And sure it’s
not runnin’ away wid yourself you are yet a while? Stop now, woman
dear, till I get you a sup of thick milk.”
Nevertheless Mrs Mulrane was very soon running away with herself
down the steep cliff path, against the bleak March wind; and as
she went she realised more fully than she had ever done before the
irrevocability of her false step. The druidical mist of untruth which
she had raised could not now be dispersed by any spell in her power;
confession was of no avail. She had indeed robbed her sons of a jewel,
and not only so, but had herself hopelessly lost it; she could never
restore it to them again.
And a few weeks later Dan Mulrane was voyaging, a forlorn and listless
passenger, in a big liner, across the lonely ocean-plains between
Liverpool and Boston. He had departed unbeknownst, wishing to shun a
domestic scene of lamentation and remonstrance. Beyond that circle he
had no need to apprehend any excessive regrets, for though naturally of
a sociable disposition, he had not a single friend. The sentiment of
the parish was that “It would be a good job if the other two had went
along wid him”; and his mother’s grief was embittered by the reflection
that “when the Daly’s two brats of boys set off to New York a convoy
as big as a fair saw them as far as Loughard; but her poor Dan might
travel away to the well of the World’s End, and no more talk about it
than if he was an ould stray saygull.”
THE FOOT-STICKS OF SLUGHNATRAIGH
I
The strange childer must have come to Clochranbeg a good while before
young Dan Mulrane the man-trapper’s emigration, for at that time they
were quite settled in the place. That is to say, they were so in fact,
though by a sort of convention it was always assumed that they were
only temporary sojourners. Upon their first arrival this had promised
to be really the case, as the elderly vagrant with whom they were
travelling intended to pass but one night in the village, and did
actually make an even shorter stay there, for the people who tried to
awaken him next morning found that he had set off again some hours
earlier. Whence he had come seemed, to Clochranbeg, a more unanswerable
question than whither he had gone, nor could the small girl and smaller
boy, who were left behind, throw much light upon his past. Their
recollections, which might be supposed to reach back a couple of years
or so, were of nothing except tramping about with “Himself,” otherwise
“the man,” and they could give no account either of their relationship
to him or to each other, or of how he had become their guardian. They
called one another “Min” and “Atty,” which was all they knew about
names; so that there were not enough to go round the three of them, as
Mr Heany the schoolmaster remarked in the course of a discussion about
funeral arrangements.
It was lucky that nobody’s feelings would be hurt by this stranger’s
coming on the rates, for burial at the expense of the Union seemed
inevitably to await him. But there was a general opinion that he should
not be allowed to go to the pauper’s corner of Kilanure burying-ground
unprovided with at least a name; and it appeared as if that much could
easily be done for him by a simple invention, until Dermot Cassidy,
who had a turn for raising difficulties, started a question about the
impropriety of “as good as puttin’ a lie in the poor man’s mouth, and
he on the way to his grave.” For it was fifty chances to one, Dermot
argued, against their guessing a name for him that would be even an
offer at his own. It might, for anything they knew, said Dermot, be
cast up to the _crathur_ where he was going. This speculation appealed
to fears and fantasies that were always rife among Dermot’s hearers,
and it was a relief when the schoolmaster recommended what could
be approved of as a safe and blameless step by those who felt most
strongly that you cannot take too many precautions when dealing with
matters of such mysterious moment.
“It’s liker than not,” Mr Heany said, “that he had the one Christian
name with the little gossoon, if he was the grandfather, as the chances
are. And if you add to that just ‘Mann’--I seen the name now and again
meself, spelt with the two n’s--you’ll be saying no more of him than
you might of any mother’s son of us all. ‘A Mann’ or ‘Art Mann’--no
fear but that’s a right guess anyway.”
This suggestion being accepted in all seriousness, and an inquest being
deemed unnecessary, the death of A. Mann was officially registered,
while the surname became less formally a property of that forlorn
little pair, who were thenceforth known collectively as “the strange
childer,” but individually as Min and Atty Mann.
Since their late guardian had transmitted to them nothing else except
a walking-stick, and a red cotton bundle, containing a few rags, some
crusts, and fourpence-halfpenny in coppers, it seemed evident that
the workhouse would have to provide for them also; and the Relieving
Officer’s deputy did, in fact, propose to convey them thither in the
old man’s hearse. But Mrs O’Hagan, with whom they were meanwhile
lodging, so vehemently protested against the unluckiness of such a
plan, and was so strongly backed up by all her cronies, that he agreed
to leave them where they were until the next time he had business in
the neighbourhood. And when before long this did happen, he was met on
her very threshold by Mrs O’Hagan with a flat refusal to hand him over
Atty and Min. She gave him impudence, he said, and asked if himself
wasn’t the sensible man to be thinking to take children driving ten or
a dozen miles in a draughty ould covered van, and they choking with
the whooping-cough that mortal minute. Faix then, he might catch them
himself, if he wanted to, she couldn’t tell where they were playing
outside down along the road. Whereupon Mrs Daly next door had poked
out her head, and peremptorily troubled him not to be drawing up his
ould workhouse yoke in front of _her_ place. Poor Alec Hanlon reported
these affronts with not a little resentment, but without obtaining much
redress from the authorities. The truth was that they were by no means
eager to make themselves responsible for the support of the derelict
children, and were more than willing to be relieved of it by anybody
else. So they instructed him to leave the woman alone; if she had a
fancy to keep the children, well and good; she’d be sure to let them
know plenty soon enough whenever she got tired of it; trust her for
that. It was perhaps a rather unofficial and irregular line of action,
but it satisfied all the persons concerned, except Alec Hanlon, who
could have wished to be charged with some alarming reprimand for the
over-awing of _impident_ Mrs O’Hagan and abusive Mrs Daly.
The strange childer themselves acquiesced in their new situation
quite contentedly. They continued to lodge with Mrs O’Hagan, who,
living her lone, had room to spare, and they boarded dispersedly among
the neighbours, who never failed to produce at least a sufficiency
of potatoes. It could not be said that either of them did credit to
their ungrudged fare, as they both remained thin and peaky-faced. In
appearance they resembled one another, though Min’s hair was dark
chestnut and Art’s a brownish hay-colour, and though the sun that had
tanned his face had sprinkled hers with constellations of freckles
of the first magnitude. In disposition there was less likeness, yet
more than showed on the surface, the difference between them lying in
development rather than in character. It was, however, noticed that two
peculiarities were equally shared by each of them. Both feared horribly
policemen and all kinds of officials, and both were most reluctant to
set foot anywhere except along the road. Evidently the main precepts
of their moral law had been: _Thou shalt keep out of the way of the
pólis_, and _Thou shalt not stravade about_; while its sanctions had
comprised shutting up in gaols and workhouses, and getting lost and
starved. Several weeks passed after their arrival before the little
Clochranbegians could persuade them to venture out upon the bog,
and for many a day did Min and Atty cast dismayed and mistrustful
glances at good-natured Andy M‘Evoy, who happened to be wearing an old
postman’s cap. Although, as time went on, familiarity and the force of
example undermined the authority of these fears, they never wholly
lost their influence.
It was furthermore discovered that the strange childer were both
endowed with the gift of song, possessing voices unexpectedly powerful
for persons of their age and growth. Min, whose years were estimated
at six or seven, had obviously formed her style upon that of various
street-singers, and in a high treble reproduced the quavers and
flourishes with more exactness, happily, than the words of their
ditties, which in her version had at least the grace of complete
unintelligibility. Atty, her junior by some twelve-month, owned the
clear pipe of a blackbird, and appeared to be an improviser into the
bargain, the stock piece in his repertoire showing all the signs of
an original composition. A simple and artless lay enough, it became
exceedingly popular at Clochranbeg, and was so repeatedly demanded by
audiences of both young and old that its strains might often be heard
rising from some out-of-door playground in the daytime, and after dark
from some flickering fireside.
“_I would I were a mountain pig,
I would indeed bedad_;”
it ran to a monotonous, mournful sort of chant,
“_I would I were a mountain pig
A-walking in the lane_;”
and it continued thus indefinitely, varying only with respect to the
occupation of the mountain pig. Perhaps the very monotony of its music
may have been found soothing, or possibly the charm lay in the perfect
senselessness of the words; undoubtedly it somehow hit the fancy of the
neighbours, and it is probably chanted to this day upon the bog-lands
of Meenaclochran.
One summer morning, when they had been a couple of months in the place,
Min and Atty wandered down towards the beach with a number of other
children, and near the end of a sandy boreen halted in a convenient
hollow, where Atty was called upon for his song. Seated under a
gold-flecked furze bush, he was chanting to a well-satisfied audience,
when a young fisherman came along up from the shore, and paused to
listen. He had a dark melancholy face, which did not look at all
amused, though he presently remarked: “That’s a comical lilt you have,
sonny, entirely.” His voice sounded gruff, and, as it were, rusty, but
in no way menacing, yet several of the children immediately in warning
tones bade Atty “whist,” while the eldest girl pulled him up by the
hand, and rushed off with him out of sight among the banks and bushes,
all the others stampeding after her. Little Tim Nolan, looking back as
they scampered, and seeing that the young man had turned away, threw
a small pebble slightly in his direction, as if to symbolise their
sentiments.
“Who was yon thin?” said Min. “Has he anythin’ to say to the pólis?”
“Sure not at all,” she was informed. “Pat Mulrane he is, one of the
man-trappers, that’s livin’ down below on the strand round the corner
there, along wid th’ ould mother of them. Quare and cruel bad they are.
One time they took and drownded the ould grandfather they had, in a big
black hole in the middle of Slughnatraigh, and they’d be apt to do the
same on anybody they got scramblin’ about the rocks near their house.
You’d a right to keep out of it.”
The warning impressed Min and Atty all the more because it came from
contemporaries of their own, and thenceforward to their list of perils
to be avoided were added the man-trappers, and the man-trappers’ home.
Before very long, Atty’s mind began to be harassed by yet another
anxiety, and this was the conduct of Min. Ever since Min could remember
she had walked literally in a prescribed track, from which she dared
not deviate, controlled by a will not to be, even in imagination,
gainsaid. And now that she found herself in a state of unprecedented
freedom, her long-repressed energies tended to run riot. Within the
limits imposed by her abiding fear of getting locked up, on the one
hand, and lost, on the other, she waxed rather wild and venturesome.
Foolhardy she appeared to Atty, whose spirits, less elastic, had
not rebounded as vigorously as hers, and whose further-seeing mind
foreboded evil from her exploits. Often did he watch her proceedings
with scared and scandalised eyes, and often did she turn a deaf ear
to a low whisper admonishing her: “They’ll put us out of it, Min, if
you do be going’ on that-a way.” Many a time, as he gave by request a
recital of his _Mountain Pig_, his thoughts were all the while full of
apprehensions about the pranks which he surmised her to be playing, and
the calamitous consequences which they might entail. As things turned
out, he might have seemed entitled to say: “Wasn’t I after tellin’
you?” Yet it may be doubted whether Min’s misdeeds had in reality much
to do with the event. Her habit of hunting the neighbours’ poultry,
and of “rising rows” among their children, did, it is true, cause some
annoyance, but would hardly have produced such an effect unaided by
other circumstances.
These other circumstances, however, arose a year or so after the
arrival of Min and Atty. A spell of exceptionally hard times set
in at Meenaclochran. Disastrous weather on land and sea, wreck of
crops, failure of fishing, took heavy toll from lives that had no
superfluities to renounce. The cheapest of yellow meal began to be
reckoned a luxury; nay, at last there was a demand outrunning the
supply even for the savourless “salt leaves,” gathered off the rocks
to be boiled into the sorriest pretence of a dinner. Everybody was
pinched, and nobody could tell how long the trouble might continue,
since the wisest person knew hardly more than little Jim Daly, who
drummed on his soon-empty saucer in vain desire for a re-fill, or old
Bridey Ahern, who said hopefully: “Plase goodness there might be a
pitaty in it to-morra,” to console herself over her dismal sea-weedy
repast.
And when matters were at the worst, nothing would suit Miss Mann but
she must needs go meddle with Mrs O’Hagan’s hens and the Fottrells’
goat. She had incited a number of the children to join with her in
building a very elaborate sand-house under a bent-matted bank on
the north strand, which was all well and good, keeping them quite
harmlessly employed. But her proceedings ceased to wear this blameless
aspect one unlucky afternoon when, in the absence of her older comrades
at school, she took it into her head that the new structure would make
a grand shed for live stock. Whereupon she had captured Mrs O’Hagan’s
four best hens, and the Fottrells’ grey goat, and conveying them
severally to the sand-house, had stuffed into it the whole reluctant
party. Grave results ensued, for in struggling to get free Nannie broke
through the crumbling roof, which dropped in heavy lumps upon the hens,
killing one of them outright, and giving the others a shock which they
“weren’t the better of to their last day,” while the terrified goat
rushed away, and was lost on the bog for the best part of a week,
during which the little Fottrells had to forego their drop of milk, a
very serious privation.
Certainly this piece of mischief happened most inopportunely, at a
time when, as Mrs Fottrell next morning observed, “It would be hard
enough to find feedin’ for an extry chucken, let alone a couple of
growin’ childer. And they destroyin’ all before them,” she added
severely. She was talking in the kitchen of Mrs O’Hagan, the strange
childer’s especial patroness, having called upon her early to report
the continued disappearance of Nannie the goat.
“’Deed yes, ma’am,” Mrs O’Hagan replied, “I’m thinkin’ this while back
we maybe had a right to let them two go into the House. ’Twould be
better for the crathurs after all than runnin’ wild here, and comin’
short as like as not. They’d be kep’ under rules there, anyway, but
it’s too ould I am meself for trapesin’ after them to hinder them of
doin’ mischief on other people, that aren’t well able to afford to be
at the loss of anythin’ at all.”
“Bedad they are not, ma’am,” Mrs Fottrell said very promptly.
“Clochranbeg does be a poor place these times. Most whiles there’d be
no need for grudgin’ the likes of them their bit of food among the
whole of us. But the Union van’s to be at Dunskeagh to-morra, and
Himself’s goin’ over to Ballylough this evenin’, and could lave word
wid them to send it on here, and pick up the strange childer on the way
back.”
“I wouldn’t say but it might be the best plan,” Mrs O’Hagan said
doubtfully.
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Mrs Fottrell said with decision. “Bad luck
to it, I wonder where they’re after hurooshin’ the misfortunate goat
to--she’s a terrible loss.”
Now this conversation was overheard by Min and Atty, hidden behind a
turf creel in the corner, whither they had guiltily fled upon Mrs
Fottrell’s entrance; and horror-stricken eavesdroppers they were. In
fact Min seemed to Atty so nearly on the point of betraying them by
breaking forth into loud lamentations, that he dragged her out unseen
through the back door; and then they both ran wildly until they reached
the border of the widest bog.
“Don’t you be stoppin’,” Min said, tugging Atty on in her turn. “It’s
away we must get the furthest ever we can contrive, before they come
after us wid their dirty ould van.”
“Where are we goin’ to?” said Atty.
“Och, how should I know? anywheres at all,” said Min.
“It’s starved and lost we’ll be,” said Atty, hanging back, and looking
distrustfully over the lonely black land, that swept out a great
circle, rounded off far away among the dim-white November mists.
“If we are itself, I’d liefer get lost than to be shut up in the hijjis
ould House all the days of our lives’ ends,” said Min.
“I wisht to goodness, then, you didn’t take and fryken th’ ould goat on
them,” Atty said querulously. “That’s the raison why she’s so mad, and
they’re puttin’ us out of it,” and he sat down under a clump of broom,
looking as if he intended to stay there.
“I wisht I was drownded in the middle of a bog-hole,” Min said with
sudden desperation, which caused Atty to clutch her frantically
crying: “Och, Min, honey, never mind. What’s to become of us at all?”
“Maybe we might find th’ ould goat some time,” Min suggested with a
reactionary gleam of hope. “And then they’d be apt to let us stop.
’Twas that they thought so bad of; worser a dale than Mrs O’Hagan’s
hin. We’d have a great chance if we found her.”
“Let’s go look,” said Atty, jumping up. “Och, Min, I declare to
goodness there she is just over yonder.”
“It’s the moral of herself bedad,” Min said joyfully, and they both
hied off across the bog towards a boulder glimmering greyly among some
rushy tussocks.
II
Before noon on the following day the two children had come considerably
nearer the fulfilment of Atty’s prediction that they might be lost and
starved. Lost, in truth, they were very thoroughly, for their quest of
the Fottrells’ goat had lured them with many false hopes so far over
the bog that they no longer knew in what direction Clochranbeg lay;
and a fast of four-and-twenty hours feels unpleasantly like starvation
to people of seven or eight. In the lonesome track through which they
were straying they had met neither man nor beast, and after a night
spent huddled in misery under a furzy bank, they had been since the
return of light wandering on, growing hungrier, colder, and more
terrified with the lapse of each endless hour. The Union van, loaded
with constables, would have appeared to them a blessed ark of safety.
But now, when mid-day was still distant, they had espied before them,
not far off, the pale twinkling of the sea, and they made towards it,
rejoicing at the sight of any familiar object.
On the edge of the cliff they were once more disappointed, because no
houses came into view; still, there was an easy slope leading down to
the beach, and it would be a relief to escape from the dreadful desert
that stretched behind them. If they had but known, they were at that
moment standing on the brink of a grimmer peril than famine, captivity,
or any other of the harms that threatened them; for there at their feet
lay spread Slughnatraigh.
The bit of the strand so-called does not outwardly show much to
account for its very evil repute all about Meenaclochran. It is a
little semi-oval of a bay, curved round by cliffs with swarded crests.
Midway in their curve a spur of the cliff shelves down to the strand,
jutting out seaward in a low rocky ridge, overgrown with a curious
entanglement of seaweed, woodbine and brier bushes. The highest tides
seldom reach quite to the base of these cliffs; and it is to the sands
spread beneath them that Slughnatraigh owes its ill-omened name.
Quicksands they are, of the most treacherous and tenacious quality.
Woeful has been the fate of many a one who, setting foot unawares on
their smooth grey face, has felt a cold mouth open and fasten upon
him, enlarging itself, and gaping wider and deeper for him the more
wildly he struggles against its grip, until at last, half sucked in,
half sinking, he goes helplessly under, and the rest of his miserable
tragedy, stifled away from light and air, is to be surmised only by the
heaving and quivering, which subside slowly, as the death-trap gulps
down its victim. More than once it has happened that those trailing
bramble bushes have served as bait. On this bog-land they grow rarely
enough to make blackberries seem a covetable prize; and roving children
have sometimes been lured by the sight of them into terrible toils.
They attracted Min now, and she pointed them out to Atty, saying:
“There might be an odd few berries stickin’ on them yet,” with which
hope they began all the more eagerly to descend the rough track towards
the beach. But when they had scrambled nearly half-way down, they came
upon a much more important discovery. From behind a projecting crag
gleamed into view the white-washed gable-end of a cabin. “Look there,
Min,” said Atty, who saw it first. “It’s a house. If there’s any people
in it, they’d be apt to give us a bit of bread or somethin’.” Min said:
“Glory be--we’ll try would they,” and was hurrying on to make the
experiment, when a sudden thought checked her.
“I declare to goodness,” she said, “I believe it’s the man-trappers’
house. They said it was just beyant the stones on the strand, and
there’s the big stones, sure enough, and there’s itself. We’d a right
to not go near it.”
Min’s conjecture was so far correct. The man-trappers did live almost
on the verge of Slughnatraigh, in fact to its neighbourhood was
partly due their long-continued ill-repute, as many an anxious parent
endeavoured to scare the children from that real and ghastly danger
of the place by setting up the man-trappers as a half-mythical bogey.
All the rumours she had ever heard about them now occurred to Min. She
remembered how a cross-looking old woman had been pointed out to her at
Mass as the mother of the man-trappers, and how she had been assured
that any one of the family would drown a person as soon as look at him.
Here on the spot, these stories seemed more true and more terrific than
ever before, and Min resolved firmly that, hungry or no, she and Atty
must give the house as wide a berth as possible, without returning to
the desolate bog. “Let’s try first is there e’er a blackberry yet,” she
said, “and after that we can creep along down close by the edge of the
say below there. Some more houses is sure to be in it prisently a wee
bit further on.”
She turned towards the thorn-clad rocks, with Atty following her. But
their path brought them at one point a fuller view of the cabin with
its blue smoke-plume, and glint of red fire through the open door,
outside which a pinkish pig and several speckled hens rooted and pecked
round a large black pot, while a white goat browsed on the patch of
thrift-sprinkled sward. And all this looked so home-like to Atty, who
was just then less conscious of fear than of a chilly hunger, that he
warily lagged behind Min, till he found an opportunity to slip aside,
and make a dart for the scene which seemed to him much more attractive
and hopeful than those dark bushes shivering in the bleak morning wind.
Mrs Mulrane was mixing meal and water for stirabout on the dresser,
when a shrill sound of singing rose up suddenly close by: “What is
it to goodness?” she wondered with a start, for nothing like it had
been heard there since her sons grew up; and going to the door, she
was aware of a very small boy in a bluish woollen bib, who sang the
louder at her approach. It had struck Atty that a rendering of his most
popular lay might prove a successful introduction, and accordingly:
“_I would I were a mountain pig_,”
he was chanting,
“_I would indeed bedad;
I would I were a mountain pig
A-aitin’ of some bread.
I would I were a mountain pig
A-drinkin’ of some milk--
I would I were a mountain pig
A-gettin’ bits of food._”
The last line vibrated with a vehement shrillness, and Mrs Mulrane
said: “Och, whist, whist. Where at all are you streelin’ about to at
this time of day?” For she was never very early astir, and had but
lately made up her fire.
“We’re goin’ home to wherever the town is,” said Atty, “And if I had
e’er an ould crust of bread, I’d sing you a lot more of the ‘Mountain
Pig’ before I began aitin’ it at all.”
With an abrupt dive backwards Mrs Mulrane vanished indoors and speedily
reappeared. Her hands were filled with the remains of last night’s
supper, two flat griddle-cakes, either of which would cover this page.
“Here’s for you,” she said, interrupting a piercing _I would_. “Take
them, and stop your mouth, and run off home wid them, before you have
the crathur inside roused up.”
This crathur was in reality a most harmless person, but the vagueness
of the term left room for alarming imaginations, and Atty, with an
uncomfortable remembrance about the man-trappers, ran off as fast as he
could to join Min, whom he soon saw clambering on the low rocks across
a smooth stretch of sand. The rocky spit went dwindling seaward, and
ended in a line of detached boulders with sandy spaces between, like a
row of stepping-stones, only suited, however, to a giant’s striding;
and the last boulder was almost reached by the white edge of the tide
as it came seething in. Beyond the cold slate-coloured water a band
of dull red lingered on the north-western horizon, a belated remnant
drifted round from the morning glow.
Running at the top of his speed, with both hands full, Atty tripped up
over a shrivelled black coil of seaweed, knotted to a stony weight, and
he came down headlong on the sand. He fell soft, and at first his chief
concern was to recover his two cakes, which had flown out of his grasp;
but when he scrambled to his feet, it was only to feel that cold clammy
mouth closing round his ankles, and to find himself sinking, swiftly,
horribly, until all the solid world seemed to be crumbling away beneath
him. Min, who had come hurrying to meet him, almost rushed into the
same entanglement, but luckily stood still on the lowest boulder, a
small, sea-weedy slab, scarcely showing above the sand, whence she
reached him a hand before it was too late. “What ailed you at all?” she
said reprovingly, as he struggled up beside her. “Can’t you walk where
it’s firm-like?” But immediately afterwards, attempting to set foot on
a firm-like place, she plunged down even more deeply than he had done,
and floundered back again in much affright.
Their plight, in truth, was extremely grave, and the more so, the
less they understood the real nature of their peril. On one side the
rough breakers were rolling in loud and swift, and all round was
spread the deadly snare of the quicksand. At any moment the children
might be urged by the more visible danger to flee into the jaws of
the more fatal one too far for retreat. Meanwhile, however, they only
uttered dismayed little shrieks as they groped vainly with tentative
half-steps in every direction for a footing they never could find.
It was just at this time that Stacey Colgan with her daughters, and the
widow Joyce, and old six-pound-ten Gallaher, accompanied by several
lads and lasses, reached the end of the shingle belt, which forms the
beach most of the way from Clochranbeg to Slughnatraigh. They had
gone out early in quest of salt leaves, and finding these scarce, had
wandered on till they came to the precincts of the man-trappers. A
possibility of lighting upon the missing strange childer was present
to their minds, though nobody thought them likely to be astray upon
the strand, and the seekers for them had scattered themselves over the
bogs and along the roads. So the whole party were surprised and excited
when Judy Colgan exclaimed that she saw a couple of people over yonder
down by the water, and that according to her belief it was the strange
childer themselves.
“True for her, themselves they are bedad,” Mrs Joyce declared. “I know
them by Min’s red skirt. Besides, who else would it be stravadin’
about there? And they in the very worst of the soft places, sure it’s
destroyed they’ll be. Woman dear, what’ll we do at all?”
No sooner was their identity established, than the nimblest of the
gossoons and _girsheachs_ raced off homewards, partly for help, and
partly from emulous eagerness to communicate with the least delay the
doubly sensational news that the strange childer were after bein’
got below on the strand, and they about drowndin’ themselves dead in
the middle of Slughnatraigh. The rest of the party advanced as close
as they dared to the verge of the dangerous ground, and stood there
in a group, clamorous as sea-fowl, and as little to the purpose. For
a strong breeze beat back the sound of their voices, so that their
injunctions to “stand studdy where ye are, and set hand nor fut off of
the dry stone for your lives,” never reached Min and Atty, who in any
case would not probably have profited much thereby. But more effectual
aid was at hand. By-and-by these helpless onlookers saw that two young
men were coming rapidly down along the rocky spit, and finally jumping
from one detached boulder to the other, till only a narrow sand strip
separated them from the children. “They be Pat and Art Mulrane,” said
Mrs Colgan; and by the dropping of the nickname she unconsciously
showed that in this desperate crisis she had fixed some hopes upon
their friendly intervention.
The first action of the brothers was hardly encouraging. One of them
shook his fist fiercely at the children, and his threatening shout rose
above the dull drumming of the rollers.
“If them barbarous young miscreants of man-trappers take and do
anythin’ agin the unfortunate little crathurs now, I hope they’ll
get hung for it, I do so,” the Widow Joyce said half-whimpering.
Biddy Colgan simply ran away screeching, because, as she afterwards
explained, she’d as lief not be seein’ the two of them _massacreed_ or
swallied up.
“Och be aisy,” Six-pound-ten said to the widow. “Sure it’s only
dispersuadin’ them he’d be of skytin’ out into the soft holes. Ah,
woman, have sinse.”
Pat Mulrane had in fact roared at the children, who seemed about to
rush towards him: “Don’t you offer to stir an atom off that, you young
thieves of the world, or it’s settin’ the dog here at yous I’ll be to
ait yous alive.” He would have found it difficult to carry out this
threat, as Garry, the black-and-tan collie, himself had been once
nearly engulfed, and ever since had resolutely avoided setting a paw
on doubtful places. However it effectually deterred Atty and Min, who
remained rooted in dismay. A finishing-touch seemed added to their
tribulations by the advent of these notorious bugbears, at whom they
had now and then flung with due circumspection a censorious pebble or
clod. As they cowered together, motionless and mute, Min could only
make some vindictive grimaces with her face hidden on Atty’s sleeve,
and Atty thought wildly of setting up a propitiatory song, but could
not screw up courage to begin.
Meanwhile a brief and anxious colloquy was going on between the two
man-trappers. The urgency of the situation allowed scant time for
words, and small choice of deeds. In a few moments the swift rising
of the tide would swamp the children on their little ledge of safety,
and though that lay within a man’s jump of the Mulrane’s station, to
spring upon it without dislodging its other occupants was, by reason of
its diminutive size and slippery surface, an altogether impossible feat.
“Musha, good gracious, what at all quare antic is the fellow at now?”
commented Mrs Colgan to her criticising companions on the other side of
Slughnatraigh, as they saw Pat Mulrane suddenly plunge forward as if
about to dive off the lowest shelf of the rock. “Is it fallin’ after
his head he’d be, to the back of everythin’ else?”
“Begorra, it’s makin’ a foot-stick of himself he is,” Six-pound-ten
averred, “to let the children across,” and so it was.
By wedging his toes tightly into a crevice of the big boulder, and
gripping with both hands a hold of the slimy, tawny-podded wreaths on
the small one, Pat, prone at full length, just spanned the interval
between them, over which Art stepped thus on a footbridge, and returned
with a frightened child swinging from either arm. This manœuvre was
executed with the utmost despatch, yet barely in time, for Pat’s
precarious clutch of the slithery seaweed failed just as the other
three were safely landed, so that down he went face foremost into
the smothering slough, whence his brother hauled him out, blinded,
half-choked, hideous to behold in a mask of blue-black oozy mire, after
a desperate wrestle with the clinging horror of Slughnatraigh.
All serious danger, nevertheless, was at an end once they were set high
and dry upon the big boulder, where they could wait securely until the
rescue was completed with the help of inanimate planks and ropes. The
strange childer were before long transferred to the Mulranes’ house,
and joined there by the Colgans with their party. Not for many a year
had Mrs Mulrane entertained so much company, and more kept dropping
in through the afternoon, as rumours reached the town, and brought
neighbours to investigate upon the spot.
Deep concern had prevailed at Clochranbeg towards the close of the day
before, when Min and Atty were found to have entirely and unaccountably
disappeared. Not only were the children general favourites, but a
feeling existed that the parish was in some measure responsible for
them, and that a slur would be cast upon it if they were allowed, as
Joe Fottrell said, “to go to loss.” Most people had a sense that such
an event would be unlucky as well as lamentable. Search-parties had
been roaming over the bogs all night, and some were still going to and
fro among their holes and hillocks; but an opinion that they would not
again be seen alive was steadily gaining ground.
Nobody wandered more widely and with a more distracted mind than Mrs
O’Hagan, the strange childer’s landlady, who was reproaching herself
bitterly for having “maybe scared them away wid blamin’ them for th’
ould kilt hin, and talkin’ about the Union.” She had gone so far
afield that the news of their recovery did not find her till near
sunset, and even then in the shape of reports at once disquieting and
contradictory. Some said that the strange childer had been last seen
right in the middle of Slughnatraigh. Some that old Mrs Mulrane had
hunted them away from her door, and set the dog at them. Others, with
much convincing persistency and detail, related that the man-trappers
“were after drowndin’ both of them below on the strand, and they
screechin’ the way you might hear them in Derry.”
Her relief was therefore intense when she found them happily
established by the Mulranes’ fire, little the worse for their
adventures, which several neighbours graphically recounted to her,
laying especial stress upon the heroism displayed by Pat Mulrane, who
had come, Six-pound-ten said, “widin an ames ace of losin’ his life
over it.” Upon Pat, who still looked limp and woebegone as he sat
in the chimney-corner, Mrs O’Hagan showered, vastly to his further
discomfort, profuse praises and benedictions.
“Long sorry I’d be,” she said in peroration, “to be passin’ remarks
agin any person in the parish, but I question is there e’er another
boy in it that would take and make a foot-stick of himself above the
bewitched ould houle out yonder, that’s neither land nor water, unless
’twas the Divil had the stirrin’ of them together accordin’ to some
plan of his own, as is like enough, for the unnathural thrimblin’ and
quakin’s in them yit. Sure now, if it wasn’t only for yourself, Pat
Mulrane, it’s at the black bottom of that awful place them two little
imps of innicent crathurs ’ud be lyin’ this minyit, supposin’ there is
a bottom to it at all, instead of sittin’ here as grand as you plase,
aitin’ bread and treckle, the bould little tormints, and half the
parish heart-scalded runnin’ over the country after them the lenth of
the night.”
“Och, they’re welcome, ma’am,” Pat muttered ambiguously.
“Take a cup of tay, ma’am; it’s dry you’re apt to be after all that
fine talk you’re givin’ Pat,” his mother said with a sub-acid suavity,
for while exulting on his behalf she retained a resentful memory of her
last visit to Mrs O’Hagan, and of Dan’s rejected suit.
Mrs O’Hagan accepted the tea unsuspectingly, though protesting that
she had only looked in to fetch home the children; yet in the end she
went her way without them. The Mulranes were loth to relinquish them so
soon, chiefly on account of Maggie Dowling, who from her imprisoning
box-bed declared that “the little gossoon wid his quare song done her
heart good,” and who seemed sadly cast down by the prospect of their
departure. “You might lave them at all events,” Mrs Mulrane suggested,
“till the crathur’s tired of the fantigue.” And Mrs O’Hagan consented,
mindful of what poverty prevailed in her own and her neighbours’
houses, and not ignorant that the Mulranes were at this time some
degrees better off than the rest. As for Min and Atty themselves, the
friendliness of Garry, and the abundance of freshly-baked griddle
cakes, very sufficiently reconciled them to their change of quarters.
In this way it came about that the strange childer took up their
abode with the man-trappers, and one result of it was that the latter
shook off the bad name which had been fastened upon them. From that
day the youth of Clochranbeg transferred their animosity to unchancy
Slughnatraigh, which they thenceforth regarded with increased dread
and aversion, and at whose impassively sullen, grey face they pelted
vanishing stones from an even more cautious distance than when the
man-trappers had been their mark. Six-pound-ten’s oft-repeated
narrative of the strange childer’s hair’s-breadth escape always wound
up with, “Ay, bedad, ’twas the fine foot-stick he made of himself
entirely that time;” and this helped to suggest the new nickname
with which it somehow seemed necessary to replace the old. It became
customary to speak of Pat Mulrane and his brother as “the foot-sticks,”
a title which, in the circumstances, nobody could shout after them with
hostile derision. Moreover, as Min and Atty often accompanied them to
the strand or the town, they were gradually drawn out of the isolation
into which they had shrunk, and began to hold again some intercourse
with their kind.
These changes were all more or less soothing to Mrs Mulrane, and under
their influence she showed a perceptible diminution in the eccentricity
and moodiness of her demeanour. But her clearing sky showed its
brightest patch one day when a friend of the M‘Evoys looked in on her
charged with what were obviously overtures to the making up of a match
between their Lizzie and her Pat. On that occasion she uttered dark
and riddling speeches, which would not have misbeseemed an ancient
Pythoness, or the heroine of an Æschylean drama, about people whose
ignorance and pride “hindered them of taking what was offered them,
when belike nothing ailed it all the while except bein’ a dale too good
for them, or the likes of them, and who were very apt to find they had
missed their chances, if ever they come lookin’ after it again.”
Nevertheless this lifting of her clouds was only partial and
transitory. Their shadow dropped upon her once more before the
dissatisfied go-between had well re-crossed the threshold, and she
fell into a gloomy reverie, standing idle at her door, while the chant
of the _Mountain Pig_ came faintly from the inner room, where it was
beguiling that long spring afternoon for Maggie Dowling. If she had put
her dejection into words they would have run somewhat as follows: “It’s
poor Dan I do be thinkin’ bad of. Them other two boys might be right
enough, but me heart’s scalded about him, for he didn’t get fairity wid
it all, troth he did not. And it’s blamin’ me he is, I well know. There
might be a letter at the office agin next Saturday, but it’s not to me
he’ll write. Last time it was to Pat, and before that to Maggie and
Art; niver a word he sent to me. It’s him I’m thinkin’ bad of, the poor
child. But I might maybe get news of him on Saturday.”
OLD ISAAC’S BIGGEST HAUL
Grace M‘Evoy heard the boys talking about it after supper as they sat
on the rocks before their doorway, in which she stood knitting; and
the conversation very much grieved and vexed her for several reasons.
She was the only daughter of old Isaac M‘Evoy, and sister of “the
boys,” so called merely because they were still unmarried. They were
all three her elders, and she herself was “well on to thirty.” Theirs
was a fishing family, and the chief event of her days had always been
the going and coming of the boat. Not the same boat, for their old
_Granuaile_, condemned as unseaworthy, had lain discarded by the tiny
rough pier for the last half-dozen years or so. Her successor and
namesake, however, sadly dissatisfied old M‘Evoy, who seldom failed
to draw invidious comparisons between the two craft when embarking or
disembarking. He had done so this evening as the _Granuaile_ junior was
being fastened to a staple wedged in among the boulders.
“Sure, if we’d been in _her_, the crathur,” he had said, looking
regretfully at the black, slug-like shape, “we’d ha’ got home in
one-half the time. She knew how to be takin’ advantage of every breath
of win’ she met wid. But this lump of a baste ’ill go sulkin’ along wid
herself before the handiest breeze ever blew in the bay, as sodden as a
gob of mud.”
“At all events,” Thady had replied, handing out an oar to Grace, “_she_
isn’t apt to be springin’ a leak on us any minyit, might land us to the
bottom like a handful of cockles droppin’ out of your pocket.”
But his father had stumped unheeding across the shingle-strip that led
indoors. He was smoking a last pipe now by the hearth, safely beyond
hearing of his sons’ discourse, although to Grace in the doorway the
voices came so clearly that she sometimes glanced to and fro nervously,
apprehensive lest they should penetrate too far.
“The long and the short of it is, it’s too ould he’s gettin’,” summed
up Thady, the middle brother; “we’d do a dale better wid him out of the
boat.”
“Ay would we so,” said Tim, the youngest, “and himself would as well.”
“If he’d contint himself at all,” Joe said more doubtfully. “Goodness
knows he’s been at it long enough. But he’s as headstrong as a
two-year-ould; and, sure, how can we go agin the man, if he’s got a
mind to be comin’ along?”
“What I was thinkin’ is this,” said Thady; “we might slip out early
to-morra very quiet, before he’s awake, and pick up young Farrelly
goin’ by the point. _He’s_ smart enough. And then, wid nothin’ on
board delayin’ us, we’d have a good chance of a bit of luck.”
“Bedad, now, ’twould be the best way,” Tim said with decision.
“Me father’d be ragin’ and annoyed, belike, over it,” Joe said with
doubt.
“Sure, man, it’s one of them things that can’t be helped if he is,
like the rain fallin’ straight and the water flowin’ crooked,” said
Thady. “He might better be ragin’ than drowndin’ himself and the whole
of us, as he might very aisy one of these rough days, let alone losin’
the mackerel on us. It stands to raison we’ll have to take and lave
him behind sooner or later if he won’t lave himself. We can bid Grace
tell him we didn’t like to be disturbin’ him that early, and she’ll
conthrive to pacify him. If he wants to be doin’ somethin’ there’s
plinty of nets to mend.”
After a little further discussion this plan was adopted, and as a
preliminary step the boys presently went indoors to bed, for they
agreed that they must start with the soon-returning summer sun. But
their sister lingered for a while in the doorway, looking out into the
waning twilight with a pucker of anxiety between her eyes and an angry
grief at her heart.
“Cruel annoyed himself ’ill be,” was the burden of her meditations,
“cruel annoyed. And he as gay and plisant in his mind this evenin’
as anythin’, and sayin’ it looked to be grand fishin’ weather the
morra--and so it will, worse luck; but they’ll all be after slippin’
off wid themselves on him, and nobody only me about the place to thry
put a good face on it, and I might as well spare meself the trouble,
for he’ll see the raison they done it as plain as I see the moon risin’
up behind Slieve Sterran. Sure now, if I was them, I’d liefer every
mackerel ever swum in the green say went to loss than to be vexin’ him
that way, the crathur, troth I would so.... And Thady agin him, that
he thought a dale on ever,” she continued bitterly. “I wouldn’t scarce
have believed it of him. But ah, sure, after all ’tisn’t Thady’s fau’t
entirely if Himself’s gettin’ ould--a thrifle ouldish--on us. Goin’
on for eighty he is--and then suppose he went, and by chance anythin’
happint him?” Grace had lived too long by the sea to underrate the risk
of such chances. “I daren’t say a word,” she said to herself, “only
it’s sorry I am in me heart wid thinkin’ of one thing and the other.”
So, still disconsolately thinking, she shut herself into the dark
little house, with a mind full of evil auguries for the morrow.
And next morning everything began to happen very much in accordance
with her forecasts. It was serene blue and white weather when she awoke
somewhat later than usual, because her unquiet thoughts had delayed her
falling asleep. There was not a sound to be heard, and for a while she
cherished a hope that her father had been roused after all, and that
the plans of the boys for leaving him behind had thus come harmlessly
to naught. But presently her heart, hopes and all, sank plump down,
like a full jug when you let go its handle in the well, for a call came
from without: “Grace! Grace!” in tones of peremptory excitement.
Old Isaac was tramping about on the boulders when she obeyed his
summons. He was a tall, long-bearded old man, gaunt and stooped, and
Grace fancied that he looked more gaunt and more stooped than usual
this morning. The many lines on his face were complicated by fresh
creases of anxiety, and the gaze he bent upon his daughter was as
intent as if he had been landing a twelve-pound salmon in a doubtful
net.
“What the mischief and all’s took the boys and the boat?” was the
question he had been waiting there to ask her. The hope he was
cherishing was that he might hear they were only gone a little way to
get bait, or on some such errand, and would be calling back for him.
But Grace replied, in as innocent and matter-of-course a manner as she
could: “Is it the boys? Sure they went off wid themselves this good
while ago. Startin’ early they had to be for fear of missin’ the tide
in the Headstones. Away beyond that they said they would be goin’ after
the mackerel, and they thought bad of wakenin’ you out of your sleep.”
Down sank her father’s hope, and up swelled his wrath. “So that’s what
they done on me,” he said. “That’s the thrick they’re after playin’ on
me--the young thieves of the world!”
“Just for ’fraid of wakenin’ you,” Grace interposed, clinging
desperately to her one flimsy excuse. “For ’fraid of wakenin’ you out
of your sleep, daddy darlint.”
“Ay, begor, afraid of that they’d be, sure enough,” said he.
“’Deed were they,” Grace said, eagerly receiving his assent as a sign
that he accepted her explanation. “Rael quiet and cautious they must
ha’ went, the way you wouldn’t be woke.”
“The divil doubt it. Arrah then, git along wid yourself out of that,
standin’ there tellin’ lies,” he said, turning upon her with a sudden
savageness. “Is it dotin’ and demented you consait I am, forby an
ould creepin’ cripple? The schemers, the villins--well enough they
seen ’twould be a grand day for the fishin’, so they thought they’d
slink off and do whatever plased themselves widout me obsthructin’ of
them--that taught every one of them to handle an oar. I’m no better
in a boat these times--and it me own boat--than a lump of ballast;
that’s the opinion they have of me. And wishin’ the whole pack of them
is--Thady and all the rest of yous--wishin’ I was in me clay, instead
of to be wastin’ their time, if you plase, and hinderin’ them of
their chances because I’m grown a bit stiff and clumsy. Git along wid
yourself, and hould your fool’s tongue.”
Grace retreated indoors, where she stood aimlessly by the grey hearth,
too much dejected to set about stirring up the smouldering peat-sod.
“They’d a right to be ashamed of themselves to go do such a thing on
him,” she was thinking, “but I wouldn’t be sayin’ aught agin them
anyway behind their backs. ’Twould only annoy Himself there the worse,
and indeed now they have him greatly annoyed--a good-for-nothin’ pack
they are. And I dunno is there a hand’s turn I could be doin’ for him,
unless I baked him a bit of griddle-cake for the breakfast. But as like
as not he wouldn’t look at it.”
On these sad reflections broke a sound which sent her darting out
of doors again. It was the rattle of a chain, and a grating on the
shingle, such as betoken arrivals and departures by water. And there,
indeed, was her father, fumbling about the fastenings of the old
_Granuaile_. In a moment the rusty bolt slipped, falling with a clank,
and he began to shove her down seaward.
“Och, saints above! What are you at, father, at all?” Grace called to
him aghast.
But he only continued to push the boat. The light canvas frame slid
along expeditiously, and close to the water’s edge he righted it with a
sudden twist.
“You aren’t ever thinkin’ to go out in that ould crathur?” Grace
protested, pursuing him in extreme consternation. “And she lyin’ there
this half-dozen year and more, and leakin’ like twenty sieves.”
“Bedad then, it’s fine and dhry she ought to be by this time,” old
Isaac replied grimly.
“To be sure, in coorse you wouldn’t be that cracked and crazy,” Grace
asserted with a confidence she was far from feeling.
“Never you mind troublin’ yourself to considher how cracked and how
crazy I’ve a fancy to be,” said her father. “Quare enough in his head
you might say anybody was that ’ud sit at home the best fishin’ day of
the saison; and it’s not what I’m goin’ to do, not for to plase all the
impident young rapscallions in Ireland. Run along and be fetchin’ me
the coil of line there’s lyin’ on the ledge of the back windy.”
But instead of running Grace sat down on the rugged little pier-end and
began to cry miserably in the golden early sunshine. “It’s dhrowndin’
yourself on us you’ll be, I well know,” she said. “And ne’er a bit
of breakfast you’ve had, and the fire not made up to be gettin’ you
anythin’ quick--och, what ’ill become of me at all at all? For it’s
sinkin’ under your feet she’ll be.”
Her father answered nothing, but stumped off into the house, whence
he soon re-appeared laden with a coil of line, a small bundle, and a
flappy brownish roll--the boat-sail, in fact, which he had reached down
from among the rafters. The sight of these final preparations seemed to
freeze Grace into composure. She watched him silently for a while as he
fitted the little mast into its socket and shifted boards and benches.
Then she said, in the tone of one stating some incontrovertible
proposition: “Well, you’ll have me along wid you, anyhow, daddy. Joe
always says it’s meself’s the great one for pullin’ and balin’ out;
and mindin’ the boat I’ll be while yourself’s fishin’.”
At this her father chuckled cheerfully as he spliced a rope. “Why to
be sure,” he said, “unless it’s one of the ould hins I’ll be bringin’
along to take care of me, or maybe ould Tib, the cat, ’ud suit me
better. In coorse I’ll be takin’ the aither or the other of yous. Just
you wait there aisy till I do, me dear.”
“May goodness forgive me, but it’s yourself’s the ungovernable man,”
Grace said, and then stood watching him in dumb despair. He had
apparently recovered his spirits, and laughed to himself occasionally;
but Grace saw his hands shaking as he tied the knots, and she felt
bitterly that her own hands were bound into helplessness by some
invincible, invisible power.
The fair morning seemed to her like a dismal parody of other fair
mornings very long ago, when she, a small child, used to be watching
him get ready to go out fishing alone, for the boys were not yet big
enough to give any substantial assistance. Hale and hearty he was in
those days, and the thought of his ever being otherwise occurred to
her no more than did doubts about the sun’s duly rising. And when he
had rowed or sailed away she could run indoors to her mother with her
razor-shells and wonderfully curious pebbles. Now, with Herself dead
on them this ten year, and Himself, old and feeble, setting off to get
drowned, for all she could do or say, she seemed to have strayed a
terribly long way from that care-free paradise.
Suddenly a change in the light made her look round, and as suddenly she
plucked her father by the sleeve. “It isn’t goin’ to be anyways such
fine weather, then, at all,” she announced triumphantly. “Look at the
fog where it’s blowin’ in like a stone wall. Sorra the boat i’ll be
after mackerel in the bay this day whatever.”
Grace was right in her facts. One of the low-lying cloud-banks that
wander more perilously than the ancient Jostling Rocks upon the plains
of ocean had drifted shoreward by some caprice of the wind, and was now
crowding into half a hundred inlets, among them the M‘Evoys’ creek.
She was wrong, however, in the conclusion to which she had so happily
hurried, and she speedily learned her mistake.
“Well now,” old Isaac said deliberately, looking round the shrunken
horizon, “all I can say is that if there was five fogs in it, or fifty
fogs, or five hundred for the matter of that, every one of them on the
top of the other, niver a bit I’d be at a loss of me day’s fishin’ for
the likes of them--or anybody else,” and he stepped on board with a
determined stride.
“And the boys ’ill go to loss in it too, belike,” Grace said, standing
by in her woe; “ne’er a one of yous ’ill ever be comin’ home to me
again, and I haven’t a sowl in the width of the world. I wisht to God
I was away in the ould buryin’-ground there at Lisannagh, along wid
Herself, and then me heart wouldn’t be broke among yous all.”
Her father, now in the very act of pushing off, gave no signs
of hearing, and she sat down upon the pier, oppressed by utter
despondency. If she had any motive at all for lingering there it must
have been supplied by her last flicker of hope. The boys, she thought,
might possibly soon return, to be instantly despatched in quest of the
mistrusted _Granuaile_.
How long Grace sat, crouched on the stones with her head in her hands,
she could not have guessed. All her thoughts were out at sea, whence
it seemed to her that news, good or bad, must soonest come. But it
was a sound of steps clattering on the loose shingle behind her that
first caused her to start up expectant. And what she saw made her stand
gazing in wide-eyed terror. For the newcomer was young Farrelly, the
boys’ comrade, alone, bare-headed and wet-haired, with drops glistening
and falling as he moved.
“Is it you then, Con Farrelly?” she said. “And what’s gone wid the rest
of them?”
“Och, Grace, mavrone--the Headstones!” said Con Farrelly.
Now the Headstones is a name of fear round about Kilavawn. It has been
bestowed on a small square-shaped bay which bears an evil reputation.
The salt water has there flowed over the grey crested ridges of a
sea-sunken hill, and these rocks emerge in such numbers that they give
it somewhat the aspect of a burial-ground. Jagged reefs and sandy bars
help to make the place a very difficult passage to thread safely, even
in fair weather; storms, and especially fogs, convert it into a mazy
labyrinth of perils. Many a luckless keel has missed the clue and come
to fatal grief among them. Con’s brief answer, therefore, conjured up a
clear and cruel picture in Grace’s imagination.
“Is it dhrownded all of them was, and you comin’ away?” she asked
calmly.
“Look you, Grace, you crathur, this was the way of it,” Con said in
a breathless hurry. “Takin’ the short cut through the Headstones we
were, intendin’ to thry off Malinish, when up come the fog like a
wing clappin’ down on us, and we in among the thick of them snaggy
rocks--you could see as far through a feather pillow--and a win’
whistlin’ up along wid it. So the first thing we knew, on agin a one
we druv, and knocked a big houle in her--she wouldn’t keep afloat
while you would be shippin’ an oar, that’s sartin, and sure you know
ne’er a one of them swims a stroke, only meself. So they bid me get to
shore, if I could at all, and they’d make a shift to hould on to the
rock--but, telling you the truth, I misdoubt could they. I heard them
lettin’ a woeful shout just afore I come to land, that was the most I
could do,” he confessed. “But I run round along this strand, thinkin’
I’d borry the loan of your other ould boat, and thry would there be
e’er a chance of raichin’ to them in her--she’d be apt to keep afloat
that far--and the fog’s liftin’ a bit. I might maybe find them right
enough yet, if I had no delayin’. Where have you her lyin’ now?”
“Sure me father’s took and dhrownded himself in her this mornin’, Con,”
Grace said, quietly still. “He wouldn’t take me along wid him, sorra a
bit would he, or else ’twould ha’ all happint very handy like. But the
ould boat’s gone.”
“The Lord be good to us, Grace, is it romancin’ you are?” asked Con.
“Why, what would bewitch the man to do such a thing all of a suddint?
Ne’er a word the lads told me of his comin’ out this day. True for you,
though--the boat’s away; and what am I to be at next?”
“Why wouldn’t you go look for another one, then, this minyit?” Grace
said with a flash of vehemence. “Wasn’t you sayin’ there might be a
chance yet? And is it standin’ there you are and talkin’ foolish,
instead of runnin’ for your life?”
“Runnin’ I could be fast enough,” said Con, “but where to thry for a
boat’s more than I can tell. Divil a one have I in me mind that I could
be layin’ me hand on. Howane’er, I’ll do me endeavours, Grace M‘Evoy,
troth will I so.”
Con darted off again along the beach, and was quickly out of sight. He
left Grace in an infinite solitude. She had spoken truly when declaring
that her father and brothers were all she possessed, for outside the
little circle gathered round yonder central hearth-fire she could count
no kinsfolk and few neighbours. Daddy and Joe and Thady and Tim, she
felt certain that she was never to behold one of them more.
Under stress of that appalling belief she could only cower down
among the boulders, closing eyes and ears to the outer world with a
fold of her grey shawl, as if she might thus exclude also the inward
desolation. She was holding back her thoughts much as she would have
held her breath, drowning under deep water, conscious all the while
that the terrible moment could not be long deferred.
“Grace, you big gawk! Is it asleep or wool-gatherin’ you are? Sittin’
crooched there like an ould wet hin. Grace, you great _stronsach_
you--instead of catchin’ a holt of the rope, and us bawlin’ to you this
last half-hour.”
Her father’s voice thus loudly accosting her broke roughly on her
muffled ears. But seraphic strains could not have sounded to Grace more
bewilderingly sweet. Up she started out of her black dream. The white
fog had lifted and lightened wonderfully, so that there were golden
gleams shining about its farthest silvery edges; but this was not what
she saw. For close by bobbed up and down the old _Granuaile_, with her
father standing in the bow, just striking the sail, and with all the
three boys sitting in the stern, safe and sound, albeit rather sheepish
and disconcerted of demeanour. Grace seized the tossed rope, and in
another minute the whole party were tramping on the noisy stones. They
had no fish to unload--not so much as a herring.
“Well, Grace, it’s the quare fine haul I’m after bringin’ home this
day at all evints,” said old Isaac, “the biggest ever I took--if it
was good for much, which it may be, or maybe it mayn’t. Where am I
after findin’ them? Sure now, tellin’ you the truth, ’twas more be
good luck than good guidance I happint on them, for the fog was that
thick you couldn’t sort your fingers from your thumbs, when I come
where I heard the bawls. But says I to meself: ‘That’s Thady,’ says I,
‘be the powers, it is himself.’ For he was a great hand at the roarin’
if anythin’ wint agin him, ever since he was the len’th of a sizeable
mackerel. And, be the same token,” he continued, “very prisently I come
widin a knife’s edge of scrapin’ desthruction into the ould boat off
the lump of a rock me three hayroes there was sittin’ gathered up atop
of. And bedad now, accordin’ to the look of them, for all the pleasure
they were gettin’ out of it they needn’t ha’ throubled themselves to be
flouncin’ off that outragious early--and bad manners to them--before
other people had got rightly asleep. They might be none the worser if
they waited till their hurry was over.”
“Och wirrasthrew, dad, you’ve got the laugh agin us this time, and no
mistake,” Joe said with his wonted good-humoured grin, “and we’re very
apt to not hear the last of it this saison anyway.”
Joe’s forebodings proved to be well founded. But the morning’s event
had another result which nobody would have predicted. Old Isaac has
never gone fishing again. Many a time--such is the contrariness of the
human mind--have Joe and Thady and Tim come talking to him persuasively
and wistfully about the grandeur of the weather, but his answer
is always the same. “I’m after takin’ me’ biggest haul,” he says,
“and nothin’ less ’ud satisfy me now. Stoppin’ at home I’ll be and
contintin’ meself wid that.”
THE WRONG TURNING
I
Dwellers at and around Beltranagh assert that a man who can find his
way about their shore by daylight “won’t be bothered anywhere else
in the dark,” and the saying is tinctured with truth. For those high
cliffs, which show to the waves and west winds a long front seldom
broken, seem to have been left with the _débris_ of their building
materials littered at their base so profusely that it crops up
perpetually above the water-pavement, or, still more perilously, lurks
unseen just below the surface. The sea is thick with rocks and reefs,
shoals and bars, which so vary in aspect and obstructiveness from tide
to tide that to thread the shifting labyrinth is a difficult feat even
for a mariner holding the clue of maturest experience. It is perhaps
most intricate just outside Carrickawn Bank, a long shingly isthmus
lying stretched across the mouth of one of the few gaps in that great
cliff-wall which here abruptly swerves inland to form a deep embrasure
filled with a hill-girt lough. Such a mere thread is the isthmus in
breadth that only its extremely tenacious stuff could have refused to
snap ages since under the stress of thundering seas. A piled-up glacis
of smooth oval granite stones, like an ogre’s sugar-almonds, each one
a heavy two-handsful, slopes seaward almost its whole length, and so
far has clattered defiance when the clutching foam leaps highest to
snatch it down. But near the northern end is one weak point, where
the gigantic pebbles are scattered sparsely with silvery sand showing
between them; and it seems probable that, in the course of some
thousand centuries, the Atlantic will there break through into Lough
Orren. Meanwhile, not many years back, the inhabitants of Beltranagh
Farmhouse used the slight depression in the shingle-bank as a sheltered
berth for their couple of boats.
The Beltranagh Farm seems a curiously situated little homestead even
for that countryside, where tillage is carried on in unlikely places,
and holdings have not uncommonly a more or less amphibious character.
Its existence is due to a small triangle of “land,” as opposed to
“strand” wedged in between the foot of the cliffs and one end of
the stony isthmus. A jut of the towering rock-wall screens a few
precious stacks and sheds from the full sweep of the west wind, but
the dwelling-house itself stands aloof from this protection, and faces
the sea across only a meagre dryish strip, even at low water. It has
two windows and a door below, and three windows above, and is washed
with a livid silurian blue, which seems to parody the colour of its
surroundings. About it are shredded the short-furrowed patches, with
soil dwindling towards their dykes from mitigated to unmitigated sand
and shingle. Potatoes struggle there sometimes into fairly vigorous
existence; and old John Moriarty’s whim was always to have a scrap
“down in oats,” which kept him “heart-scalded” half the year. He was a
proud man if his grain-crop loaded “the little ass” or the slug-shaped
curragh. This scantiness of the farm produce certainly saved some
trouble, as all that went to market had to be conveyed painfully along
the rough natural causeway, or at the owner’s greater risk by the
lapping water, which in wild weather can rage fiercely even on the
landward side of the barrier. Up the steeps behind the house nothing
less primitive than a goat-and-gossoon path leads to nothing more
civilised than a wet bog, while at the further end of the isthmus you
come upon only one road that deserves the name, blustery, sea-skirting,
three lonesome miles long before it begins to be fringed with the
outlying cabins of Haganstown. As for the boreen that turns off to the
left and runs along the lough shore, it very soon degenerates into the
rudest of cart-tracks, and except for the name of the thing you might
as well take your own way across the grassy-ledged hill-slopes, girdled
with sheep-walks and seamed with water-courses.
When Jim Moriarty came back to Beltranagh Farm, after an absence of
more than a dozen years, there were circumstances that threatened
to make a peace-lover’s course as troublesome steering as if it had
literally lain among the adjacent reefs and shoals. He was the eldest
son of old John Moriarty, whose death had been the cause of his return
to a home from which a falling out with his stepmother in early youth
had banished him to employment in a woollen manufactory at Mallow.
The joining of threads so long severed always calls for considerable
tact and adroitness, but Jim brought to his job, which was unusually
complicated, rather less than an average equipment of these qualities.
He found the household now consisting of his brother and sister, Andy
and Biddy, whom he had parted from as children, and his much younger
half-brother, Jack, whom he had never met at all, so that he must needs
make three new acquaintances, a thing he was slow to do. But he had
not simply to deal with the inevitable estrangement of absence; there
was also his father’s will. By this document John Moriarty, to the
surprise of all parties concerned, divided his property, comprising
several acres, into six equal shares, three of which he left to his
son Jim, and one apiece to his other children. Furthermore, Jim had
power to buy out his brethren compulsorily, if he pleased, or sell the
farm to somebody else; so that his position was one of very commanding
superiority.
The fact was that these dispositions had been made not many months
back by old John in a spleenful mood, which caused the absent--who
are not quite always unduly blamed--to appear less distasteful than
the perpetually and irritatingly present. “The little gossoon’s an
ass,” their father had grumbled to himself. “And the other two’s as
headstrong as a couple of pigs--done the very thing I bid them to not
do wid the Kerry heifer. It’s my belief Jim ’ud make a better offer at
lookin’ after the place, if he got the chance.” And acting upon these
views he instructed Councillor Dowdall that Jim’s the chance was to be.
But Jim’s brother and sister were vastly aggrieved, the more so because
for the last year or two they had managed domestic affairs much as they
would; and they immediately formed the opinion that this arrangement
had been designedly brought about by his “slutherin” letters to their
father. Jim’s letters had been in reality few and brief, and entirely
free from sentiment. Andy and Biddy, however, were guided less by
probabilities than by a natural desire for an object of resentment
still accessible. Jim would have borne the whole brunt of theirs had
they not been constrained by other considerations to manifest it in
modified forms. They dared not quarrel utterly with a person who could
no doubt oust them from the old home in which their affections were
rooted. Accordingly their behaviour was a series of compromises between
wrath and prudence. They stopped short at direct accusations and
confined themselves to innuendoes. Andy never “up and tould him to his
face that he was a schemin’ villin, and had as good as grabbed the bit
of land off them behind their backs.” He only muttered, with the vague
allusiveness of Greek tragedy, about “some he could name that had been
a great hand at featherin’ their nest with the scrawm of a pen now and
agin and the price of a penny stamp.” And if Biddy at dinner-time wore
the aspect of a Gorgon who had tasted something bitterly unpalatable,
or if she flounced ostentatiously out of the room upon Jim’s entrance,
she would afterwards apologise through the medium of hot cake for
supper, or an offer to do a bit of mending. More overt demonstrations
must, they felt, be deferred until their present precarious position
became assured one way or the other.
Jim himself was both more and less alive than they supposed to the
state of their feeling. Under a somewhat stolid demeanour he concealed
no small chagrin at the discovery that “them two weren’t anyways
disposed to be over-friendly.” But his wits were not quick, and his
conscience was clear of anything except a regret that he had kept
aloof from Beltranagh all those years nor sought to restore amicable
relations with his father more effectually than by intermittent
letters; and this made him slow to guess the true cause of their
animosity. Thus the sallies which they themselves feared might have
gone too far failed to reach him with explanatory effect; he merely
perceived that they were meant to be somehow disagreeable.
Yet even if Andy and Biddy had been “a bit pleasanter in themselves,”
Jim would have found Beltranagh a dreary abode, comfortless within
as without, and remote from familiar friends and occupations. His
stay there would most likely have been brief only for the special
circumstance that at this time his right arm was still partially
crippled by an accident, which hindered him from attending to his
business, and made him think it advisable to spend his enforced leisure
rent free on his property. So while he waited for the tardy re-knitting
of injured ligaments and sinews, the season slid on from autumn into
winter. His chief resource at first against the monotony of those empty
hours, and his hankering after the meadow and woodlands about Mallow,
lay in the companionship of his young half-brother Jack. Rather dull
and backward for his nine years was Jack, partly by nature, and partly
owing to a life of singular isolation and insipidity, flavoured only
with acids and bitters infused at the discretion of elders’ uncertain
humours. It was a strange joy for him to associate with a person whose
temper seemed to be uniformly unruffled, and whose dexterity, even
though one-handed, appeared quite marvellous. By the time that Jim
had constructed a fascinating miniature lake and canal with loughs on
it among the boulders, Jack had become his faithfully attached ally.
Whereupon Biddy expressed to Andy some gloomy expressions: “Mark my
words,” she would say, “it’s makin’ a fool of the little ape he is,
the way he’ll have him aisy persuaded to stop along wid himself here
whenever he throws the two of us out of it, as he’s apt to take and
do one of these days. And then ’twill be mighty convanient for me
fine gentleman to keep the poor child growin’ up big and strong to be
doin’ him a man’s work about the place for nothin’. That’s what he’s
up to, you may depind.” However, as weeks passed and he betrayed no
disposition to encroach or interfere, much less evict, matters were, on
the whole, tending towards improvement at the time of his first call
upon the MacNees.
II
The voyager up Lough Orren, having passed through the straits where
it is cut nearly in two by the shears of opposing hills, will see on
ahead a snowy gleam, which grows on his sight from what might be a
floating lily, a gull’s wing, a skiff’s sail, into the white front of
the MacNees’ little house. It stands on a steep bank overlooking the
lough, whence its reflection often strikes back sharp and clear, for
this green-rimmed bowl of fair water is seldom a flawed mirror. Jim
Moriarty had not been long at Beltranagh before he learned to welcome
the white fleck when it came into view as he made his way towards
it by boat or on foot. These MacNees were distant cousins of the
Moriartys, and for all an intervening league, their nearest neighbours,
so lopsided visiting terms were maintained between the two families.
That is to say, the Moriartys occasionally called upon the MacNees,
who did not return their visits. It had long been a joke among them to
apologise and account for this by declaring that the lough was double
the length going backwards. Andy had more recently begun to add, with
significance, to his versions of the jest: “Sure it knows who it does
be separatin’ us from, isn’t that the raison, Lizzie?” But Lizzie
had never yet “let on” that she heard him. It was true enough that
the MacNees’s situation seemed almost more out-of-the-way than their
friends’, considering the disabilities of the household: Mrs MacNee, an
elderly little widow woman, with her two daughters, Maria an invalid,
and Lizzie, whom her sister half wistfully called “as cogglesome
about settin’ out to go anywheres when she got the chance as if every
fut she put down would be treadin’ on red-hot pitaties.” Accordingly
they were rarely to be met abroad. Andy and Biddy were rowing over
to them one fine Sunday afternoon when Biddy invited Jim to join the
party, mainly that it might be graced by his fine Mallow tweed suit,
but also to disoblige Andy, with whom she was temporarily affronted,
and who she well knew would have preferred his brother’s room. Jim,
on his part, regretfully consented, lest they should “think too bad”
of his refusal. But the expedition after all proved more agreeable
than he could have by any means expected; he was afflicted much less
than usual with gawky dumbness, and in fact found it so possible to
converse with Mrs MacNee that he regarded the visit as a rare social
success. This encouraged him to repeat it, and he presently acquired a
habit of doing so at short intervals. Sometimes he went with Andy and
Biddy, but more often with Jack to supplement his one-armed rowing;
or he tramped alone round by the lough side, a longer and slower
route. Soon, as he grew quite at his ease in the society of the quiet,
good-natured sisters, their kitchen, being warm and weather tight,
with a transfiguring illumination of fire-light shaken over it, seemed
to him a far pleasanter living-room than his own at Beltranagh, which
had several of the features of a sea-cave. Still, his original and
permanent attraction was old Mrs MacNee in her frilled white cap and
large-plaided little shawl, with her last-generation reminiscences, and
her assumption, not displeasing to his consciousness of approaching
thirty, that he had not yet ceased to be merely a youth.
Now nobody could be long in Mrs MacNee’s company without becoming
aware of her three ruling passions. These might be summed up as a
love, a fear, and a hate, of which the respective objects were her
son, ghosts, and spiders. None of these emotions existed unmixed with
another. As no one holds any such possessions in fee simple, she had
to pay a heavy fine of fear for her interest in Paddy, all the heavier
on account of his absence in terribly far-off States. Fear, again,
mingled with her abhorrence of the long-legged spinners, who, hideously
sprawling, let themselves down by sudden threads from the rafters “on
top of a body’s cap” maybe, or glanced in hobgoblin gallops over wall
and floor. Nor could she truthfully have denied, though she dared not
avow, a mortal antipathy to those ghostly enemies, whose presence,
less frankly manifested, was scarcely a whit more doubtful, and more
dreadful by far. She found it a solace to discourse about these things
to a sympathetic hearer, and such a one she had in Jim Moriarty. With
respect to Paddy and the ghosts he was nothing more. All he could
do was to listen appreciatively while she expatiated on the various
virtues of her son, or related how the lough and its shores had come
to be infested with phantoms of an ill-omened sort. But in the matter
of the spiders he was able to lend more practical assistance, and it
became his custom to spend part of each visit in pursuing them, with
the help of a heather-tipped oar-handle, to their most obscure and
recondite recesses. Lizzie doubted whether “he mightn’t as well be
offerin’ to hunt the clouds off the sky as them crathurs that kep’ on
patchin’ up their old webs out of nothin’ at all;” and Maria sometimes
complained that he stirred up the dust to fly about choking them; but
as the chase seemed a satisfaction to Mrs MacNee, it was persevered in
until at length it brought disaster.
One evening after tea Jim was flourishing his mop with especial
energy on the track of a huge spider, which his hostess had descried
“leggin’ it up the wall beside the turf-bin, with horns on it’s
hijjis head the len’th of your arm and as black and hairy in itself
as the divil’s hind-foot.” This prodigious object was elusively swift
in its movements, and dodged about for a long while among the rafters
with tantalising disappearances and reappearances, until at last Jim,
making a desperate lunge, tripped over a stool and brought down his
weapon with much violence on the jingling dresser. It stood so thick
with crockery that the resulting damage seemed strangely slight, being
limited to the fracture of a single cup. Only Jim and Lizzie witnessed
the accident, Mrs MacNee having stepped into the other room bringing
tea for Maria, who was laid up with asthma. “That’s contrary now,” said
Lizzie. “Of course nothin’ would suit it but to be the one our Paddy
gave me mother just before he quit, and that she sets the greatest
store by at all.”
“Ay, ay, ay, it’s too bad altogether,” Jim said, standing in large
disconcertion, and looking down on the small pink-and-white victim of
his clumsiness.
“The worst of it is,” said Lizzie, “that she’ll be sure to think
it’s a sign of somethin’ happenin’ him, and fretting herself into
fiddlestrings she’ll be till we hear from him agin.”
“I wonder now would there be e’er a chance I could match it anywhere,”
Jim said, ruefully examining the pink-banded cup with the piece out of
its side. “It’s not too oncommon a pattron.”
“It wouldn’t be the same thing to her as Paddy’s one, even so,” said
Lizzie.
“Suppose it happened she didn’t know the differ,” said Jim.
“To be sure if I kep’ the right side turned out she might maybe never
notice it till you thried for the other,” said Lizzie.
“Do then, like a jewel,” said Jim.
“It might be the best plan,” said Lizzie. “For I well know she’d have
us all bothered hearin’ banshees, and dreamin’ ugly dreams, and sayin’
it was a sign of troubles. And you might have a good chance of matchin’
it at the fair there is to-morrow or next day down below.”
“I will so,” said Jim.
Thus the conspiracy was hatched, with what seemed a fair prospect of
success. But the Fowl of Fortune never will sit upon only a single egg;
and it seldom happens that at least one of the brood does not turn out
an unchancy bird.
On the next day was Haganstown Fair, at which six of the Moriarty sheep
off the mountainy lands were to be sold. Andy had intended to drive
them over with the help of Garry the collie and Jack; but at the early
breakfast Jim proposed to come instead of the latter. He said it was
because the young chap had a heavy cold on him to be going out under
the wet, and Andy said (aside to Biddy) it was because the big ass
did be always stuffin’ himself wherever he wasn’t wanted; but neither
explanation was strictly true. And at the Fair the first acquaintance
Jim fell in with was Lizzie MacNee, who for a wonder had been persuaded
to accept a seat on the Duffs’ side-car. The meeting seemed a lucky
event, as they both hoped that the right teacup might be found in time
for Lizzie to carry it home with her. “And that,” said Lizzie, “would
be a great thing; for she’s apt enough to take the notion of usin’ it
at the party to-morra night, and then where’d we be?” To-morrow was
no less an occasion than Shrove Tuesday, which the MacNees were to
celebrate with friends to tea. But the Duffs were in a hurry home out
of the rain, and Lizzie had to go before the china-hunt had well begun.
“I’ll get it sure enough yet, no fear,” Jim prophesied at parting.
“’Twill be on one of them stalls. And I brought the broken bit along,
the way I mightn’t be mistook in the colour.” He showed her, with
some pride at his own providence, the pink-and-white fragment which
protruded from a pocket of his best coat.
“Don’t be late bringin’ it over to-morra,” said Lizzie. “Of course
Biddy and little Jack ’ill be comin’ along--and Andy, maybe, that’s too
much took up wid his ould sheep to come and spake a word to anybody.”
Andy, standing black-browed at a little distance, looked as if any
words he might see fit to speak would be far from agreeable. He had
watched the meeting of Lizzie with Jim, and through the voluble
bargaining of old Joe Megarity had overheard snatches of their
conversation, which he thought betokened some secret understanding
between them. His impression when setting out had been that Jim was
coming to keep an eye on the sale of the sheep, lest he should be
defrauded of the profits in which he owned so large a share. But now a
different motive suggested itself, and shrivelled up the more sordid
suspicion as a wave of flame might scorch up a muddy little puddle.
As the Duffs’ car drove off he withdrew scowlingly into the seclusion
of a dense crowd, and for the remainder of the Fair evaded notice so
completely that Jim had to return alone.
III
The next morning, which was the last one of an inclement February,
wore so murky and menacing an aspect that Biddy Moriarty decided
upon walking over very early to the MacNees, lest if she waited till
towards evening the threatened _polthogues_ of rain should catch her
in her “good things.” She started in her best humour too, for Jim had
just presented her with a grand blue silk scarf, and moreover, to her
delighted exclamation that it was “the very same colour as the one
looked so iligant on Lizzie MacNee,” had replied: “Bedad now, Biddy,
you’d be twice as purty a girl as any MacNee if you done your hair a
trifle tidier.” This qualified compliment was no more than the truth;
but compliments of any sort had so rarely been her portion that it
elated her exceedingly. Passing the turf-stack she saw Andy lounging
against it, and accosted him with: “Well, Andy, do you know what Jim’s
after sayin’ to me?” Andy, however, kicked over a zinc bucket which
lay near, and growled amid its clatter: “Och, go to the mischief. What
the divil do I care what the bosthoon’s after sayin’ to anybody?”
So, inferring his mood to be unsympathetic, she huffily went her way
with her news untold. Jim, who had thought of entrusting her with the
surreptitious cup, which he had successfully matched, saw that she was
bundle-laden, and resolved to row himself over with it at a reasonably
early hour.
But by the time that it seemed late enough to set off the weather
had altered seriously for the worse. Not only was the wind rising in
fitful squalls, but through the nearest gap in the hills a procession
of low-trailing clouds came on interminably, with the gait of winged
things that chose to creep, and in a lull about noon one of these lit
like an immense white moth on Beltranagh Farm, blotting out its world
with blurs of blank fog. “It might take off wid itself in a couple of
hours, if the wind got up agin, or it might settle down for the divil
knows how long,” was Andy’s forecast when he came gloomily groping
indoors and was rather anxiously consulted by Jim. “And what odds does
it make one way or the other?”
“I was thinkin’ of gettin’ over to the MacNees,” said Jim.
“Then you might as well be thinkin’ of breakin’ your fool’s neck
while you’re about it, steppin’ into some hole--and welcome,” said
Andy, dumping himself down into the hearth corner. He had brought
home yesterday, instead of one fairing that he had changed his mind
about getting, a bottle of new whisky, and to-day’s evil humour was
aggravated by its contents. Jim perceived that Andy did not propose
to accompany him, which was inconvenient, inasmuch as an experienced
guide would have been useful, sullen or no. However, he reflected that
morose society might be better than none for Jack, whose cold forbade
stravading about in the chilly fog. So he tied up his teacup in a
large red cotton handkerchief and went out, uncertain whether to make
his way by land or by lough. This question soon seemed to be decided
for him by his losing himself with a thoroughness which he would
have thought impossible upon a strip of ground nowhere many perches
wide. The fog pressed on him so impenetrably that he could not see a
hand, much less a foot, before his face, and in skirting rough, tall
boulders and crossing little creeks he lost his bearings completely
and irretrievably. To and fro he circuitously strayed, until he would
have abandoned his expedition in despair had not home become as
unapproachable as any other place.
Then at length he stumbled against something and discovered that it
was the small boat in which he had made his last voyage up the lough.
She was lying as usual on the little sandy patch close to the water,
which he heard lapping unseen; and he forthwith felt assured that his
plan could be carried out after all. He generally disliked giving up
a plan, and particularly wished the teacup to arrive in good time. As
he faced the water a cold blast blew steadily in his back, and he said
to himself: “More power to it! That win’ ill soon raise the fog, and
’twill give me a fine lift up the lough. Me arm’s right enough anyhow
for rowin’ that far; I needn’t put up the sail while it’s so thick.”
He launched the boat easily, with his bundle stowed carefully under
a bench, and was just pushing off when somebody chuckled startlingly
close by. The fog was lightening, for he could almost imagine that he
saw the outline of the somebody seated on a boulder. “Is it fishin’
you’re a-goin’ this fine evenin’?” said Andy, and laughed derisively.
“To be sure I am, all the way up to Mrs MacNee’s. Are you comin’
along?” Jim replied, choosing to assume that Andy’s sarcasm was
amicably meant, but not by any means supposing that the invitation
would be accepted. Andy in fact did reply: “Am I goin’ to blazes wid
me great-grandmother’s cat?” But the next moment he jumped up, saying:
“Och, bedad, I might as well,” and suddenly had one foot at sea.
“If you’ve drink taken, you’d a right to stop on shore,” said Jim, to
whom this infirmness of purpose looked suspicious. But Andy only said:
“Drink away, boys,” and swung himself on to a bench. His embarkation
was immediately followed by another, which sought, and failed to be
unobserved. “What’s that clattering?” said Jim. “Och to goodness is it
Jack?” It was Jack, who had furtively attended Andy when he sauntered
out. “Git along wid yourself home, you young rapscallion,” Andy said,
making a grab at him, whereupon Jim shoved the child out of reach
behind him into the bows. “He’d better stop as he’s come,” said Jim.
“He might be all night findin’ the house agin.”
“Och, have it your own way,” said Andy, with another laugh, taking an
oar. Jim also began to row, not rejoicing in either of his companions.
For some time he pulled on silently and gave no signs that he was
growing puzzled: their progress seemed to him so inexplicably slow. The
high wind certainly was with them, yet they made little way, and as if
against a strong current. The blinding white fog had thinned somewhat,
and lifted, but nothing came into view except dull green water, and
that was strangely turbulent. “Begorra, there’s no end to it,” said
Jim, at last, or rather shouted, the noisy wind prescribing loud and
laconic speech. “We should ha’ been past the narrows long ago, but
ne’er a sign of them; and its wilder the wather’s gettin’ on us instead
of smoother.”
“Sure, now, yourself’s the quare man,” Andy shouted back. “Thinkin’ to
be in the town of New York by tay-time. If you get your breakfast there
you’ll be doin’ right well.”
“What at all are you romancin’ about?”
“Where else are you expectin’ to get it--and yourself rowin’ out to say
as hard as you can pelt for the last half-hour or more? We’ll be off
Inish Arbeen by now.”
“It’s a lie you’re tellin’. Sure, I knew you were demented wid the
drink.”
“Take a sup yourself, then, boyo, of wather, and you’ll aisy see if
e’er a drop like it’s in Lough Orren to wet Lizzie MacNee’s tay,” Andy
yelled hoarsely, hindered by his own passion as well as the rising
storm’s; and Jim involuntarily obeyed the injunctions as a splash of
scudding spray was slung across his face. Tasting the sharp Atlantic
brine, he was convinced that Andy, drunk or sober, had spoken the truth.
“Then I turned the wrong way and you never tould me. Of all the bedlam
tricks,” he said. “But we must be gettin’ back out of this the quickest
road we can, and it’s as much as we’ll do.” He stopped rowing and held
water, so that as Andy continued to pull, the boat swung round with her
broadside to a wave, which swooping by almost swamped them.
“Quit them fool’s antics,” commanded Andy. “We couldn’t make an offer
to git back agin’ that win’, and if we could we’d only be bet to
sticks on the shingle. What we’ve a right to do is thry run in under
the lee of Arbween Headland over yonder.” He pointed across a field of
mounded foam to where, on the more stable-seeming vapour, quivered a
dim outline, showing the soft curves of silvery flower-petals, but in
reality representing a bastion of black rock reared above buttresses
shagged with murky weed, and hung with seething white fleeces. “It’s
our best chance,” he said, “and a bad one.”
“Thry anythin’ you can; I’m a land-lubber to you,” said Jim. It was
indeed no time for self-assertion. The wind was raving in a full gale
as they began to struggle towards their refuge, awfully distant beyond
whirling chasms and drifting cataracts. No conversation was possible,
save the argument between the powers of the waters and the air, carried
on with skirling shriek and moaning bellow. At last, in a brief pause,
a human voice, small and futile, made itself heard. It was Jack, whose
hitherto implicit faith in his elders’ capacity for managing affairs
had been shaken by the fiercer plunging and battering, and who now
inquired breathlessly: “Is there e’er a chance--of us goin’ down--the
way the Mulhalls’ boat done wid them before Christmas?”
“The divil recaive the chance there is of any such a thing, sonny,
sorra a one at all,” said Jim, with a vivid recollection of how he had
decreed the child’s fate. “Take the cup out of the handkerchief there
beside you, avic--’twould ha’ been in smithereens if you hadn’t kep’
a hold on it--and bale away wid it like a Trojan.” He set Jack this
task as he might have blindfolded a frightened horse. But when Andy saw
the cup unwrapped, his eyes glared in the black and white of his drawn
face. “It’s not drinkin’ tay out of that Lizzie MacNee ’ill be this
night, nor e’er another night she won’t be, I’m thinkin’, for all the
fine hurry you were in takin’ off wid it to her,” he said triumphantly.
“What blatherin’ have you about Lizzie MacNee?” Jim answered. “’Twas a
cup I was bringin’ her mother in place of one I broke on her.”
“And I didn’t see you colloguin’ wid Lizzie yisterday at the Fair, and
she so took up wid you she couldn’t look the way anybody else was?”
“Lizzie MacNee’s nothin’ to me, alive or dead, or meself to Lizzie,
there’s the whole of it. And that’s what you’ve dhrownded the three of
us for--you mad divil.”
“We’re not dhrownded yit. Forby, how could I tell it was goin’ to
blow a gale?” Andy rejoined half apologetically, after one more
hopeless wrestle. “It’s just a quare bit of bad luck all round. Faix,
there’s an end of that anyway.” For at this moment the cup, slipping
from Jack’s hand, broke in two. The mishap made him look up with an
apprehensiveness that in the circumstances struck Jim as singularly
piteous. “Never mind, Jack, me man,” he hastened to say, “sure what
matter at all? ’Twas the unlucky ould cup, and we’ll do as well widout
it every atom.” He was thinking to himself: “If I could be sartin ’twas
an aisier way than dhrowndin’, I’d knock him on the head wid the oar--I
would so.”
Andy spoke his thoughts aloud: “I hope Biddy’ll be stoppin’ the night
at the MacNees. What I do be thinkin’ worst of is her comin’ home, the
crathur, to the empty house. She and Lizzie was great friends ever;
Lizzie ’ud be very apt to keep her.” For further reflections they had
no time. A vast wave, sweeping along to hurl itself against the cliffs,
was caught and swirled round close by in a boiling crater, whence it
broke forth through a flurry of smotherin’ foam, and rising higher and
higher poised itself over the huddled heads in the little boat. Another
instant and it fell sheer upon them, as a rearing horse falls back to
crush his rider.
At this time, which was about sunset, the MacNees, in their fire-lit
kitchen away at the head of the lough, made up their minds that it
would be ridiculous to expect any guests on such a wild wet evening,
and had begun to prepare tea. “Your brothers might be lookin’ in a bit
later, when the win’ goes down,” Lizzie said to Biddy. “I wouldn’t
wonder if Jim did anyway.”
“If they’d be ruled by me they’d keep off the lough after dark,” said
Mrs MacNee. “The dear knows what else might be out and about on it this
minyit.”
“Ah, sure, they’ll do well enough so long as they meet nothin’ worse
than mother’s ould ghosts,” said Lizzie.
“They’ll maybe have little Jack along wid them,” said Maria. “And a
child’s a grand thing, folk say, for keepin’ away any such. We mustn’t
forget the sugar-sticks we have for him.”
“Yis, mother, I’m just puttin’ out the common cups,” said Lizzie. “What
need is there to be usin’ Paddy’s good one when nobody--”
“Whisht,” Biddy interrupted, “isn’t that them outside?” She listened
for a moment, and then: “I thought I heard Andy’s voice callin’,” she
said, “but it must ha’ been only the howlin’ win’.”
CRAZY MICK
“So them half-dozen big giants,” said Felix the Thatcher, “did be
drinkin’ off their cups of tay, as plisant as anythin’, sittin’ over
yonder fornint us, every one of them cocked up on his own bit of
a hill.” Felix pointed across the small round valley to a concave
hill-line, which does show six more or less distinct summits. “And if
they did, some fine evenin’ a one of them took and slung the grounds at
the bottom of his cup slap down there into the middle of the grassland,
and you may see them lyin’ on it to this day.” The end of Felix’s
reaping-hook dropped till it quivered at a black patch that occupied a
large space in the middle of the level green floor below, and spread
with splash-like streaks towards the slopes surrounding. Amongst them
a few white dots were scattered, gleaming clearly, and to these Felix
referred as he continued, in an unmistakable tone of self-quotation:
“Bedad now, I’m thinkin’ he must ha’ chucked out two or three grains of
lump-sugar along wid them. I wonder they’re not melted agin now--unless
it’s breadcrumbs they were.”
“You might wonder anybody wasn’t tired tryin’ to get a livin’ on a
wet bog, and there’d be some sinse in it, begor,” Dinny Colman, who
rented one of the white cabins, interpolated, rather resentfully
matter-of-fact; but Felix finished his conceit perseveringly. “Bad luck
to the big bosthoon. Why couldn’t he have the wit to sling th’ ould tay
leaves over his shoulder into the lough, or into the say beyant, where
they’d make no differ, instead of to be destroyin’ the bit of good land
on us? He’d little to do, let me tell him.”
Felix the Thatcher was also, though not by trade, a _shanachie_, or
story-teller of some renown in his district, and he had now produced
the favourite local legend of the giants’ tea-party, ostensibly for
the information of Larry Dowdall, a new-comer, but principally for the
entertainment of four gossoons, who listened with unjaded interest.
They, with their three elders, were sitting on a furzy bank at the
foot of a very steep oat-field, which the men had been reaping all
the forenoon, while the boys did such odd jobs as their size and wits
permitted. Now, just as Felix had finished accounting for the existence
of the black bog, another object that seemed to demand explanation
presented itself--a figure moving along the lane, which at a lower
level girdles the hillside. It was a tall, elderly man, in a long,
ragged cotamore and battered caubeen, who walked slowly and stoopingly,
with down-bent eyes, apparently talking to himself.
“Here’s Crazy Mick trapesin’ along,” said Patsy Colman, “Himself and
his little brat.”
“If he’s been till now gettin’ here from Foynish, he’s took his time,”
said Patsy’s father, “for I seen him halfways afore breakfast.”
“Sure he does be stoppin’ continual to rest the little _girsheach_,
goodness help him,” said Felix.
“What’s he lookin’ for all the while?” said Larry Dowdall, as they
watched Crazy Mick’s progress, intermittently visible between the high
banks of the winding boreen. “He’s peerin’ down before him as if he had
the notion he was walkin’ after a lost shillin’.”
“Och, that’s not his notion at all,” said Felix, “it’s discoorsin’ he
consaits he is to a little girl he owned one time--she’s dead this
twinty year and more, herself, and the mother, and another child; they
all died on him in the fever widin a couple of days, and he’s wrong
in his head ever since. But his belief is that he’s got Peg along wid
him yet. It’s her he’s havin’ the talk wid there this minyit, you may
dipind--and she in her clay maybe before you were born--and walkin’
slow he does be to humour her, or whiles carryin’ of her about.”
“If you pelt a lump of a stone, or a sod of turf, or anythin’ at him,”
said Art Fitzsimon, the biggest gossoon, “he’ll be grabbin’ her up in
his arms like, and lettin’ on to hide her away under his ould coat, and
bawlin’ and cursin’. It’s as funny as anythin’ you ever seen. When he
comes past here I’ll show you.”
“If you offer to do any such a thing I’ll clout your head,” Dinny
Colman said, and poked him preliminarily with the disapproving toe of
a heavy brogue. Art wriggled out of reach; but after all there was no
opportunity for executing his purpose, as Crazy Mick turned off down a
by-path before he came to where the lane ran beneath the party on that
bank.
Crazy Mick did not go very far, only just out of sight round the spur
of the hill that marks an entrance to another little valley holding
a narrow water, more like a short length of river than a lough. He
knew that countryside well, as he had tramped about it for the last
quarter of a century almost, so that his recurring calls were quite
an institution in the district, and the inhabitants of its scattered
dwellings would have found their situation all the lonelier if “the
crathur” had ceased to look in on them for a bit and sup, or a taste
of the hearth-fire. They had learned to take it as a matter of course
that he should insist upon sharing all these things with an invisible
Peg, and they humoured his fancy as best they could. Experiments
such as that proposed by Art Fitzsimon were strenuously discouraged,
and Mick was seldom molested. He was very harmless, well-meaning,
indeed, though generally self-absorbed, like one in a half-dream.
Danger threatened to Peg alone could stir his wrath. The people, a
diminishing number, who recollected him before his troubles, used to
say that he had been always a trifle soft, but as good-natured a poor
boy as you’d meet between the Seven Seas. Nobody could tell exactly
how his hallucinations had begun. It was only known that for several
days following his wife’s and children’s funeral he had been seen to
sit “quiet and moidhered like” among the tall nettle-clumps in Kilanure
burial-ground by the lough, and then for some weeks had disappeared.
When he returned it soon became evident that he believed himself to
have recovered his three-year-old Peg, and that he was in quest of
Herself and the baby Dan, whom he expected to find in the little house
where, only last spring, he had had all his wealth and pelf gathered in
one glow by the flickering turf-sods, while fate and death had seemed
as remote as the dim mid-day moon.
These two delusions were the source of all his solace and the cause of
all his misery, the first comforting his days, and the second bringing
him bitter disappointment almost every night. For dusk seldom closed
in but a light gleaming from some cottage window filled him with an
idle hope of what was farther beyond his reach than the evening star.
It was at sun-setting that his expectation grew strongest, because
the hour had been wont to bring him home from his work, when work and
home were his. More than once he went back to his old tumble-down
cabin, but seeing it empty of familiar faces, he declared it to be “the
wrong place he was after comin’ to,” and continued his search without
mistrust of ultimate success.
Though he might have had lodging for the asking among his neighbours,
he did not wish to be shut up indoors. Faces and voices that were
strange, or at least _other_ to him, saddened and bewildered him, so
that if possible he would sleep out under ricks and hedges and banks;
he said that Peg liked to be looking up at the stars. But in wet and
cold weather he was obliged, on her account, to accept with reluctance
the offer of bed as well as board.
A rain-storm had driven him to do so on the night before this September
afternoon, and the consequence was that his sleep had been broken and
scanty. Therefore now, when he sat down in the shade of a hawthorn bush
on the sloping shore of the lough, a drowsiness crept swiftly over him
and he was soon fast asleep. His slumber lasted for hours, and it was
not far from sunset when something suddenly roused him. It was a voice
and a laugh from a little further up the hill-side, along which the
reapers were going home. “There’s himself and his Peg,” Art Fitzsimon
was saying.
Crazy Mick started up half awake, and walked round the bush into the
brightness of the long sunbeams, which were slanting across the lough.
The sun had dropped low into the gap between two purple pyramids, and
his rays on the smooth water had woven a strip of matting, as if with a
skein of fiery golden thread. It was like a carpet for some wonderful
sort of footpath, he thought, blinking at it with sleepy eyes, and
he said so to Peg. But immediately afterwards he blamed himself for
putting such a notion into her head; it might encourage her to run into
the water some day, which would be a terrible thing entirely. And
then, all in a moment, with the swift shifting of a dream, he began to
see that terrible thing actually come to pass. Peg darted away from him
and raced down to the edge. He made a rush, too late to stop her, and
in an instant was floundering helplessly out of his depth.
Larry Dowdall was just in time to plunge in and rescue him, with no
small peril from the blind “drowning grip”; but then Larry and the two
other men needed all their strength to keep him from struggling back
into the lough, where he averred that his little girl was being drowned
dead.
At nightfall they brought him, exhausted and passive, to the District
Asylum, for which he was clearly a suitable case, as he had been seen
to throw himself into the water, and his looks and words bespoke
unreason. However, he did not rebel against captivity. With Peg had
gone all his business and desire. He did not even wish to meet his
wife and little Dan now. Herself would think too bad, he said, of his
losing Peg. And after moping for a while, one morning he turned his
disconsolate face to the wall and unwittingly went perhaps the very way
he had been in search of so long.
WIDOW FARRELL’S WONDERFUL AGE
I
Clochranbeg, the tiny Donegal town, half of which, on the brink of
its tall sea-cliff, stands overlooking its other half, set low on the
shore, is a place whither we may return after a lapse of years to find
not only everything but everybody very much as we left them. And though
this is partly because many of the children, whose growth would have
been perplexing, will unfortunately have emigrated, it is partly, too,
because many of their elders wear so well and change so slowly.
Not that Clochranbeg is a Tir-na-n-og such as one lights on now and
then in the soft south, where brows remain strangely unwrinkled by
passing Time’s inscriptions. Here in the bleak north, face to face with
the roughest weather, we seldom find, as did of yore the Northumbrian
king, “beauty that blooms when youth is gone,” and the inhabitants
have to be satisfied with vigour and energy continuing unusually long
after visages are tanned and furrowed. What they do pride themselves on
considerably is the hale old age to which they often attain, and which
those of the upper town account for by the airiness of their situation,
subject to every wind that blows, whether across the boundless Atlantic
or the wide Meenaclochran bog-lands; whereas their neighbours in the
lower town ascribe it in their case to the splendid shelter, from all
save western storms, enjoyed by them at the foot of the high cliff.
“Sure now, it’s ourselves gets our plenty of the fresh air, one way or
the other,” boasts Jim Doyle. “If we had everythin’ else accordin’,
we’d be the very rich people entirely;” and he sticks to his opinion
even while flakes of his thatch are flying all abroad upon the blast.
But Hughey M‘Evoy wouldn’t take a shilling a day to live cocked up
there like a windmill bewitched, and he does not abate his terms,
though a wild night may bestrew his roof with sea-wrack and fling salt
spray hissing upon his hearth-stone. Both, however, agree that there
are few places where people are apt to be getting their health as well
as at Clochranbeg.
So it is easy to understand what jealous feelings would be roused by an
incident which occurred one summer not very long since at Stradrowan,
a village several miles inland, away beyond the big bog. The hundredth
birthday of one Mrs Julia O’Meara had there been celebrated “with
every sort of grandeur you could give a name to,” including an
entertainment at the schoolhouse, and a presentation of sundry garments
and groceries, organised by Mr Felix Reilly of the parish shop.
Highly-coloured accounts of the proceedings had been spread around
at fairs and markets, but, more than that, the affair had actually
got into the newspaper, being made the subject of a paragraph in the
_Northern Trumpeter_, wherein to details of the ceremony were appended
some remarks on the salubriousness of Stradrowan as evidenced by its
possession of so hale and hearty a resident centenarian.
In these lurked a sting which moved the Clochranbegians to indignant
murmurs about people who thought themselves very fine with their names
on the paper; people who were mighty fond of flourishing themselves
to the front, and other reprehensible members of society. Mrs Pat
Doherty, being “something to” the Stradrowan Reillys, had gone so far
as to purchase at Loughmore, twelve miles distant, that copy of the
_Trumpeter_; and when a fortnight old it was still much in request
among her acquaintances. Two of them, in fact, were busy with it one
warm afternoon when the Widow Farrell looked in on her way to Geary’s.
The Widow Farrell had been living quite alone on a potato-patch in a
recess of the sea-cliff ever since most people could remember, though
her youth had passed before she came to Clochranbeg. She was one of the
Carmodys, whose habitation had been on the townland of Moyloughlin,
towards Kilanure, but of whom none now remained on that countryside.
At Clochranbeg she had no one belonging to her more particularly than
by the vague and intricate cousinships, the tracing and recognising of
which may be regarded as a matter of kindness rather than of kindred.
Undoubtedly there was nothing in the widow’s circumstances that could
tempt anyone to claim affinity with her from interested motives; for
her position was as precarious as humble, resting upon the success
of her efforts to raise potatoes enough for herself and her few
hens, while the utmost she hoped from the future was that “whenever
anythin’ bad took her it might be for good and all,” by which phrase
she meant to express a wish that no lingering illness should bring her
ignominiously to the Union Infirmary. At this time, however, she was
still a brisk and active little old woman, who could patter about the
deep-sanded boreens with her piled-up creel of turf sods as nimbly as a
goat, when “Pather Phelan would be buildin’ her her stack.”
It was a much lighter load she had now as she came blinking out of
the July sunshine into Mrs Doherty’s house, perched on the rim of the
cliff at the northern end of the straggling street, which forms the
higher Town. “Sit ye down, ma’am; is it kilt you are wid the heat?” Mrs
Doherty said, hospitably starting up from her end of the fireside form
so abruptly that Nannie Phelan was all but tossed off the other.
“Sorra bit, ma’am, am I,” said Mrs Farrell, sitting down quickly,
nevertheless, to restore the balance. “It’s a grand, blazin’ hot day,
glory be to goodness. Just steppin’ along to Geary’s I am wid me eggs
for some oatenmale.”
“Poor Mr Geary, he’s none too well plased wid the way they’re settin’
themselves up over at Stradrowan,” said Nannie Phelan. “Says I to
him the other day: ‘Well, Mr Geary,’ says I, ‘Mr Faylix Reilly over
yonder’s the great man altogether these times, himself and his
prisentations,’ says I. And says he to me: ‘Ah sure, it’s all in the
way of business, that’s what it is,’ says he, as much as to make out
the same might happen himself any time at all. So he passed it off wid
the form of a laugh, but if he wasn’t more than a little put out I
haven’t an eye in me head. He never happint to look at the _Trumpeter_
he said. Och, Mrs Hickey, it’s yourself has the strong sight, to be
readin’ that quare small little print.”
“Plain enough it is,” Mrs Hickey replied from her stool at Nannie’s
elbow; “the only thing that bothers one is how at all they conthrived
to reckon up the ould crathur’s age that exact; for ’twould be much if
anybody had a notion of it after such a len’th of time, supposin’ ’twas
ever in their knowledge. Bedad now, ma’am, if you axed me how ould
I was this minyit, that haven’t the sign of a grey hair on me head,
you’d ax me more than I could be tellin’ you. Why, one does be losin’
count of the childer’s ages, once they’re over three or four year.
It’s somethin’ aisier wid the bastes, because one does be keepin’ them
mostly a shorter while. But if you owned a pig or a heifer for fifty
or sixty year, you’d be very apt to disremimber what sort of an age was
on it before you got shut of it.”
“You would so,” said Mrs Doherty. “But bastes is a different thing. You
can’t be countin’ up their ages conformably to what cows and pigs might
have a recollection of, as if they were Christians. And that’s the way
they manage wid them oncommon ould-aged people.”
“Ay do they, thrue for you,” said Mrs Hickey, “_The vener’ble
re-ciperant of the prisentation retains a vy-vid remimberance of the
fateful year ’98, the landin’ of the Frinch, the battle of Watherloo,
and other historiogical evints, which she grapically relates to her
interested audithors_,” she spelled slowly out of the smudgy column.
“But sure there’s plenty here in Clochranbeg could remimber that much,
and maybe more, if they gave their minds to it.”
“What ’ud ail them to not?” said Nannie Phelan. “I’ve a good few things
in me own recollection, and as for Mrs Farrell, that has a heavier age
on her than any of us here, ma’am, she had a right to remimber all
manner. But there’s no talk of presintin’ her wid shawls and gowns and
chests of tay.”
“Ah, not at all, not at all, why would they?” the widow said
disclaimingly. “I’m a dale short of a hunderd yet anyway.”
“Might you happen to mind any talk of the war and the Frinch landin’,
ma’am?” Mrs Hickey inquired of her.
“Sure I’m hearin’ talk of it all the days of me life, for that matter,”
Mrs Farrell said. “But the war I’ve the most recollection of was an
American one, for it lasted a cruel long while, and the prices there
did be on everythin’ would frighten you. A shillin’ for a little weeny
taste of tay you could put in a half egg-shell. Sorra a sup of it any
poor person seen those times, and everybody said ’twas the American war
made it so dear.”
“A drop of tay’s a woeful loss,” Mrs Doherty said. “There’s nothin’ to
aquil it. But how long back might that be, Mrs Farrell?”
“Och, woman dear, I couldn’t be tellin’ you! It was a good while bedad.
Only I remimber as if it was yisterday, Mr Geary’s grandfather sayin’
to me ’twas the war in America riz up the price of the tay.”
“Mr Martin here can tell us very belike,” Mrs Hickey said, wheeling
her stool half round so as to reach a small elderly man, who was
sitting just behind it at the window, and reading the other sheet of
the _Trumpeter_. He was the National School teacher of Clochranbeg.
“Mr Martin,” Mrs Hickey shouted in his deaf ear, twitching him by the
sleeve out of his leading article.
“Public opinion--troth, if that’s what all they’re trustin’ to,” Mr
Martin said, as if she had jerked off what lay uppermost in his mind at
the moment.
“Och, no matter for that,” she said. “I was axin’ you could you tell us
what American war there might be a great while ago had somethin’ to
say to the price of tay.”
“Oh, ay to be sure,” said Mr Martin, “that ’ud be at the beginnin’ end
of the War of Indepindence--the time a mob of people dressed themselves
up like wild Injins and stepped on board of all the ships that was
lyin’ in Boston Harbour loaded wid tay, and every bit of it they slung
into the water--hundreds of tons’ weight.”
“Wisha, wisha,” deplored Mrs Doherty. “Themselves was the lads to go
do such a mischievous thing, and to be sure that ’ud make it terrible
scarce and dear. It’s grew in them parts, I should suppose. But how
long would it be since then, Mr Martin?”
“’Twould be before any of us was born or thought of,” said Mr Martin.
“I couldn’t give you the very date out of me head extemporaneous, but
’twas a dozen year or so after George the Third come by the crown of
England. If you called it seventeen hundred and seventy you wouldn’t be
far astray.” And he hurried back to his leader.
“Siventeen hundred and siventy,” said Mrs Doherty. “Isn’t that ould
ages ago?”
Nannie Phelan was adding up on her fingers under her breath. “Tin and
tin is twinty, and tin is thirty,” and at the end of her calculations
she said: “I declare to goodness it’s better than a hunderd year,
forby whatever age she was herself at the time. Is it just a slip of a
_girsheach_ you were then, ma’am?”
“’Deed no, Nannie; a widow woman I was then, the very same way I am
now,” Mrs Farrell said, glancing anxiously from face to face. Her three
neighbours were surveying her with a sort of awe-stricken curiosity,
which was not reassuring.
“Well to be sure,” said Mrs Hickey, “she looked to be an ould woman
when I come here first, and that’s over twinty year back; but I’d no
notion she was that wonderful age altogether.”
“Tellin’ you the truth, I was noticin’ her failed a dale this good
little bit,” said Mrs Doherty. “But that’s only to be expected, the
dear knows, and she goin’ on for two hunderd.”
“What way are you feelin’ yourself at all, ma’am dear?” said Nannie.
“I do be gettin’ me health very raisonable,” Mrs Farrell said, “glory
be to goodness.” But her tone was dejected enough to harmonise with the
condolence expressed in Nannie’s inquiry.
“I wonder now might she happen to have e’er a line wrote down
anywheres?” said Mrs Hickey. “That’s sometimes a handy way of makin’
out things.”
“There’s a little ould prayer-book I have at home this long while,”
said the widow, “and I remimber me poor father sayin’ me own name was
on a leaf of it. I scarce think there’s aught else. I niver got any
learnin’ to spake of, for I come away from school to help in the house
after me sisther--” Mrs Farrell stopped herself suddenly, for she was
just stumbling on a bit of family history which she always avoided with
care.
“She’s fit to drop wid draggin’ herself up the steep hill, that’s what
ails her,” pronounced Mrs Doherty. “I’ll be wettin’ her a cup of tay.
It’s much if the crathur overs next winter,” she added in a loud aside
to Nannie Phelan.
“I met Pather Doyle and I comin’ along here, and he said I was lookin’
grand,” Mrs Farrell put in wistfully.
“Ah, sure, Pather’s a great talker. If he says a word of truth, of an
odd time, it’s mostly because he consaits in his own mind it’s a lie
he’s tellin’ you,” said Mrs Doherty.
“But don’t be frettin’, ma’am,” said Nannie Phelan, “you might do
finely yet a while. Buryin’ the half of us you might be. And I’ll slip
over meself now wid your basket to Geary’s, and fetch you what you was
wantin’, the way you needn’t be killin’ yourself trampin’ about. So
just sit aisy where you are.”
Nannie would not be gainsaid, but bustled off, eager to communicate
their remarkable chronological discovery, and to carry out a benevolent
plan of her own. Its result appeared when she returned after half an
hour’s gossip and presented to the widow a small, peaked blue paper
parcel.
“’Tis just a grain, ma’am, I got you meself; and your oatenmale’s all
right in the basket, wid an egg to your credit. Ah, sure, not at all,
don’t say a word. ’Deed now, it’s a poor case if the ouldest ould woman
in the country couldn’t make herself a cup of tay. When I tould Mr
Geary he said ’twas a couple of ould-age pinsions you had a right to be
gettin’.”
“Offerin’ to make her a prisint of them he’d be, if only he kep’
them in stock, he would so. Musha, long life to himself,” Mrs Hickey
remarked with sarcasm.
The gift made Mrs Farrell very grateful, but failed to raise her
spirits, which had sunk low as she sat perplexed, sipping out of Mrs
Doherty’s ponderous blue-rimmed cup; and she soon got up, saying it was
time she stepped home. Her hostess, though declaring it would be a sin
to ask her to stay late, and perhaps catch her death of cold, protested
against letting her go by herself and carry down the basket, which
she had carried up without a thought, and Nannie Phelan, putting her
head out of the door, espied a long-legged, bare-footed little niece
trotting by, and bade her come to take home Mrs Farrell’s basket. So
the widow set off, escorted by Katty M‘Cann.
It seemed to Mrs Farrell that the lane was unwontedly steep, and that
never before had she waded so wearily through the deep sand. Twice she
had to bid Katty not “be tatterin’ along at such a rate, fit to jig
the breath out of a body.” As they went between the silvery banks,
which took lilac and amber hues in the sunset shine and shadow, she was
groping among her memories for some way of creeping out from under the
huge burden of years so suddenly heaped upon her by the computations of
her friends.
“I was growin’ an ould woman, I well knew,” she reflected, “but what
they say’s beyond the beyonds entirely. I never heard tell of any of
the Carmodys livin’ to one hundred, let alone a couple, nor yet anybody
belongin’ to me poor mother aither. People ’ill be wonderin’ what’s
keepin’ me in it so long. Onnathural it is.”
Yet she could find no escape from their conclusions. The years that had
passed since her early widowhood lay behind her all in a dim mist of
monotony, confusingly alike, without any notable events for time-marks.
Whatever things she did remember distinctly and consecutively belonged,
she knew, to the far-off days before the loss of her elder sister and
her own short married life. In the featureless blur of shifting summers
and winters it was impossible to fix dates for isolated reminiscences
such as the dear tea and the American war; ten years, or twenty, or
forty might have elapsed between them. That old prayer-book, the
legacy of her father’s brother, alone afforded hopes of a clue, and
so impatient was she to follow it up that when she reached her door
she bade Katty wait a minute till she fetched out something she wanted
read. Katty, tilting the damp-embrowned page to catch the slanted
sunbeams, spelt off the fly-leaf, “Norah Carmody.”
“Sure enough, you’ve got it right, that’s me name,” said Mrs Farrell.
“But would you try is there any figures on it, honey?”
“Sivinteen hundred and sixty-two there is,” said Katty, peering closer
at the faded ink. “That’s a quare long while ago.”
“It is so, God knows,” Mrs Farrell said, relinquishing her last hope.
“And it stands to raison nobody’d take and write down me name before I
was born. Thank you kindly, Katty.”
As she turned indoors she felt the new, unaccustomed weight of that
great old age pressing sadly on both body and mind, and she dropped her
basket on the floor and sat down forlorn by the smouldering wraith of a
fire. She had not the heart to think even of Nannie Phelan’s tea, which
in any ordinary circumstances would have given the evening a cheerful
flavour; it seemed such a lonesome fate to be the ouldest ould woman in
Ireland.
II
It was early in July when her neighbours discovered the Widow Farrell’s
wonderful age, and three months later found her beginning almost to
look the character of a bi-centenarian, so bent, wizened and decrepit
had she grown. Not that anything definite ailed her: the change was
wrought partly by her own melancholy imaginations, and partly by other
people’s alarming speeches. She told herself that she needn’t expect
to have the use of her limbs any while longer, and everybody she met
told her how surprising it was to see her able to be going about at
all; and the consequence was that she daily felt herself becoming more
feeble and incapable. On Sunday mornings she sometimes cheered up a
bit, because she could not help feeling flattered by all the attention
she received as she climbed the steep boreen to Mass, among a troop
of sympathetic acquaintances, who contended with one another for the
privilege of offering so distinguished a personage an arm. But even
then she heard and overheard many observations which, however kindly
meant, were by no means encouraging, and through the long week, when
she lacked any such excitement, she sat brooding and moping, until her
strength waned with her spirits. Out of doors she seldom stirred.
One mild autumn afternoon, however, the mellow golden light tempted
her to lift her old shawl over her head and creep as far as the John
Phelans, who lived close by, just across a loop of smooth firm sand at
the mouth of a boreen. Down this a stream of people had been wending
on their way back from Rathcroskery fair, and as several of them had
turned into the Phelans’ kitchen, the widow arrived amid quite a large
party of neighbours. Nannie Phelan, maiden sister to the man of the
house, welcomed her kindly, and sat down with her in a quiet corner,
noticing that the old woman looked what she would have described as
“skeery and desolit like.”
“Sure, I dunno is there one thing amiss wid me more than the other,”
Mrs Farrell explained lugubriously, “only I was dramin’ all last night
a dale about the little round musheroons we did be gettin’ in the
fields at home, and they made me think of me sisther Rose, that had an
oncommon fancy for them ever. I’d bring her any ones I could find, and
she’d be puttin’ them in among the hot ashes for to broil. I mind the
smell of them this minyit, and she pokin’ them out wid a bit of stick,
and sittin’ cocked up on the end of th’ ould settle a-nibblin’ of them,
the crathur, like a wild rabbit wid a weeny white turnip stole for
itself. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe a sort of sign.”
“She’s away this great while, I should suppose? The Lord be good to
her,” Nannie said with interest. It was a new departure for Mrs Farrell
to mention this long-vanished elder sister, of whose very existence
many of her friends had never heard.
“Ay is she that,” she replied to Nannie, “for what else would she be
after all this while? And Christy Dann as well--the back of me hand to
him; nobody thought anythin’ of them Danns. But sorra tale or tidings
ever I got of what become of her since then. I dunno if any of them did
at home, and I question would they let on to me even so, they were that
mad about it all. Many’s the time I would be frettin’ and wonderin’,
for I always had a great wish for poor Rose ever since I was no size to
spake of. As pretty as anythin’ she was, and rael good-nathured. ’Twas
twinty-siven pities--But sure it was to be, and belike it’s all one now
which of them she took.”
“What happint her, ma’am?” Nannie inquired eagerly; but before she
could be answered the open door all at once admitted sounds of
such shouting and clattering and trampling that curiosity about the
immediate present expelled curiosity about the remoter past, and she
rushed out like the rest to see what was going on.
Everybody considered that if Joe Mulcahy had not taken more than was
good for him he would never have trotted his horse and car down the
steep and deep-rutted boreen; and nobody thought it otherwise than very
natural that the result of his rashness was an upset at the foot of the
hill. The horse tripped, and Joe and his two fares were pitched off.
But they all fell softly, and only the harness was damaged. While it
was a-mending with fishing-line the stranger passengers were invited
to take a seat at the Phelans’ fire, the circle round which was thus
enlarged by the addition of a middle-aged, black-bearded gentleman in
light grey, and a little girl in navy blue with a curly-feathered hat.
Elderly Terence Lalor from Moyloughlin, who was visiting his married
sister, Mrs Phelan, under-took, as the person of most consequence
present, to entertain the new-comer, whose “furrinness” appeared
plainly in his accent, even before he remarked, in the course of
conversation, that he had had little experience of side-cars, as they
were pretty considerable scarce on the streets of New York City, which
he had but lately left.
“They’re the quare ould awkward yokes, bedad,” Terence asserted with
polite self-depreciation. “’Tis only in a poor, backward counthry
people would be bothered usin’ them at all. We ourselves has to make a
shift wid them to be gettin’ to fairs and funerals and such. Deed now
I mind the big loads there did be on our ould rattlethrap at home of
a Sunday mornin’, drivin’ over to Mass at Cranmore; and, by the same
token, I mind me poor mother had a sayin’ that a jauntin’-car was a
terrible secret-thrap. For, says she, the people sittin’ back to back
on the two sates might be talkin’ away about diff’rint things, widout
a notion that e’er a word ’ud get across the well from one side to the
other. But then maybe all of a suddint the horse ’ud come to a stand,
or throt over a soft place, where there wasn’t a sound of his feet or
the wheels, and wid that every word they were sayin’ ’ud rise up clear
on the air, before they could stop themselves spakin’ loud, like as
if they intinded it for the whole of Ireland. Begob, I knew that to
happen meself before now. But most whiles, when you’re peltin’ along
the hard road, you couldn’t tell what anybody might be sayin’ or doin’
on the far side, more especially if there was e’er a big box, or a
couple of sacks, or anythin’ sizeable, sittin’ stuck up between yous
on the well. There’s a story I’m hearin’ all the days of me life shows
the truth of that same, sir; and morebetoken you was passin’ the very
place it happint to-day, drivin’ over here from Moyloughlin, as you was
a-sayin’.”
“So we did, sir,” said the stranger, “and I seldom ran across a
lonelier-looking prospect than you have lying around most of the way.”
“Well, sir,” said Terence, “it was before me own recollection
altogether, but I wisht I had a pound-note for every time I heard
tell of it. ’Twas when the Carmodys of Moyloughlin, very respectable,
dacint people, that are all gone now, were after makin’ up a match
for the eldest daughter wid a strong farmer of the name of Lawrence
M‘Nelis, that owned a good bit of land, and was a warm man. But this
Rose Carmody couldn’t abide the thoughts of him at all. The work of the
world they had gettin’ her persuaded, and in the end nothin’ ’ud suit
her but she’d be married away over at Carrick, where her grandmother
lived. So to satisfy her they settled it that way, and the day before
the weddin’ she and her father set off drivin’ to Carrick on their car,
wid herself on the one side and a big box of new clothes beside her,
and her father on the other sate, and the well between them piled up
high wid a cartload of things belongin’ to Rose that they were bringin’
over. Well and good, sir, they come as far as a cross-roads you might
remimber, where the Carrick road turns off the bog, and there’s a
collection of quare big lumps of boulder-stones scattered just in the
corner. And thereabouts ould Carmody and the driver seen another car
standin’ a bit down the Kilanure road wid nobody mindin’ it; so they
passed the remark that that was no way to be lavin’ it; and that was
all they noticed then. But when they got to Carrick, sorra a bit of
Rose was on the car, and sight nor light they ever seen of the girl
agin. For what did she do, if you plase, but took and slipped herself
off unbeknownst there at the cross corner, where Christy Dann was
waitin’ for her, lurkin’ behind the big stones--a young rapscallion
widout a brass bawbee to his name that she took a fancy to--and away
wid the pair of them to the States before man or baste could purvint
it. Finely distracted her people were, that’s sartin. But what become
of her nobody knows from that good day to this--Any more than I know
what the mischief you’re riefin’ the sleeve out of me coat for, Kate.
Is it wantin’ anythin’ you are?”
“If you had aught better than a pair of ould owl’s eyes in the ass’s
head of you, ’tisn’t makin’ a fool of yourself you’d be tellin’ stories
agin the Carmodys and ould Widdy Farrell sittin’ fornint you listenin’
to the whole of it,” his sister remonstrated in an indignant whisper.
But his attention, and indeed everybody else’s, was diverted to the
American gentleman, who had jumped up and stood facing the semi-circle
of neighbours with an air of no small importance and excitement.
“I’ll tell you what’s become of her, sir--you and all your friends,”
he said. “She’s alive and well this day in her son’s house on Congress
Avenue, Corneliusville, the widow of a highly-respected citizen, and
the grandmother of myself, Christopher P. Dann. I was named for my
paternal grandfather. Yes, sir, he mayn’t have been very flush of cash
at the time when he carried off Rose Carmody from the folk who were
for buying, and selling, and breaking her heart among them all, but he
made his pile out West, and left a good business to his children and
his children’s children. Often she’s told me how she slithered off the
car and crawled on her hands and knees through the furze bushes, afraid
of her life that her father might look behind him before she got to the
shelter of the big stones. And she’s never regretted it, she claims,
not for half-an-hour. But now I’ll trouble you to present me to the
Widow Farrell that good lady mentioned, for it was to look her up that
I’ve driven over from Moyloughlin, where I called at the Carmody house
and could get no information relating to any member of the family,
except the Widow Farrell of Clochranbeg--my great-aunt Norah, I take
it, born Carmody.”
“Well I declare to goodness if that doesn’t bate anythin’ ever was! And
here’s Mrs Farrell herself--step along, woman alive,” Nannie Phelan
said, pushing forward the widow.
“Musha then, you done well, sir, to not be delayin’ any longer, if
that’s what you’re after,” said Matt Caffrey. “When a body comes to
be goin’ on for a couple of hunderd year ould it stands to raison
them that’s intendin’ to visit her has a right to set their best foot
foremost.”
“Indeed it’s a very ould, ould crathur I am, sir,” the widow said in
her tremulous high piping; “a hunderd and fifty year’s a quare great
age for a lone widdy woman to be lastin’ to, wid ne’er a one left in
this world. And it’s true for them that I’m apt to quit very prisently.
Sure I’m scarce able to stand on me two feet these times, let alone
walkin’. But what talk have you about me sister, Rose Carmody. Och,
but that was the notorious young villin to entice her away from us.
How-an-e’er, it’s oulder agin than meself she was, and in her clay she
is this many a long year, God save us all; ay is she, for sure.”
“You’re wrong there, ma’am,” said Mr Christopher Dann, beginning
to shake hands with her vigorously. “As I stated, she’s alive and
well; has never had a day’s sickness since I knew her, and that’s
over forty years. But as for the advanced age you claim, Aunt Norah,
you’re mistaken there again; you put it at too large a figure by a
very long chalk. Why, it’s some seventy odd years since my grandfather
and grandmother Dann crossed the fish-pond, and she says she left the
sister Norah, that she’s talking about all the time, only a little
slip of a girl of ten or eleven. So if you’re eighty-five, ma’am,
this day, it’s the very most you can total up to. Grandmother Dann
herself’s something just short of ninety, and a fine woman still.
If you’ll excuse the remark, I think she’s better preserved than
yourself--fresher and robuster looking. But there’s considerable of a
family likeness all the same. Rosette, come here and tell me whether
this old lady reminds you of anyone at home.”
The little girl, who seemed to be about seven years old, came and
stared hard for a moment with very large dark blue eyes, which were
overcast occasionally by a drift of soft black hair. “Why, certainly,”
she said with confidence, “if she had a red shawl, and not such wide
ruffles to her cap, she’d be a little like great-grandma Dann.”
“That’s so. What Miss Rosette Dann misses seeing correctly don’t amount
to a lot,” her father said with pride. “But, talking of the shawl,
don’t you feel like fetching it out of the strap on the brown handbag
over there by the door?”
As Rosette ran off Mrs Farrell said: “Woman dear, I give you me word
she’s the livin’ moral of me sisther; the very eyes of her, and the
toss of her head to keep the hair out of them. Me brothers would be
sayin’: ‘Way there, Captain,’ to her, and biddin’ her stand steady,
lettin’ on ’twas our ould plough-horse she was like. Well now, to think
of me behouldin’ such a thing, and gettin’ news of Rose, after all
the frettin’ I had and wonderin’ what was become of her, and if it’s
drownded she was crossin’ over the water, or starved dead maybe rovin’
about the world wid that young miscreant--beggin’ your pardon, sir, if
he was somethin’ to you, but it’s dog’s abuse we did always be givin’
Christy Dann. And so Rose is all this while livin’ grand in the States,
and no such outlandish ages on the two of us whatever. They had me
torminted here, sir, addin’ up this way and that way till they found
out I’m the ouldest ever was. Scarce the heart I’d have to be as much
as throwin’ their bit of food to me poor hins, when I’d be thinkin’ of
the show I was makin’ of meself livin’ that onnathural len’th of time.
But now--it’s as surprisin’ as can be.”
Yet she considered it a degree more surprising a moment afterwards
when Rosette returned with an ample shawl overflowing her short arms,
and was helped by her father to wrap her great-grand-aunt in the soft,
scarlet cashmere folds. They made of the little old woman an object
more brilliant than the red sods’ glimmer through the dusky room, as
her friends clustered round her, testing the fabric with finger and
thumb, exclaiming and conjecturing about price and material. Rosette,
however, planted herself in front of the widow, and looked fixedly
at her for a minute or two. “Was it you really that used to bring
great-grandma the cunning little musheroons?” she said at last. “I wish
you’d show me where they grow, I’d like to find some myself.”
“There, that’s me drame,” said Mrs Farrell, clapping her hand
impressively on Nannie Phelan’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you it was a sign
of somethin’? ’Deed, jewel, I’m afeard it’s a trifle late in the saison
for musheroons, but there might be an odd few yet in the high fields up
above me house. I’ll skyte up wid you to thry is there, and welcome.”
“Is your house near by?” said Rosette, “for I guess we might go round
there and have tea. We’ve brought it in a hamper, because father said
we didn’t know what circumstances the Carmody family might be in. And I
think _these_ circumstances are real poky and smoky. Father can carry
the hamper; it’s heavy.”
Miss Rosette Dann was a young person whose wishes were complied with as
a rule. She might presently have been seen crossing the curved sweep
of sand towards Mrs Farrell’s cottage, walking hand-in-hand with her
great-grand-aunt, at a brisk rate, enlivened by skips and hops, to
which the old woman adapted her paces quite nimbly and cheerfully.
Towards dusk that evening Mrs Doherty called on Mrs Hickey in a state
of serious perturbation. “I’m after gettin’ a quare turn,” she said,
“for I looked in just now at the Widdy Farrell’s door on me way up
here, thinkin’ she might be apt to be after takin’ a wakeness. And if
I did, there was the ould crathur dressed out in I dunno what sort of
deminted red rags, dancin’ her steps like a three-year-ould--a jig, if
you plase--in the middle of the floor, wid a couple of strange people,
as well as I could see, sittin’ inside and laughin’ at her; tinker
tramps belike. It’s daft entirely the poor ould body’s gone.”
“Sorra a bit daft is she,” said Mrs Hickey. “Didn’t you hear tell?
Sure there’s some people belongin’ to her just after landin’ over here
from the States, and they as rich as Jews; and accordin’ to what they
say the sisther of her that run away from her own weddin’ this great
while back’s livin’ out there yet as fit as a fiddler; and it’s all
a mistake about the widdy herself bein’ any wonderful ould age to
spake of. The American gentleman says ’twas her grandmother owned the
prayer-book wid her name in it, and he knows the Widdy wasn’t so much
as born for better than forty year after the war about the tay. She’s
raison to dance jigs bedad. They brought her the iligantist shawl you
ever witnessed.”
“It’s well to be her,” said Mrs Doherty. “But here am I braggin’ away
this day to everybody at the fair that we had the wonderfulest ould
ancient woman at all livin’ here in Clochranbeg. And now it seems she’s
no oulder than plinty of other people.”
“Ah well, she won’t be so one of these days,” said Mrs Hickey, “if she
lives long enough.”
And with that consideration Clochranbeg has so far had to remain
content.
THE HINS’ HOUSEKEEPER
Biddy M‘Gowran felt herself to be a person of no small importance when
her grandmother had fairly set off to market and she could contemplate
her own morning’s work. She expected to be extremely busy, and well
she might, as her task was nothing less than the “redding up” of their
kitchen, which she rightly thought in bad need of such an operation.
The mistake she made was in assuming that it could be satisfactorily
performed by the hands and wits of seven years old.
Biddy had arrived at Kilanure only the day before, having hitherto
lived with her other grandmother in a gate-lodge a long way off.
Both her parents had always been dead, it seemed to her, though her
grandmothers did talk as if the trouble had happened quite a short time
ago. The gate-lodge she had just left was a highly ornamental one, with
a little terrace of coloured tiles round it, and stained glass in the
Gothic porch-windows, and all things about it were kept very spick and
span. A girl came up from the village once a week to wash and scrub,
and whatever could be polished was polished, and whatever could not be
was dusted every day.
Why this Kilanure grandmother, whom she had so seldom seen, should now
have come to fetch her away, Biddy did not know; but as she was told
that she should return “one of these fine days,” she started happily
enough, while little, old Mrs Nolan stood under the porch, shaking her
head sorrowfully in the cold March sunlight.
On their journey to Kilanure her new granny, as Biddy called her, had
spoken much about her son Larry, Biddy’s poor father, who, she said,
had been the best son in Ireland, and the finest figure of a young
man in the County Donegal. Whereas old granny had often talked of her
daughter, little Molly, who used to be the prettiest girl in five
parishes, and the best daughter that ever lived in this world--God be
good to them all.
“And a grand worker poor Larry was,” Mrs M‘Gowran now had repeated more
than once. “Ne’er a lazy bone had he in his body; I’ll say that for
him.”
This phrase stuck in Biddy’s mind, and it was chiefly a wish to prove
herself a worthy daughter of such an industrious father that made her
so eager to set about doing something without delay. But there were
other reasons too. She was really shocked at the grimy aspect of the
kitchen, as far as she could see it, for perpetual twilight dwelt
behind the two tiny windows with their panes of dusty greenish glass
and beetle brows of sloping grey thatch. The state of the floor struck
her particularly; it felt gritty and rough underfoot, as if incrusted
with dried mud. Biddy wondered how it could have got into such a
condition. The scrubbing girl, she conjectured, might not have come
this week, so that granny had no one to help her except grandfather and
Uncle Joe, who of course were not of any use--at all events indoors.
Biddy had often thought, as she watched Meg Hoey working at home, that
it must be very delightful to have command of a great bucket filled
with foaming suds, and a piece of brown soap for the making of more,
besides a cloth and a brush, and liberty to splash and slop all over
the shiny tiles or snowy boards. But Meg always refused to let her try,
on the grounds that she would be only destroying her clean frock and
delaying other people at their work. All this somehow made it now seem
quite clear to Biddy that she should set about cleaning up as soon as
ever she had the house to herself, and thus be able to surprise her
grandparents with the improvement upon their return. She had indeed
already rather surprised her grandmother by the alacrity with which
she agreed that the walk to market was too far, and her vehemence in
declaring that she would not be a bit lonely by herself until her
grandfather came in to his dinner at one o’clock. So Mrs M‘Gowran
started on her long trudge, reflecting that poor Larry’s little girl
seemed to be a good, biddable child; her husband went off with Joe to
their field-work, having told Biddy that she was the grandest little
housekeeper alive; and Biddy found herself at last blissfully alone.
She was strenuously bent upon deserving that character.
Her first requirements were some water and a bucket, and she had the
good fortune to find them both at once, in the shape of a battered old
zinc pail, nearly full, standing at the back door. She resolved to be
content with cold water, for the black, soot-shagged kettle on the
hearth was almost as big as herself, and she had sense enough not to
try lifting it. Brush and cloth must next be sought; but here Biddy had
less luck, as no semblance of the former appeared anywhere, and the
nearest approach to the latter that she lit upon was a blue checked
linen fabric lying folded on the window-seat. To the unprejudiced eye
it was quite evidently an apron; however, since there were two rather
large holes in it she gladly decided that it could be good for nothing
except a floor-cloth; and when she had torn it across to make it a more
convenient size it certainly did look like nothing better than a rag.
Then, after a long and anxious quest she found, in a broken tea-pot
on the dresser, a piece of soap, disappointingly thin, it is true.
Still she thought it would do, and she dropped it into the bucket,
intending to stir up a lather with the poker as soon as it had melted
sufficiently.
While she waited for this she had leisure to notice that two grey hens
and a white one were crawking dismally in a row on the top of the
half-door. She had closed it to exclude them, being much scandalised
at their free-and-easy entrances. Poultry were never permitted to
set scratching foot near the trim flower-beds about the castle
gate-lodge, so Biddy had no experience of fowls and their habits; but
she felt pretty sure that three hens would not keep on making such a
disconsolate noise, like the winding up of the old wheezy eight-day
clock at home, unless they wanted something very badly, and she quickly
guessed that something to be their breakfast. Granny had most likely
forgotten to feed them in the hurry of setting off to market.
What their usual food was Biddy could not tell, but during her late
researches she had espied on a shelf under the dresser a large loaf
of baker’s bread, which seemed to her suitable fare. Being stale, and
not well kneaded, the loaf fell in two as she lifted it out, making it
all the easier to break and crumble up. As she flung the white flakes
thickly into the middle of the road before the door, fowls gathered
speedily about them into a flock so numerous that Biddy thought: “New
granny must own a power of hins.” And well she might think so, for she
was entertaining unawares any of the neighbours’ “chuckens” that could
arrive fast enough, half flying, half running headlong, to share in
this public feast.
Watching and supplying their quarrelsome repast, and wishing the big
loaf yet bigger, for it was vanishing like snow in a rapid thaw, Biddy
did not see that three small children, with ragged lesson-books, and a
grey stuff bag, had come along the road and stopped to look on. They
were her cousins, Paddy M‘Gowran’s children, on their way to school,
but Biddy, the stranger, knew of no such people. After a while: “Is it
throwin’ all her good bread to the hins you are?” inquired the taller
of the little girls, who was some sizes shorter than Biddy. The sudden
question startled her, but as she considered it an impertinence she
did not answer. Presently: “Gimme the heel of the loaf,” said the fat
little boy. “It’s a nice crusty bit,” and he held out a hand.
“Indeed and I will not,” Biddy said, twisting the tough crust. “I’ve
got little enough for the poor hins as it is.” Thereupon he tried to
snatch it with a jump, but she flung it into the very centre of the
bobbing heads, and withdrew empty-handed behind the half-door.
“Come on out of that wid yourselves, Lizzie and Willie,” said the elder
little girl. “We’ll be late, and she’s a cross one.” So they trotted
away down the road.
There was now nothing to hinder Biddy from beginning her great task
immediately, and she set to work with much zeal on a patch near the
door, where she fancied that the floor looked grimiest. At first she
thought she was making good progress, because as she scrubbed away the
blue cloth quickly grew so very black and dirty that it seemed as if
she must soon come upon something underlying smooth and clean, white
boards or gay-coloured tiling. But this did not happen. The more she
scrubbed and wrung out her wet cloth the worse matters looked, and
in one place a perceptible hollow unaccountably appeared. If such an
extraordinary thing had been possible she would really have believed
that the floor itself was turning into mud. She was feeling much
perplexed and distressed, and had already splashed herself all over,
when a sudden blot of shadow made her glance up, to see the doorway
darkened. It was done by two girls, elder sisters of her last visitors,
and they stood staring curiously in at her. Neither of them spoke to
her, but they whispered to each other loudly with giggles.
“Herself’s off marketin’, I suppose. Look-a, Nan, there’s the young one
she said she was fetchin’ home!”
“Glory be to goodness, what’s she doin’ at all? After spillin’ the
bucket of drinkin’ water belike, and wipin’ it up.”
“A quare bad offer she’s makin’ at it then. And I declare now it’s one
of granny’s good blue aperns she’s got wisped up there ruinated.”
These remarks so exasperated Biddy that she plucked up courage to say,
copying Meg Hoey’s manner as closely as she could: “If _I_ was anybody
else, that came gapin’ at a person doin’ a bit of work, I’d stand
out of the light and mind me own business, and not be delayin’ other
people.”
Her rebuke seemed to amuse the girls vastly, which was disagreeable.
However, they went away directly, which was a relief. “Come along,
Sally,” Nan said, “we had a right to be there by now. Och but it’s the
comical, ould-fashioned thing.”
As the sound of their laughter receded Biddy determined to prevent the
recurrence of all such annoying intrusions by shutting the front door,
and in her haste to do so she overset the bucket, which sent wedges of
water shooting out on every side. Then, while she struggled desperately
with the stiff latch, a young man came sauntering by, and stopped to
give it the necessary shove and shake, partly from good-nature, partly
for occupation. He wore labourer’s clothes, but so far had done nothing
that day except whistle on the bank a bit down the road.
“Is Mrs M‘Gowran widin?” said this Matt Caffrey. “Ah no, to be sure,
it’s at market she is this mornin’. And so yourself’s keepin’ house,
are you--and after spillin’ the sup of water on the floor? Well now,
that’s too bad.”
“Washin’ up I was,” Biddy said, still with some pride.
“Bedad were you?” said Matt. “It’s the first ever I heard tell of
washin’ up a mud floor. Maybe if you have e’er a drop of water left in
it you might take a turn at the road out here. There’s scarce a puddle
on it to-day at all, and you’ve got a grand one in there begorrah.”
Biddy’s eyes widened with consternation as she began to perceive how
much worse than useless her efforts had been. “But sure there’s no
great harm done,” Matt added, seeing her dismayed look, “I’ll show you
the way it can be set to rights soon enough, if that’s all that ails
you.”
He stepped indoors, and picking up a large iron turf-shovel, thrust
it into the hottest corner of the fire, whence he presently drew it
out, turned a glowing red. This he held steadily, much as a careful
laundress tests her heated flat-irons, low over the wet patch on the
floor, which at once began to yield up its superfluous moisture in
pallid mists of steam. He repeated the process several times, till
Biddy, standing by, saw things underfoot grow reassuringly firm and dry.
“There--a fly wouldn’t aisy wet the tips of his ould toes on it now.
And you might be layin’ out the table ready for dinner, agin the others
come home,” said Matt, who rightly surmised that she was wishing to
wield the heavy, scorching shovel, “and then they’ll find everythin’
rael iligant.”
“True for you, I might so,” said Biddy, and darted over to the dresser.
But in a minute she emerged from among its deep bottom shelves with a
mortified air. “I made sure I seen another loaf sittin’ in there,” she
said, “and it’s only an ould white bowl.”
“Was it there you got the one you were throwin’ to the chuckens a
while ago?” said Matt, “for you may depind she had it keepin’ for the
breakfast to-morra. They do mostly be havin’ a bit of baker’s bread of
a Sunday mornin’.”
At this suggestion Biddy looked more alarmed than she knew. “Well, she
can be gettin’ another one before that, I should suppose,” she said in
an unconcerned tone.
“What sort of trees do loaves of good bread be growin’ wild on in your
part of the counthry, might I ax?” said Matt, with polite gravity.
But Biddy suddenly slid down into depths of despair. “Och, what’ll I
do at all? Sure how could I tell it was the only one she had? And the
hins was starvin’ wid the hunger, and fluttherin’ in at the door like
aigles. And it’s tormintin’ me you are, talkin’ about your ould trees.”
“Whisht-a-whisht, there’s a jewel,” Matt said soothingly, “sure
I wouldn’t be tormintin’ anybody. You made a fine offer at it,
considerin’. And as for the loaf, we must conthrive one way or
another.” He was jingling a few pennies in his pocket as he spoke, and
balancing the price of whisky against the price of bread. “Just be
washin’ the face and hands of you, that are a thrifle black or so,”
he said, “and I’ll be back again wid somethin’ in a couple or two of
minyits.”
Matt had not far to go, and he trotted briskly, especially past Doyle’s
public, so that he very soon did return with nothing less than a portly
loaf. But he found the kitchen empty, and through the open back door
sounded doleful cries. “Murther alive! What’s took her now?” he said,
setting down the loaf and running out.
Biddy had taken Matt’s advice, being indeed extremely muddy, and had
gone with a jug to the small stream, which she saw flickering by, not
many yards from the back door. There, stooping over the water, she
lost her footing on the slippery grass, and went headforemost in. It
was quite shallow, and she might easily have scrambled up the bank if
she had not got into such a panic that she could only hold on to the
edge and scream.
Matt pulled her out dripping. “Well now,” said he, “it’s the unlucky
day wid you entirely, as Tim Joyce said when his best cow choked
herself swallyin’ one of his new brogues. But the jug’s only cracked,
and that’s somethin’ anyway. We’ll make a good job of it yit. And
I’ll just bring you in to me sisther over yonder, and see can she get
you dried.” So he conducted her along the stream, past two or three
cabin-doors, till he came to one where a good-humoured young woman was
standing at a tub.
“Here’s a little girl, Bessie, from ould Mrs M‘Gowran’s,” he said to
her, “after dhrowndin’ herself fetchin’ water, and the rest of them all
away; so I thought you might maybe set her to rights.” And Mrs Bessie
said, “Mercy on us all and more too! The little crathur’s dreeped.
Why, to be sure, I can borry her a loan of Katty’s Sunday frock till I
give them muddy things a rinse in the tub here along wid me wash, and
they’ll be none the worser.”
Meanwhile Biddy’s grandmother, and her husband, who was helping her
with some parcels, were on their way home through the village. As they
passed the schoolhouse, about which the children were playing, little
Ellen, Lizzie and Willie M‘Gowran rushed up to them eagerly with news.
“Och, granny, do you know what the cross girl at your place is after
doin’ on you? She’s broke up your big loaf, and threw it every bit out
to the hins.”
“The bould little thing!” Mrs M‘Gowran said in high vexation, “and I
keepin’ it these two days a purpose agin to-morra.” She flounced on, so
much perturbed that she forgot to produce the sugarsticks she had in
her basket for the tale-bearers, who were thus justly punished.
A little further on she met their sisters Nan and Sally, and was
greeted with: “There’s fine disthruction up at your place, granny. Poor
Uncle Larry’s daughter has the floor all swimmin’ in says of water,
and she’s after tearin’ your good blue apern in two halves to wipe it
up wid. And the show she is herself wid mud and dirt is a sight to
behould. And the childer says your loaf of bread--”
“I’m to be pitied wid the likes of her, the dear knows,” said their
grandmother, hurrying on faster still, with Nan and Sally following to
see what would happen. But when they arrived, there stood the table
in the middle of a dry floor, and on it glimmered a large white loaf,
which a black hen was eyeing warily, as if about to aim a judicious
peck.
“What romancin’ at all had yous then?” Mrs M‘Gowran said, turning her
wrath upon the two girls. “There’s naught amiss wid the floor, and she
needn’t ha’ meddled wid the loaf to be lavin’ it out, but it’s right
enough. Shoo, get along, you ould baste; it’s one of Mary Gallaher’s
pullets. I wonder where the child is herself.”
Here Matt Caffrey put his head in at the back-door. “Matt, avic,” said
Mrs M‘Gowran, “might you happen to see little Biddy runnin’ about
anywhere?”
“I seen her,” Matt said rather solemnly, “times and again. And the last
time I seen her it’s as near as anythin’ she was dhrowndin’ herself
dead, the crathur, outside there, strivin’ to fetch you in a jug of
clane water you might be wantin’ when you come home. Och no, ma’am,
she isn’t hurted, glory be to goodness; I had her hefted out in a
brace of shakes. Me sisther’s just givin’ her a dry at her fire, and
she’ll bring her round to you directly. ’Twould be a pity of anythin’
happenin’ her, for there isn’t a finer-lookin’ child in the parish.
It’s yourself she favours, ma’am.”
Sure enough Matt’s sister immediately arrived, leading Biddy, very trim
and tidy in a clean pink cotton frock. But at this moment Nan, who had
been poking the loaf, triumphantly announced a discovery: “It isn’t
your one at all, granny. Scaldin’ hot it is, just out of the oven like,
instead of bein’ stale.”
“Blathers, Nan M‘Gowran, hers it is,” Matt said, and paused, divided
between a wish to screen Biddy and to let his own generosity appear.
Biddy, however, settled the question herself. “There wasn’t e’er a bit
of anythin’ else to be givin’ the hins,” she said, “and the feathers
of all of them standin’ on end wid the hunger. So I gave them the
whole of the loaf; but the strange man said he’d bring another--before
he saved me out of the river it was.”
“Well, well,” said Mrs M‘Gowran, mollified by relief from several
alarms, “she done the best she could, and she isn’t of a size to have
over-much sinse yet awhile.”
“And the hins wouldn’t find fau’t wid her housekeepin’ anyway,” said
her husband. “Deed now, she was a grand housekeeper--for the hins.”
And thus Biddy M‘Gowran came by her nickname, which she took with
her--so fast it stuck--years afterwards, when she went to keep a house
of her own at Clochranbeg.
TWO PAIR OF TRUANTS
Ever since little Minnie Lawlor, accompanied by her mother and younger
sister, had come to live with her grandmother in a gate-lodge of
Shanlough Castle, her great wish had been to visit the castle itself,
which was always whetting her curiosity by showing just the rim of one
turret, like the edge of a crinkled cloud, over the rounded tree-tops
in the distance. But it was not until some months had passed that she
found an opportunity. Then, on a showery May morning, her mother set
off early to Killavin Fair; her grandmother was pinned to the big chair
in the chimney-corner by an access of rheumatics; Lizzie Hackett, the
cross girl who scrubbed for them, sent word that she could not come
till noon; and, as the last link in this chain of lucky chances, the
rope-reins of Willie Downing’s ass-cart snapped right in front of the
lodge gate just when Minnie and Baby were setting off for school. “Bad
manners to you, Juggy, for a contrary ould baste!” Willie was saying
as he halted for repairs. “Would nothin’ else suit you but to set
me chuckin’ th’ ould reins till they broke on us in a place where a
man hasn’t so much as a bit of string?” Willie, being twelve years
old, seemed of formidable age and size to Minnie, who was seven: but
the good-natured expression of his face, where large freckles made a
well-covered pattern, emboldened her to propose the plan which had
occurred to her at the sight of the empty ass-cart. As a preliminary,
however, she supplied him with the longest bit of twine she could
twitch from the thrifty wisp hung on the hook of a dresser. After
which, “Is it anywheres near the castle you’ll be drivin’ to?” she
inquired, pointing in that direction.
“I’m apt to be passin’ it pretty middlin’ near,” said Willie,
struggling to knot a pair of rather skimpy ends.
“And do you think you could be takin’ me and Baby along wid you that
far?” said Minnie.
“What for at all?” he said, looking doubtful.
“To see the grandeur that’s in it,” replied Minnie.
“Up at th’ ould place?” said Willie. “I never heard tell there was any
such a thing in it.”
“Well, there’s grand people in it, at all events,” said Minnie. “Me
grandmother does be sayin’ the Fitzallens hasn’t their equals next or
nigh them. Lords of the land they are, and the top of everythin’. I’d
like finely to be seein’ them, and so would Baby. But if we’ve any talk
of walkin’ a step up the avenue, me grandmother always says: ‘On no
account suffer them, Maria; it mightn’t be liked by the Family.’ So we
do be stoppin’ in the little ugly shrubbery.”
“I dunno is there e’er a lord in it,” said Willie, doubtfully. “If
there is, I never laid eyes on him.” This was disappointing.
“I suppose you’re very ignorant,” Minnie remarked after a slight pause,
as if she had sought and found a satisfactory explanation.
“Pretty middlin’ I am, sure enough,” Willie said more decidedly, and
then added, as if he, too, had hit upon a probable conjecture: “Belike
yous would be wantin’ to see Mrs O’Rourke, th’ ould housekeeper?”
Minnie might have replied truly that she had never heard tell of any
such person; but as the idea seemed to remove her new acquaintance’s
difficulties she answered: “Ay, sure we could go see her if you took us
along. I can step in meself over the wheel, and you can aisy give Baby
a heft up.” “But in my belief it’s goin’ to school the two of yous had
a right to be,” Willie said, relapsing into doubt again as he glanced
at their small bundle of ragged-edged books.
“Och, me mother’d say we might have a holiday this minyit, only she’s
went to the fair,” Minnie affirmed confidently, though she might have
had some difficulty in reconciling this belief with her gladness that
there was not present anybody whose permission need be asked. “I’ll get
in first.”
“Themselves inside there might be infuriated wid the whole of us,” said
Willie, still unconvinced.
“Sure you’re not a tinker, are you?” Minnie said, ostentatiously
surveying the no-contents of the cart. “They do be biddin’ us have
nothin’ to say to tinkers, but ne’er a tin can or anythin’ I see in
it.” As Willie’s objections seemed to be over-ruled by this argument,
she continued: “So Baby and I’ll run in and leave our books, and get
our good hats; we’ll be back agin you have the reins mended--mind you
wait for us.”
Her anxiety about her appearance before the eyes of the grand people
made her risk losing the chance of seeing them at all as she hurried
herself and her sister into their best jackets and new hats trimmed
with pink gauze and daisies; while a wild hope she secretly entertained
that they would be offered hospitality up at the castle led her to
discard the basket containing their dinners. Baby, indeed, was inclined
to demur at this, so Minnie compromised the matter by extracting the
two oranges which crowned the menu, and Baby, bearing the golden balls,
followed as contented as any ordinary queen.
The ass-cart had obligingly waited for them, and Willie Downing had
spread a sack for them to sit on at the back. He also helped Baby to
scramble up, but unfortunately said to Minnie, “You’d better be keepin’
a hold on her, for ones of that size don’t have much wit. She’d drop
off as aisy as a sod of peat, and be delayin’ me to pick her up”--a
remark which Baby resented, as albeit three years short of Minnie’s
age, and thrice as young as Willie, she had a strong sense of her own
dignity. Otherwise the drive was very thoroughly enjoyable. The cart
was not, indeed, a luxurious vehicle, being simply a flat wooden tray
on wheels, with no springs to soften its jolts, and no rail to prevent
one of them from jerking out an unwary passenger. But the little girls
thought it a most desirable substitute for their stuffily stupid
schoolroom, and when they were rocked as if in a boat on a choppy sea,
Minnie said that it was as good as going two ways at once. Juggy’s pace
was slow, as suited her venerable appearance, for many years had made
her as white as if she had been bleached and as stiff as if she had
been starched. Willie had a thick ash stick, with which he every now
and then made a loud rattling clatter on the front board of the cart.
“You might as well,” he explained, “be batin’ ould carpets as Juggy,
but the noise keeps her awake sometimes.” Minnie and Baby, however, had
so much to look at in the strange bog-land through which the cart was
passing that they were in no hurry for the end of their drive. In fact,
even Minnie felt a little forlorn when Willie drew up at a small gate
in a high stone wall and said: “I’ll be droppin’ yous here. It’s the
nearest I can be bringin’ yous to the castle. You’ll find your ways to
it pretty middlin’ aisy by them shrubbery paths, unless you take the
wrong turn; you might ready enough, for there’s a dale of diff’rint
walks through it, but they’ll bring you somewheres anyhow. Git along
out of that, Juggy.” For then it suddenly occurred to her that they
had come a long way, which they must travel back all by themselves.
Willie’s directions, too, were not by any means as clear as she could
have wished, but no more were to be had, as Juggy started perversely
without her usual delay; and although he shouted something as he jogged
away, they could make out only the words “pretty middlin’,” and it was
useless to call “what?” Soon the sounds of the creaking wheels and
clattering stick died out of hearing; so Minnie took Baby in tow and
ran into the shady shubberies, hoping rather uneasily for the best.
Now, on this same May morning, and in the same neighbourhood, two
other young persons were planning an adventurous expedition. Mick and
Rosanna Tierney, who lived in the village of Glasdrum, not far from
Shanlough Castle, were bigger children than Minnie and Baby Lawlor,
and attended the white-washed school near the Lawlor’s gate-lodge, but
less regularly than they would have liked to do. For when they were
kept at home it was by no means to amuse themselves, and they much
preferred their holidays at school. On this morning, however, although
they grumbled over their tasks, it was not because they were prevented
from pursuing their studies, but because they particularly wanted to
go and spend their pennies at Killavin Fair. Mick had five and Rosanna
had four, partly in halfpence, so that when their wealth was all
spread out on the top of the low yard wall, the row of coins looked
long enough to buy almost anything. And at Killavin Fair wonderful
purchases might be made. The young Tierneys had heard that you could
get four sugar-sticks, “the len’th of your arm,” for one penny, and
there were swinging boats, and a theatre, and other shows to which
the same sum would procure admission. Accordingly, they had set their
hearts firmly upon it. But unluckily Mrs Tierney had been told that
“great bargains entirely” would appear there in the shape of “rael
grand blankets, that heavy you could scarce believe the weight of them,
wid a quare raisonable price on them whatever,” and having scraped
together a few shillings she was very anxious to inspect these wares.
To Mick and Rosanna, in this warm May weather, heavy blankets seemed
highly uninteresting, but their mother saw further and considered her
business of more importance than sugar-sticks or merry-go-rounds. Thus
it happened that Rosanna and Mick were required to stay at home minding
Biddy and Peter. The charge seemed to saddle them with quite disabling
incumbrances; for Peter was subject to panics at anything new and
strange in his eighteen months’ experience of life, and would certainly
roar without ceasing if brought in among the marvels of the fair, while
three-year-old Biddy, though quiet and tractable, was too little to
walk, and too heavy to be carried, a couple of Irish miles. “Sure, you
might as well be liftin’ a sack of pitaties,” said Rosanna; and Mick
added: “Ay, bedad, and you could aisy be shyin’ a one of them down the
road as far as she’d go without whingein’ to rest.” Yet though matters
looked so hopeless the day was still young when a promising scheme
presented itself to them. Mick had just captured Peter, who was in the
act of toddling off up the street on some excursion of his own, and who
loudly resented his arrest.
“Och, now, whisht bawlin’,” Mick said to Peter. “Was it losin’ yourself
you wanted to be? Bobby Byrne was tellin’ me,” he remarked to Rosanna,
“that they got a stray kid out on the bog one day last week. Belongin’
to the tinkers they thought it was.”
“And what did they do wid it?” Rosanna inquired.
“Brought it to the Shanlough Barracks down below there till the polis
would be findin’ out who owned it.”
“I wish to goodness we could be lavin’ _these_ two there,” said Rosanna.
“I wish we could so,” said Mick.
“We could carry them that far ready enough--it’s only a shortish step,”
Rosanna went on slowly, as if she were considering something really
possible; “and then, if we’d left them down there, we might skyte over
the bog to Killavin, that’s the nearest way, and see the fair, and
pick them up again when we would be comin’ back, as handy as anythin’.
The polis ’ud mind them first-rate; it’s their business to look after
whatever’s gone lost.”
“But sorra a bit of these ones _is_ lost,” objected Mick.
“And sure, couldn’t we very aisy lose them,” said Rosanna, “somewheres
convanient to the barracks?”
“The ould lads,” Mick said, meaning the police, “would know right well
whose childer they are, and where they come from.”
“And what great harm if they did, you gaby?” said Rosanna. “And
besides, aren’t they a new set that’s only a few weeks in it? Very
belike they never laid eyes on either of them.”
“Gaby yourself,” Mick said, “but Biddy’d be apt to tell them anyhow.
She’s gettin’ to spake terrible plain.”
“Biddy niver say’s e’er a word except ‘_Yis_’ when she’s wid strange
people; she’s a good child,” Rosanna said with confidence. “But I was
thinkin’ if we might by chance run up agin mother in the fair, and then
where’d we be?”
“Och, for the matter of that we could dodge her aisy enough in the
crowds there’ll be in it,” said Mick.
“Let’s thry, at all events,” said Rosanna, suddenly, pursing up her
mouth, and eyeing him with the expression of a magpie who is not sure
how near he may venture to hop. And Mick said, “We will, bedad.”
Not very long afterwards, Police-Sergeant Corry, sitting with his
pipe and newspaper in the porch of Shanlough Constabulary Barracks,
saw crawl in at the gate a small child, who was followed on foot by
another somewhat bigger. “Run away with you,” he called to them, and
resumed his reading. But when he finished his column he perceived that
they had sat down half way up the flagged path to the door, with no
apparent intention of moving on. So he went to investigate.
His inquiry was on the whole unsuccessful. The baby’s evidence was
quite inarticulate, and the little girl replied “Yis” to all his
questions in a manner which made her a most unsatisfactory witness. It
was a lonely place, on the edge of the bog, with no other houses near,
and nobody else in sight; though, if he had only known, two pairs of
eyes were all the while watching him through the thick fuschia hedge.
“They don’t belong to tramps,” he said to himself, “for they’ve got
very respectable boots on them, and dacint hats. Tell me, now, which
way you’re after comin’ along here, there’s a good child,” he said to
Biddy, and Biddy said “Yis.” Just then it began to rain violently,
which led the Sergeant to bring them indoors to his wife, who was
sewing in the little parlour. “Here’s a couple of childer that can’t
give an account of theirselves,” he said to her. “We’d better keep
them a bit, and as like as not we’ll presently have somebody peltin’
in with inquiries.” Whereupon Mrs Corry, having had some experience
of such cases, gave them slices of sugar-sprinkled bread, and several
empty spools to play with in a corner, while immediately afterwards two
figures might have been espied running off at full speed across the
bog, among the grey curtains of the shower.
About this time Tom Flannery was digging in his potato-patch at the
fork of the Letteresk and Glasdrum roads. “Faix now, but Lizzie
Hackett’s in a fine hurry, whatever ails her,” he said to himself
as he became aware of a young woman trotting along the dyke. “Where
at all are you takin’ off wid yourself to?” he shouted as soon as
she was near enough; and Lizzie shouted back across the low stone
wall: “Sure, they’re in great distraction above at the lodge. The two
childer’s lost. They went out this mornin’ early, but a while ago the
schoolmistress looked in wid word they’d niver been next or nigh her.
Stole they are by them tinkers, I’ll bet you anythin’, and their poor
mother away at the fair, and the ould woman shakin’ in her chair fit to
thrimble the house down on her head. But runnin’ up to Connolly’s farm
I am, for Minnie and Baby’s went there a few times along wid me, and
its mostly the only place they know their way to hereabouts. You didn’t
be chance see them goin’ by this mornin’?”
“Sorra a stim, _this_ mornin’ nor _that_ mornin’,” said Tom. “But if
they’re strayed or stole you’d a right to lave word with the polis.”
“Och, lave word with them yourself,” Lizzie said, setting off again,
partly because she never liked taking advice, and partly because she
did not now wish to lengthen her hot race by calling at the barracks.
Tom rejoined: “Bedad, I’ve somethin’ else to do, me dear!” But when,
by-and-by, he finished his job, he turned a bit out of his homeward way
that he might pass the police-station. Sergeant Corry was looking over
the arched gate into the road. “Dry weather, Sergeant, when it isn’t
wet,” said Tom. “Did you hear tell anythin’ of two children bein’ lost?”
“What sort of childer now?” said the Sergeant. “Well, I dunno very
rightly,” said Tom. “I never seen them; but they’re out of the lodge
over there at the castle entrance, and ould Mrs Lawlor’s expectin’ her
death wid the fright. A little girl and a baby, I think, they said.”
“Sure enough they answer to that description, the two I have inside
here. The small one’s no size to spake of, and the other’s a girl,
though she hasn’t got the gift of the gab yet. I’ll send them over to
the lodge with Doyle and Atkinson that’s about settin’ off pathrollin’.
It ’ill be a good job to get them shifted into their own quarters
before night.”
To the lodge, accordingly, two tall constables carried the little
Tierneys, encountering by the way a fierce shower, which twisted
Biddy’s black locks into dripping rats’ tails, and soaked Peter’s
fluff of fair hair till it shrunk into nothing, like a wisp of wet
thistledown. Their arrival caused bitter disappointment to Mrs Lawlor,
junior, who had lately returned to her despoiled home. She vehemently
declared the forlorn-looking bundles to be no children of hers,
nor anyways like them, and was disposed to resent the constables’
conjecture that Minnie and Baby had just run off for diversion with
some of their schoolfellows to the fair. However, she consented to
keep these strange children while a search was being made, and she
beguiled her suspense by getting them into dry garments, outgrown by
the probable victims of tinkers and tramps.
Meanwhile, Minnie and Baby had in reality been experiencing many
vicissitudes. At first all had gone fairly well with them. After some
roaming they had emerged from the shrubberies on to a sloping lawn,
whence they had a grand view of the castle with its turrets and towers.
It pleased them so much that they sat down on a bench beneath a big
sycamore to enjoy the prospect and their oranges. This was the highest
point of their success; for when they had just finishing peeling, and
the grass all around them was thickly strewn with shreds of white-lined
golden rind, suddenly there appeared to them an elderly, angry man in
a straw hat, who wanted to know what they meant by trespassing on his
grounds, and bade them clear up that disgraceful litter at once, and
stood pointing his stick and glaring dreadfully at every single scrap
of peel until it was picked up; and then, as they fled away like scared
rabbits, shouted that he would give notice to the police to keep an eye
on them. Thenceforward troubles gathered and gloom. When they escaped
from the labyrinth of shrubberies they found themselves in strange
fields, where they met with herds of what were certainly beasts, and,
in Minnie’s opinion, most likely bulls. They were hunted out of a
rickyard by a barking dog, and in their flight Baby lost a shoe, which
they dared not turn back to discover. Soon afterwards she ran a thorn
into her unshod foot and could hardly hobble along. It came on to rain
so heavily that their new hats were battered and drenched out of all
shape and hue, and Minnie tore a sleeve of her good jacket into ribbons
scrambling through a hedge. As time elapsed they felt more and more
thoroughly lost, and their terrors were increased by a dread that all
the while they might perhaps be trespassers with the eye of the police
upon them.
But at last, when they had almost despaired of ever, as Baby said,
“bein’ _anywhere_ again,” as they stumbled along the edge of a ploughed
field, they were met by a big boy carrying a bunch of bright tinware.
Minnie had luckily still sense enough left to explain that they were
looking for a gate-lodge of the castle; upon hearing which the boy
just caught each of them by an arm and swung them through a gap in the
ragged hedge, setting them down plump in the middle of a muddy lane.
“Sure, there’s one widin’ a couple of stones’ throws off you, only you
was headin’ the wrong way to get to it,” he said, pointing along the
lane. “Them’s the gate-posts glimpsin’ at you out of the trees.” And
the children perceived with relief and amazement that so it actually
was. Full of joy and confidence they started again, but before they had
gone many steps they met Lizzie Hackett setting out to see if there
were any signs of the constables coming back with news of what, in her
own mind, she called “them young torments.”
“Saints and patience!” she said when she saw them, “and so there you
are. I declare to goodness I thought it was a couple of beggar childer
comin’ along, you’re that quare shows. Where in the earthly world have
you been the whole day?”
“We just took a bit--a bit of a walk like,” Minnie said, beginning to
feel that their difficulties might not yet be all at an end.
“Well, to be sure--a fine bit of a walk,” said Lizzie, “wid your poor
granny and your poor ma terrified out of their sivin sinses, and
meself kilt stravadin’ over the parish after you. A race’s runnin’ on
you for a couple of as bould childer as there is in Ireland.” Lizzie,
being out of humour with everybody, preferred the chance of paying out
the truants for the trouble they had caused her to the excitement of
announcing their return, so she continued: “Howsome’er, you’ve no call
to be hurryin’ yourselves now. You can be stoppin’ away as long as
you plase, and longer after that again, for your ma says she won’t be
bothered any more to put up wid the likes of such ungovernable brats,
and she’s got herself a couple of nice, good little childer to keep
that won’t be annoyin’ her losin’ themselves about the country instead
of goin’ to their school. And she’s after dressin’ them illigant in the
cloth cape that was belongin’ to you, Miss Minnie, and a one of Baby’s
cotton frocks, and the two of them’s sittin’ this minyit as grand as
anythin’ at all before the fire in the parlour. Pettin’ them finely
herself is and not thinkin’ a thraneen of yous. It’s in your beds that
them ones ’ill be sleepin’ this night. But sure you’d rather be tearin’
about under the rain in the fields like the rabbits,” said Lizzie,
pulling her shawl over her head and walking on. “And it pitch dark,”
she added over her shoulder.
If Minnie had been in her ordinary frame of mind she would have
perceived how improbable this story sounded, and would have said to
Baby: “Och, never mind; she’s only romancin’.” Just then, however, she
was too tired and bewildered to take a sensible view of anything, and
what Lizzie asserted alarmed and enraged them both. Still they more
than half hoped that they would find it was not true at all. But as
they trotted and hobbled past the parlour window they got a glimpse
into the fire-lit room, and there, sure enough, two horrid little
children were seated before the hearth, one wearing a pink frock, the
other Minnie’s well-known brown cape. And he--which was the worst part
of it--sat on Minnie’s mother’s knee, with a bitten biscuit in his
hand. “’Deed she has really got them,” Minnie said to Baby with a sort
of groan. “There’s no good in us goin’ in any more.” And both the
little girls flung themselves down on a mossy log, which had been made
into a seat, beneath an old laurel bush near the door. They had not
noticed the sound of footsteps that were following them, but just then
two figures came rushing by and darted into the house. In the parlour
Mrs Lawlor heard the patter of feet, which she had been listening for
so long, and she jumped up very quickly, only to meet with another
disappointment.
Mick and Rosanna Tierney had enjoyed their time at the fair. They saw
two shows, and bought as many sweets as possible with their remaining
pennies. They were careful not to meet their mother, nor did they
forget how desirable it was that they should be at home again before
her. The heavy rain, too, made it easier for them to tear themselves
away from among the stalls and booths and carts and set off across the
bog to pick up Biddy and Peter at the barracks. Rosanna had three fruit
drops and half a peppermint sugar-stick tied up for them in a corner of
her wet pinafore. Mick had meant to bring Biddy a bull’s-eye, but he
put it into his mouth just to taste, and forgot to take it out until it
was too late.
At the police barracks the rain had driven Sergeant Corry indoors, but
he came out when he heard the children clattering into the porch.
“If you plase, sir,” Mick said, panting, “we want the couple of childer
we left--I mane we _lost_--here this mornin’ going to Killavin--a
little one, and a bigger little girl--dark hair she has, the same
as _her_.” “They’ve straw hats on them,” Rosanna struck in, “and the
youngster has a grey flannen frock, and Biddy’s is blue, and she’s
black stockin’s. She wouldn’t tell you her name, or say anythin’ only
‘Yis.’”
“Them’s the very two we had here till a while ago I packed them off to
Mrs Lawlor up there at the castle lodge. Bedad,” said the sergeant,
“it’s the wrong children I’m after sendin’ her. And what do you mean,
I should like to know, by leaving them crawling about here and giving
trouble and annoyance?”
But the Tierneys were not waiting to listen. “Come along, Rosanna,”
said Mick, “we might be in time to get them yet if we hurry.” And they
did hurry with an impetuosity which brought them head foremost into the
Lawlors’ kitchen.
“What brings you here at all?” poor Mrs Lawlor said in much vexation
when she saw who they were not. “It seems to me every strange child
in the parish is takin’ upon itself to come tumblin’ in on top of us
except me own little girls, and the deer knows where they may be.”
“We was only wantin’ to fetch away our two,” said Mick. “The sergeant
sent you the wrong childer. That’s Peter you’ve got, ma’am--och, and
there’s Biddy. You take hold of her, Rosanna; I’ve took him. And I seen
a couple of little girls sittin’ roarin’ on the sate there next door,
and we runnin’ in, that might be your ones, ma’am.”
Out sped Mrs Lawlor, hopeful again, and this time not in vain.
“Children dear, what happint you at all?” she said, “and where have you
been?”
“We got into an ould donkey-cart,” Minnie said deplorably, “and then
we lost our ways--and an ould man’s after settin’ the police to keep
an eye on us--and Baby’s one shoe is off her, so the other’s no good;
and she’s run a thorn into her foot; and I’ve tore the cuff off of me
sleeve; and our hats is destroyed. But we thought there wasn’t any use
goin’ in, for Lizzie tould us you’d took them other ones instead.”
“A donkey-cart!” said Mrs Lawlor. “I always said those thieves of
tinkers were at the bottom of it. But come in, me jewels; sure you’re
drowned and perished. The polis ought to be ashamed of theirselves for
not minding their business better.”
And in Mrs Lawlor’s mind, indeed, the blame was permanently shared by
the tinkers and the police, which was of course convenient for her
children, and probably did not in any way affect either the police or
the tinkers.
As for the young Tierneys, they got home with such guilty expedition
that they were all discovered innocently safe and dry by their own
fireside when Mrs Tierney returned, with sugar-sticks, from the fair.
And thus we must fear that the episode ended in a lamentable failure of
poetical justice to all parties concerned.
THEIR NEW UMBRELLAS
One blustering March afternoon Mrs Mooney looked in at Thomas
Cantillon’s to fetch a boot he was stitching for her, and there she
found her neighbour, Mrs Doyle, half-way through a story. “I thought
’twas headlong into the deep gripe ’twould land me before ever it
stopped,” Mrs Doyle was relating, “for the tuggin’ and pullin’ of it
was more than I could contend wid.”
“You’d a right to let it go altogether sooner than that, ma’am,” said
old Thomas, “considerin’ the pair of you’d be very apt to ha’ sted
there once you got in.”
“’Deed now, maybe I might as well anyway,” said Mrs Doyle, “for I
question will I get e’er a day’s work out of it again. Every bone in
its unlucky body that isn’t broke seems to be twisted crooked, and
strained like.”
“And what baste at all was it you were tryin’ to control, ma’am?”
inquired Mrs Mooney. “If it was that ugly-tempered mule of Kelly’s,
you’re the foolish woman to make an offer at it. Sure it’s as much as
me own Tony himself can do to manage the ungovernable crathur.”
“Mules!” said Mrs Doyle. “What talk had anybody of them? Sure I was
tellin’ Mr Cantillon the way me umbrella got destroyed on me yisterday,
comin’ home from Mass in the storm. The win’ took a holt on it the
instant I come out on the straight road, and had it next door to
wranched out of me hand; and then inside out it blew itself on me wid
a flap you might aisy hear in the city of Cork, and only for Dinny
runnin’ up and raichin’ it down for me out of the sky, you might say,
the dear knows where the either of us ’ud be this minyit. But look
at the objec’ it is now. I misdoubt will it ever be fit for anythin’
again, unless scarin’ the crows.”
The umbrella did certainly appear much the worse for its recent
unequal struggle. It was stuck helplessly half-open, bent ribs thrust
themselves through jagged rents in its weather-stained cover, a
menacing crack ran up its varnished yellow stick. Mr Cantillon, who
makes boots, and mends miscellaneous property for Killymena, shook
his head over this new patient long enough to emphasise the extremely
skilful treatment which its case would require, and then he said: “Ah
sure, ma’am, I’ll put some sort of a shape on it for you, ma’am, one
way or another, though it ’ill be a ticklish job, and I wouldn’t like
to promise you that it ’ill present a very handsome appairance. But
just for to be usin’, I wouldn’t wonder if it was as good as new.”
“That’s more than ever it was widin my recollection then,” said Mrs
Mooney; “darned it was, and the handle chipped ever since as long back
as when ould Fergus Doyle did be ownin’ it.”
“Ay, did he, bedad! our family always kep’ an umbrella,” said Mrs Doyle.
As an umbrella is kept by several of the most respected families in
Killymena, umbrellaless Mrs Mooney naturally surmised an innuendo in
the statement, and hastened to rejoin: “Well, if it was me, I’d liefer
get a drop of wet now and again than streel about houldin’ up an ould
flitterjig that ’ud have people laughin’ at me behind me back, and I
consaitin’ meself a great one all the while. I’d as soon put me head in
a rag-bag be way of a shawl.”
“Sure, then, it’s well to be you, ma’am, that’s so contint the
way you’re like to stop,” Mrs Doyle said, just a shade, perhaps,
over-politely.
“See you here, Mrs Mooney, I’ve got your repairs done,” said Thomas
Cantillon, preventing a repartee by the production of Mrs Mooney’s boot
from behind his chair.
“You’re after patchin’ it,” she said, examining it with a lengthened
face. “I thought a stitch was all it wanted. But in coorse a man must
keep his trade goin’. That ’ill be a pinny more on me, I suppose now.”
“Och, keep your pinnies and tuppinnies, ma’am,” said Thomas; “me’s
trade’s not so slack that I’ve any need to be stirrin’ it up wid
clappin’ on extry patches. You can pay me the next pinny that tumbles
down your chimney, and so can Mrs Doyle for her umbrella that I’ll have
regulated again next Sunday.”
So Mrs Doyle and Mrs Mooney pointedly wished Mr Cantillon good evening,
and wished one another nothing good or bad--at least not audibly--as
they departed in opposite directions.
A sort of rivalry had long existed between Mrs Doyle and Mrs Mooney.
It had begun when the simultaneous drowning of their fishermen
husbands left each of them a young widow with one small baby; and it
had gone on till now, when these infants had grown to man’s estate.
They were, in fact, the central subject of the rivalry. At first,
indeed, this had seemed hardly possible to anybody except Mrs Mooney
herself, Mrs Doyle’s little Dinny being so obviously a much bigger
and better-tempered baby than her own little Tony, who was weakly and
fretful. As time went on, however, not only did Tony’s health improve,
but he developed a quickness of wits and capacity for book learning
which could be set against Dinny’s superior size and his prowess at
all manner of athletic pursuits. Mrs Mooney, when hostilely critical,
called Dinny Doyle “a big oaf,” while Mrs Doyle spoke of Tony Mooney as
“that quare little shrimp.”
The two boys themselves had lived on fairly friendly terms from three
years old to twenty, and now that they were to see something of the
world beyond Killymena, they rejoiced at being able to do so in
company. For they were just setting off to the city of Cork, a vast
distance away, where Dinny had got employment on a little pleasure
boat which rowed visitors to the Exhibition short lengths up and down
the pretty River Lee; and Tony was to keep accounts in a restaurant
near the entrance-gate. Sir Gerald Vane-Montfort had spoken for them
to the Executive Committee, and hence these situations, the emoluments
of which seemed splendidly liberal. So when Mrs Mooney related with
indignant inaccuracy at supper-time how Mrs Doyle had been giving her
impudence about not owning an old rag of an umbrella, Tony did not
hesitate to promise her that he would bring her home the grandest
umbrella in the parish. And on this same evening likewise, when Mrs
Doyle doubted mournfully whether Mr Cantillon would ever contrive to
splice the cracked handle, Dinny confidently bade her never mind, for
she should have the best umbrella he could get in the city of Cork.
Mrs Mooney said that Tony would find plenty of things to be spending
his money on besides his ould mother, and Mrs Doyle said that Dinny
had a right to be saving all he could towards the rent, and the
seed-potatoes, and his suit of clothes; but notwithstanding their
protests both women thought a great deal of these promises. On the grey
morning of the lads’ departure, Mrs Mooney said to her son: “I wouldn’t
mind bettin’ even sixpences that you’ll never have the notion of an
umbrella in your head from this minyit till you’re steppin’ on to the
platform here again--but, sure, ’twill be a good day whether or no.”
Mrs Doyle was less outspoken; still, as they waited for the train, she
could not forbear saying, “I declare to goodness, Dinny, the little
shiny hole in the cloud there behind Loughlin’s house is the very moral
of the shape of the biggest tear in me ould wreck of an umbrella.”
Spring, summer and autumn passed by; the season’s flowers had budded,
blown and faded; and the Cork Exhibition, a brilliant, artificial
blossom, was to vanish like the rest. Consequently Dinny Doyle and Tony
Mooney were returning to Killymena. They had experienced an eventful
and memorable time, but were not, on the whole, sorry to have done
with it. Dinny was rather tired of watching the little boats slide up
and down the water-chute and flounder into the stream amid a flurry of
shrieks and splashes. The clatter of plates and glasses, mingled with
the strains of a military band, had begun to pall upon Tony in his
office box. And though in out-of-work hours sights and diversions were
bewilderingly abundant, the homely features of quiet little Killymena
seemed to both of them just then a more alluring prospect. Tony, it
is true, was planning to leave it again soon for good, having heard
of a situation near the city, whither he would, if possible, persuade
his mother to move; but Dinny looked forward to resuming his place
in Mick Devlin’s fishing-boat, and felt that it would be a pleasant
thing once more to sit behind a tugging sail, in an ocean-odorous
breeze, and to haul at a fishing-net. “There’s more raison and sinse
in that after all,” he concluded, “than in paddlin’ about wid people
that might as well be a flock of demented saygulls, accordin’ to the
foolish gabbin’ they have out of them.” It was thus that, in captious
moods, he characterised the conversation of his passengers. “And they
holdin’ up them little frilly-flouncy affairs over their quare big
hats--_sunshades_--musha cock them up, it’s the iligant wisps they’d
be if there come a sup of rain,” he often added disdainfully. But then
the far more effectual shelter that he was going to provide for his
mother’s shawled head generally occurred to him, and always restored
his good-humour. Tony also bethought him from time to time of his
promise; but he found the recollection less soothing.
The two youths met on a platform of the labyrinthine-lined Cork railway
terminus, and waited the tardy coming of their train seated on a bench
beneath a lurid advertisement of coffee essence. They piled their
baggage in a small heap between them, and kept upon it vigilant eyes,
especially on two long, slender, brown-papered parcels: Dinny, indeed,
felt more secure when his was in his own hand.
“I see you’re bringin’ an umbrella too,” Tony said, referring to this.
“I’ve got me mother’s there. It was in a little shop on the Coal Quay;
a good plain one it is. Bedad now, I might as well stop away as come
back widout it, she’s that set on a one.”
“I seen this in a shop-windy in the Main Street a while ago,” said
Dinny, “and I’ve been wonderin’ would I have the price of it saved in
time. ’Twas only yisterday I had be good luck. There was ne’er another
in it that I liked the appairance of as well. The girl sellin’ them
said ’twas gintleman’s size, and I’d better take a lady’s one, that ’ud
come somethin’ chaiper; but says I to her, me mother was as good as any
gintleman ever stepped, and I wouldn’t put her off wid a skimpy size
for the sake of a half-crown when I had it in me pocket. Rael tasty the
handle is; and they say the mischief himself couldn’t blow it wrong
side out; the frame’s guaranteed.”
“Gintlemen’s size might be apt to be a thrifle heavy and clumsy like
for her to be carryin’,” Tony said hopefully.
“Divil a bit of it,” said Dinny; “me mother’s a strong woman yet, glory
be to God. Just weigh it in your hand--or stop a minyit; I’ll sthrip
the paper off of it and show you.”
Dinny unfastened the knotted twine with deft sailor’s fingers, and drew
the slim, dark-green umbrella out of its shiny black case. The sleek
folds were furled with wonderful symmetry about a polished cherry-wood
stick, which ended in a richly-carved knob studded with burnished
stars; a silver band further adorned it, and a twining shamrock spray,
while a long flossy tassel floated with a finishing touch of elegance.
“I won’t hoist it up,” he said; “for fear I mightn’t get it rolled
again as smooth as they done it in the shop. But you can see by the
feel of it that its rael strong silk; twilled it is.”
He was so absorbed in the proud pleasure of displaying and repacking
his purchase that he did not observe how Tony’s countenance had fallen,
and he looked up from his knot-tying with amazement at the tragical
tones which burst forth.
“Silk bedad!” Tony said bitterly; “troth it is that. And the handle
bates everythin’. She won’t look at mine, that’s sartin, for it’s as
plain as plain, and only black alpacky it is, or some other common ould
stuff. The man said it was good wear; but when she sees it alongside of
silk--och, murdher! What did that one stand you in now?”
“Siventeen-and-six,” said Dinny.
“And mine I gave five shillin’s for, and me wid a florin a week more
than you. I might as well be slingin’ it under the next train passes;
there’s the whole of it. Sorra the hap’orth of use there is bringin’ it
home to her, for it’s only annoyed she’d be. But ne’er another penny I
had to spend on it, what wid this thing and that.”
Tony thrust his hands into his pockets, and with his eyes fixed
gloomily on the toes of his brogues, and his shoulders shrugged up
to his ears, sat moodily recalling the circumstances amid which his
wages had so insidiously melted away. In the retrospect his proceedings
looked silly enough. The tempting side-shows of the Exhibition, the
rifle ranges, bars and refreshment-rooms had accounted for many
small coins; others had been swallowed, to even less profit, by the
penny-in-the-slot fortune-telling machines, which were stuck like
snails all over the walls of the Exhibition buildings, or had gone for
slides down the switchback and water-chute. He was feeling thoroughly
disgusted with himself and his investments when Dinny pulled him by
the sleeve. “Look here,” he said, “aren’t you and your mother about
quittin’ out of Killymena for good next week?”
“We are so, if she’ll be ruled by me,” said Tony, “but divil a bit
of me knows what mislikin’ she may take against it now if she’s
disappointed over the plain umbrella.”
“Well then,” said Dinny, “I’ll thry can I conthrive so that me mother
won’t be usin’ hers till the Sunday after, the way your mother won’t
be put out of consait wid that one. She’ll like it well, no fear, so
long as she doesn’t get the notion that another’s grander. Mind you, I
dunno will I be able, for me mother’ll be dead set on takin’ it to Mass
to-morra; but I’ll do me endeavours. I might manage to mislay it; that
wouldn’t be a bad plan.”
Yet, while he proposed it, Dinny felt that he was despoiling his return
of perhaps its most triumphant moment; and Tony, not unaware of this,
said, with appreciation: “Yourself’s the dacint man.”
The circumstances which attended their home-coming seemed to favour
Dinny’s design, for the night was so dark when they reached Killymena
that the two women waiting at the dimly-lit station could barely see
their sons, let alone take stock of bundles and parcels. Dinny got his
baggage into his little nook of a room and stowed away the dangerous
package unseen quite successfully. All supper-time he was expecting his
mother to ask some question about her promised present, but she never
did, though she threw out several hints that it went to his heart to
ignore. But when she had wished him good-night, and he was standing,
the long parcel in his hand, considering whether he could find it
a safer hiding-place, she suddenly slipped in again, just for the
enjoyment of another look and word, and beholding, could not forbear an
exclamation: “Glory be to goodness, so you brought it after all! I was
thinkin’ you maybe forgot it, unless you was only intendin’ to not give
it to me till we’re just settin’ of to Mass to-morra.”
Dinny saw, accordingly, that there was nothing for it but to explain
the matter fully, and if possible secure her co-operation. He stated
the case as strongly as he could, enlarging upon the immensely
superior quality and cost of this umbrella, and the extreme ill-nature
of making poor Mrs Mooney think badly of her one, which was the
best that Tony could afford. His eulogium was judiciously vague,
because he apprehended that a detailed description, much more a
glimpse, of the ornate handle and sheeny green folds would render
his mother’s impatience to be showing them off altogether intolerant
of postponement. It was not easy, even so, to prevail upon her, for
memories of taunting speeches rankled to strengthen her contention that
“she had no call to be puttin’ herself about to plase Judy Mooney,
set her up!” However, he at length obtained her consent to lay aside
the unopened parcel until to-morrow week. And he created a temporary
diversion by producing a little scarlet volume out of which trailed a
long and wonderful series of highly-glazed landscapes.
Next morning was, rather unluckily, just the weather for a new
umbrella--drizzly showers, and no wind to threaten a precious novelty
with rough usage. Nevertheless, Dinny got his mother safely off to
eleven o’clock Mass under her old battered gingham, her dissatisfaction
with which he sought to mitigate by holding it over her himself. He
hoped that they would not fall in with the Mooneys, for he dreaded
the effect which the actual sight of her neighbour’s glory might have
upon his mother’s tongue. But when they were near the chapel door he
saw what almost startled his own into unruliness, for a few yards in
front of them paced Mrs Mooney, proudly holding up the very moral of
_his_ grand green silk umbrella--nay, it was the identical same one,
and no other; he espied the silver shamrocks shining as she furled
it in the porch. Tony must have taken the wrong parcel last night by
accident in the dark, “or else he done it on purpose, the villin.” His
outrageous conduct in keeping it made that seem highly probable; and he
certainly had a guilty air as he followed his exultant mother to their
seat. Dinny determined to have it out with the thief of the world the
instant service was done, and he sat irefully longing for that instant
to arrive.
The congregation at last broke up, and as they stepped out Mrs Doyle
bade Dinny take a hold of the ould umbrella for her, because her two
hands would be full trying to keep her skirts from the mud. She might
have added truthfully that she wished to detain her handsome son at her
elbow, and, having accomplished this, she said complacently,--
“Mercy on us, Dinny avic did you see the show poor Mrs Mooney’s after
makin’ of herself? In such a hurry she was to be stickin’ up her gazabo
of a new umbrella she’d scarce wait till she was clear of the door, but
took and nearly prodded the eye out of young Barney Loughlin, whirlin’
it up in the face of him. The woman might ha’ more wit. And it not
rainin’ a drop then either--it’s only beginnin’ again this minyit. And,
child dear, but I’m glad it’s a diff’rint sort of a one you brought me;
for I couldn’t abide the thoughts of that quare-lookin’ yoke at all.
It’s twyste too big for one thing, and them outlandish cockasinas stuck
on the handle has an ojis, ugly apparence--rael comical. I never seen
anybody wid them. I should suppose them little gimcracks do be very
chape. And tellin’ you the truth, I always had a great wish for a black
umbrella.”
“Black the one at home is anyway,” said Dinny, looking somewhat
disconcerted, “and as plain as plain.”
“Well now, alanna, that’s a good hearin’,” said Mrs Doyle. “Black’s the
very best colour it could be, it’s that dacint at a buryin’. Frettin’
in me own mind I was, thinkin’ you might bring me a brown or a green
one. But black’s iligant; I needn’t be ashamed to hould it up at any
funeral on the countryside.”
By this time they had overtaken Mrs Mooney and her son, who were
talking to a knot of neighbours. Tony, with dismayed visage, slipped
round to Dinny’s free hand and whispered apologetically,--
“Och, Dinny, it was the wrong parcels we took in the dark, and before I
knew where I was she had it opened on me, and in such an admiration of
it she was that I hadn’t the heart to be tellin’ her. But I’ll get it
back to-morra from the crathur by some manner of manes; I will so.”
“Ah, whisht, and no matter about it,” Dinny replied. “We’ll swap and
lave them the way they are; me mother’d liefer have the other one.”
Tony’s half incredulous relief needed some further explanatory asides;
and meanwhile compliments were politely passing between their mothers.
“’Deed now, Mrs Mooney, ma’am, that’s a grand umbrella you’ve come by
entirely. Rael off the common it is; I never seen the likes of it at
all.”
“Ah sure, ma’am, it isn’t too bad. Me son’s after bringin’ it home to
me. But it’s a heavy one, let me tell you, to be liftin’ all the way,
and me gown ’ill be disthroyed streelin’ through the mud. Bedad it’s
the fine, tall, upstandin’ stick you’ve got there to yours, Mrs Doyle,
this day, and that’s no lie.”
Mrs Doyle, smiling broadly, said merely: “Och, he’s a young slieveen;”
but she suppressed a forthcoming unfavourable critique upon the
silver-banded handle, which Tony, in haste to take the hint, seized,
saying: “Step along wid you, mother, and I’ll studdy it over your head.
Sure, it’s no great weight once you’re a bit used to carryin’ it.”
And thereupon four people, under two umbrellas, set their faces,
well-satisfied, home.
A SMALL PRACTICE
The most noteworthy event in Cocky M‘Cann’s history up to its ninth
year was the accident by which he broke his arm and became for some
weeks an inmate of the Ballygowran Union Infirmary. That this disaster
befell him in the course of a repeatedly-forbidden attempt to mount Mr
Scanlon’s cross mare, and that he himself laid all the blame on the
bosthoons who “were after coverin’ her wid an ojis ould bit of sackin’
as slithery as ice, the way nobody could get e’er a firm holt of her
at all,” were characteristic features easily recognisable by any of
Cocky’s acquaintances. That it _had_ befallen him anyhow seemed a very
serious matter to himself, but still more so to his mother, upon whom
it entailed the grievous necessity of a temporary separation from her
idolised only child. Nevertheless, his removal beyond reach of her
petting and humouring gave him leisure to draw the morals pointed by
his own doing and suffering, and to study various object lessons that
were set before him as he roved convalescent through the wards. But
although these were not wholly without effect, and although he did
return to Ballylogan a few degrees less headstrong than he had left
it, he had unluckily taken up one new notion which tended to obscure
any traces of improvement, and even led his neighbours occasionally to
pronounce him “twyste as ungovernable as he was before.”
This notion was a firm belief that during his sojourn in hospital he
had acquired such skill in medicine and surgery as fully qualified him
to prescribe for any of his ailing fellow-creatures, or to operate
upon them, as circumstances seemed to demand. Of course, if Cocky had
confined himself to entertaining this vainglorious opinion, it would
have been a very harmless vanity, calling for nothing more censorious
from his elders than: “Och, now, isn’t it the quare, ould-fashioned
crathur?” But that was by no means the case. Cocky always had a
perilous propensity for putting his theories into practice, nor did
he forbear to do so here whenever he saw a chance. And in consequence
he became more than ever a terror to adjacent owners of small live
stock, human and otherwise. Mrs M‘Loughlin, for instance, was only
just in the nick of time, by the best of good luck, to prevent him
from administering to her little Lizzie a murky mixture compounded of
varnish, washing-soda, soft soap and tea, which he declared looked and
smelt the very same as the black bottle he used to be seeing Nurse Lane
at the Infirmary curing hundreds and thousands of childer out of, that
was worse with the whooping-cough than Lizzie.
Luck did not always intervene so opportunely. In the case of the
Nolans’ duck circumstances enabled Cocky to carry out his treatment
with more freedom from interference. Having kept his patient under
observation for some time, he had formed the opinion that it was
“waddling as crooked as a ram’s horn,” and furthermore that “the left
leg was bruck on it, and had a right to be plastered up stiff,” in
the manner, as much as possible, of a fractured limb, which he had
watched with interest during his attendance at his medical school; and
the result was that after a day’s anxious search the hapless fowl was
discovered helplessly rooted to a retired spot by the ponderous ball
of mortar and clay in which one leg had been encased. When extricated
with difficulty its lameness appeared to be so much aggravated that
Mrs Nolan was presently obliged to kill it to save its life, at a dead
loss. “The finest young duck,” she protested, “in the parish, and
worth every penny of half-a-crown, if it wasn’t only for disthruction
bein’ done on it by a bould-behaved little tormint, that the polis
ought to be walkin’ off to the lock-up out of dacint people’s way,
if the seargint was good for anythin’ else except playin’ poker in
the barrack-room and not mindin’ his business.” It is fair to note,
on the other hand, how, in Mrs M‘Cann’s opinion, so confident as to
be proclaimed loudly from her own front door: “One-and-six would ha’
bought the last feather on the crathur’s back twyste over, and divil a
much else anybody’d ha’ got off it--a skinny little bag o’ bones, wid
ne’er a penn’orth of dirty male thrown to it ever since it looked out
of the shell.” As for Cocky, in response to all upbraiding he simply
“gave impidence,” and declared with exasperated regret that: “If the
fool of a baste ’ud ha’ kep’ aisy wid its quackin’ and bawlin’ he’d
have had it grandly cured soon enough, for there was nothin’ else ’ud
ha’ been bringin’ anybody next or nigh th’ ould shed wunst in a month
of Sundays.”
The duck’s fate thrilled from end to end of the M‘Canns’ cabin-row,
and the shock would have been more entirely unpleasurable if it had
happened at the expense of some family other than the Nolans. They had
never been very well liked at Ballylogan, especially since a married
daughter and son-in-law had come to live with them. Nobody, indeed, had
much to say against old Jim Nolan, nor the daughters, Katty and Anne,
while the sayings against his wife and the two Gildeas were rather
vague, being seldom more definite than statements which set forth that
Mrs Nolan was a quare one, and that Patsy Gildea had the face of an
ass. Widow Gilletty gave voice to the prevailing sentiment when she
remarked of the Gildea-Nolan alliance that “by the rule of contraries
she’d have expected that Rose to have took up wid some dacinter man
than himself.” Still, this hazy misliking would have in a measure toned
down the neighbours’ disapproval of Cocky’s unsuccessful experiment,
had not their righteous wrath been sustained by a strong sense of the
possibility that he might at any moment seek a subject among their
own belongings, an uneasiness which found relief in anticipating the
curtailment of Cocky’s ill-employed hours of idleness by his attendance
at the Letterowen National School. He had lately begun his education
there in accordance with directions left by his seafaring father,
happily so much to his taste that he really followed the line of least
resistance in carrying them out. Enforced abstinence now whetted his
appetite for knowledge until he was eager to resume his studies almost
before Mrs M‘Cann considered his recovery sufficiently complete. The
daily setting forth of Cocky M‘Cann on an absence of several hours’
duration was viewed with complacency by the eye of Ballylogan. His
mother’s tendency to regret was too trivial an exception to be regarded
as more than, so to speak, a very slight cast in that composite orb.
Before long, however, his schooling was again interrupted, this time
by a local epidemic of influenza, which caused a prolongation of the
Christmas holidays. They were at Ballylogan a dismal season, what with
one thing and another, including, it must be said, the presence of
Cocky, who turned the calamity to his own purposes. His pleasure was to
call upon house-bound sufferers, whom if he could not always persuade
patiently to receive his medicine, he not seldom succeeded in seriously
alarming by the grave nature of his diagnoses. “I declare to goodness,
ma’am,” Mrs Sweeny reported to a crony, “it’s terrified entirely me
poor sister was yesterday evenin’ wid the romancin’ he had out of him.
Sittin’ all of a shake in her chair she was when I come in, and says
I to meself the minyit I laid eyes on her: ‘As sure as anythin’, the
woman’s got the shiverin’ ague;’ but says she to me ’twas just the
turn she was after gettin’ wid the awful talk of Cocky M‘Cann. For
says she he run in and tould her he well knew by the look of her it
was mortal bad she was wid ivery sort of desperit sickness. ‘Bedad,’
says she, ‘I couldn’t make an offer at repaitin’ the quare-soundin’
words he said was ailin’ me; for,’ says she, ‘I never heard the like
of them before--not wid Dr Whyte himself,’ says she. ‘And sure,’ says
she to me, ‘if it was about gettin’ her death she was wid any nathural
description of complaint, that might be no more than the will of God,
and some sinse and raison in it.’ But what all that Cocky was after
tellin’ her was a dale worse than the _new-money_ or the _bluerissy_,
and it gave her the cowld creeps. And to the back of that, there was
some manner of outrageous ould brash he was biddin’ her cure herself
wid--lamp-oil and traicle and salt--I dunno the half of it--and axin’
me she was should she be thryin’ it. So says I to her, if she’d be
said by me, she’d just dhrink a good sup of hot buttermilk-whey, and
let alone meddlin’ wid any of the spalpeen’s prescriptions--set him
up--that were fit to poison the parish. But sure now, ma’am, Mrs M‘Cann
had a right to keep the tormintin’ brat at home, instead of him to be
runnin’ into other people’s houses, and frightenin’ them out of their
misfortnit minds.” To whom Julia Hogan replied: “Och, Mrs M‘Cann is it?
Sure she’s that foolish about him, it’s my belief she consaits he’s the
great docther entirely. If he bid her take and ait the ashes off the
hearth she’d be apt to go do it; and as for him minding anythin’ she
said, she might all as well be spakin’ to the sparras hoppin’ in the
hedges.”
Several other neighbours were visited with similar warnings and advice,
which Cocky’s mother was in truth quite powerless to prohibit. But
before school opened again his attention was diverted from the health
of Ballylogan by a momentous occurrence. It was a piece of great luck,
nothing less than his picking up on the road an envelope containing a
five-pound note. The white cover had not a stroke of writing on it,
and the note, its sole contents, looked speckless too, as if little
handled. Now, however, it was subjected to much fingering and minute
scrutiny by a selection of the M‘Canns’ acquaintances, losing under the
process some of its unsullied crispness, while its genuine character as
a Bank of Ireland note, worth a twelve months’ rent and more, seemed
to be thereby only the firmlier established. Opinion was far less
decided about the probable way in which it had come to be so improbably
lying on the path under O’Carroll’s fence, just at the gap where the
Ballylogan children climb up and down to and from school. The most
opposite views, again, were held as to what Mrs M‘Cann should do with
this treasure-trove. They ranged from those of the rigid moralist who
laid down the stern law that “she had a right to go straight off and
lave it wid the polis or Father Mooney,” to the reckless declaration
that she would be “the biggest fool ever walked if she didn’t spind
ivery pinny of it just as she pleased.” In the end she compromised
the matter by determining to put it up safely until she could consult
Himself, otherwise Bernard M‘Cann, who was expected home from a voyage
in a few weeks’ time.
This arrangement met with, on the whole, approval, not being opposed
even by Cocky, who was actually almost slightly over-awed by the
magnitude of his own achievement. The possibility of personally
consuming such vast wealth did not occur to his wildest imagination,
and he readily assented to the bestowal of the precious envelope in a
recondite nook. But he did make his find a pretext for demanding more
than usually frequent pennies from his mother. “Just you wait, then,
till I come home wid the next pounds-and-pounds note I get, me good
woman,” he would retort at any demur. And he so often heard laudatory
comments upon “the cuteness of the crathur, mind you, that had the
sinse to know it was somethin’ val’able in place of to be tearin it
up the way the other childer’d ha’ been apt to do,” that, what with
conceit of wisdom, and exultance in many extra sugar-sticks, his
elation waxed apace. In fact, his spirit might at this time have been
augured strutting with very appropriate gait towards an imminent fall.
As for Mrs M‘Cann, the keen edge of her pleasure at their good luck was
prematurely turned by a misfortune commonplace enough--too common--in
the shape of a bad toothache which presently attacked her. Upon its
advent all her joy in the prospect of riches vanished away with the
promptitude which occasionally disposes us to wonder that happiness,
perpetually suspended at the mercy of any one among a myriad nerve
threads, should ever attain to even the briefest span of existence.
Being a very robust person, she naturally took a despondent view of her
case, and when the malady had tormented her for a night and a day she
lost hope and temper. She morosely repelled the neighbours’ sympathy,
and even Cocky found his proffers of infallible remedies, extraction
included, received with testy curtness, a novel and disconcerting
experience, which made him all the more anxious that a state of things
so uncongenial should come to a speedy end. He was far from pleased at
being summarily told to run off wid himself and lave moidherin’ a body
gabbin’ about what they done in the Infirmary; ’twas no manner of use,
and the cowld pitaties ’ud do plinty well enough for the dinner; _she_
didn’t want anythin’ at all, and couldn’t be bothered warmin’ them up.
It was on his way to fetch a jug of water from the public pump, about
sunset, that Cocky fell in with Mrs Gildea, going the same errand.
Chiefly out of perversity, he held this unpopular person in somewhat
high esteem, and treated her to more civility than he generally
bestowed upon the other neighbours. Mrs Gildea had just then been
having words with her husband, who was sitting, head in hands, on a tub
at her father’s door. Her words had been to the effect that if there
was a bigger ould slouch in the country than himself, she didn’t know
where he look for him. Tom Gildea, whose several questionable qualities
did not, to do him justice, comprise a huffy temper, had merely
replied: “The county be choked. Sure what chance has a man to be doin’
anythin’ in the likes of this little ould glory-hole? Onless he’d the
luck of the young rapscallion there I see runnin’ out of Mrs M‘Cann’s
house, that’s after pickin’ up a fortin off the road, would ha’ took
the two of us over to the States you do be ravin’ about.” To which his
wife had rejoined, with acrimony: “Bedad, then, it’s one while a lazy
divil like you’d be pickin’ up e’er a fortin in the States, or any
place else.”
But when, by-and-by, not many yards away, she overtook Cocky M‘Cann at
the pump, her manner and speech were bland and suave. Mrs M‘Cann, she
said to him, was a very lucky woman to own a sinsible, handy boy, that
would be fetchin’ her in her jugs of wather, let alone findin’ her a
pocketful of money, and handin’ her ivery pinny of it to keep, which
was more than many a one would ha’ done. This flattery was especially
refreshing to Cocky, who had missed his usual household affluence of
it, and he responded by pumping for Mrs Gildea so vigourously that her
jug suddenly overflowed into her shoes. “Och, bad luck to you--to the
ould spout of it that’s quare,” she said, with a jump backwards. “But
sure there’s no harm meant or done. Is it wetted you are, sonny dear?
Well, now, you’re a good boy, and the next time you get anythin’ on the
road, I only hope you’ll be bringin’ it in to me. I might be chance
have a load of sweeties to swap for it.”
“There mightn’t ever be anythin’ more on the road again,” Cocky said,
discreetly avoiding a committal of himself to this barter.
“Ah, sure it’s just jokin’ I am,” said Mrs Gildea, “for, of coorse,
you’d be a-bringin’ whatever it was home to your mammy, to put up
somewhere safe, the way she’s after doin’ wid the five-pound note, I’ll
be bound.”
“We have so,” said Cocky.
“I wouldn’t suppose she’d be apt to be tellin’ _you_, now, what place
she’s keepin’ it in,” said Mrs Gildea. “She’d liefer not, for fear
you’d be meddlin’ wid it, and losin’ it on her.”
“Oh, wouldn’t she not?” said Cocky. “When only for me she’d never ha’
thought of the little ould black tay-caddy in the houle in the wall,
back of the dresser, by the fut of the bed, that’s a dale the best
place to be keepin’ it in.”
“Why, tubbe sure, and so it is. Yourself was the cute one to be
thinkin’ of it. Back of the dresser, be the fut of the bed--so that’s
where she has it, and a very handy, safe place entirely. You needn’t be
lettin’ on to her that you was tellin’ me; not that I’d be passing any
remarks about it, no fear. It’s nothin’ to me where other people do be
keepin’ their ould tay-caddies. And what’ll your poor mammy do widout
you at all, to be runnin’ her messages for her, when you’re prisintly
goin’ back again to the school?”
“To-morra I’m goin’,” said Cocky. “But she’s well able to be fetching
the wathur and everythin’ herself, only she’s bad these two days wid
the toothache, and as cross as the cats. Not a bit of her would thry
the cowld starch poultice I bid her, or I daresay she’d be well agin
now. But she might be better in the mornin’.”
On the contrary, however, in the morning Mrs M‘Cann was worse, or at
anyrate looked so, because her face had swelled all on one side; “as
big as two sizeable heads of cabbage,” Cocky assured Mrs Gildea, whom
he found waiting for him when he passed her door on his way back from
the pump, before breakfast, with a can of water. At this time Cocky
was under some concern about his mother’s affliction, and this from
fairly disinterested motives, as his absence all day at school would
make her doleful and irascible mood a matter of small importance to
himself personally. His wish for her relief was, therefore, mainly not
a self-regarding sentiment, though he did in some measure consider the
possible effect upon the replenishing of his dinner-basket.
“The face of her swelled up awful, and got ne’er a wink of sleep the
whole night?” Mrs Gildea repeated upon hearing these symptoms. “Deed
now, the poor woman’s to be pitied. But look here, sonny, I’ve got a
little drop of stuff here, you might be givin’ her, would make her
sleep grand, and do her all the benefit ever was.” She showed, from
beneath her shawl, a hand holding a small, nearly empty bottle. “It
always sent me poor father-in-law off like a top, when he was bad a
couple of years ago, every time he took it; you might as well ha’ been
offerin’ to wake up a one of the hearth-stones as him, ten minyits
after he’d had his dose of it. Little enough of it he left behind him;
but there’s somethin’ better than a small-sized spoonful in the bottle
yet, and that ’ud do her finely. So just bring it home to her, there’s
a good boy, and bid her dhrink it straight off, the way she may git
somethin’ you may call a sleep, and as like as not be quit of the ugly
toothache agin she wakes.”
“There wouldn’t be an atom of use biddin’ her take it,” said Cocky,
“or anythin’ else there wouldn’t. I tould her of plinty of things to
cure herself wid, but she won’t touch e’er a one of them. As headstrong
as can be she is over it. She’s past _my_ conthrol,” Cocky asserted,
solemnly, adopting a somewhat familiar phrase, not without enjoyment of
it. “So you may be keepin’ the little ould bottle.” He was not quite
sure whether he regretted or rejoiced to have this reason for rejecting
Mrs Gildea’s offer. Certainly he did wish for his mother’s cure; but
that it should be wrought by another person’s advice and assistance,
when his own was disregarded and disparaged, would have seemed a very
undesirable fulfilment of his desire. On the whole, probably, he was
glad of the excuse. But Mrs Gildea persisted. “Sure people do often
be conthrairy like in themselves when they’re sick,” said she. “It’s
humourin’ them one must be in a way. Wouldn’t she be takin’ e’er a sup
of tay now?”
“And what else would I be fetchin’ the wather for if it wasn’t to boil
the kettle?” said Cocky. “She says a hot sup might be apt to do her
good.”
“Well, thin, I’ll tell you how you could conthrive. Just git her
attintion disthracted a bit, and slip what’s in the bottle, body and
bones, into her cup, when she isn’t lookin’. Ne’er a taste she’ll get
off it in the strong tay, but drink it down iligant unbeknownst, if
you do the way I bid you, like a clever boy. And when you run home
this evenin’ you’ll find she’s after sleepin’ beautiful all the while
you were away, and sorra the talk of any more toothache,” Mrs Gildea
predicted, holding out the little bottle.
Cocky stood irresolute. The plan had an attractive aroma of practical
joking, while the promise of a mother once more cheerful and laudatory
was undeniably alluring; but the conditions galled his professional
pride.
“And you needn’t ever be lettin’ on I gave it to you, or anything about
it,” Mrs Gildea continued, “for very belike she might be mad wid
us.” This hint perceptibly strengthened Cocky’s inclination towards
compliance, for it showed that she did not propose to claim any credit
from the cure, which seemed to him some amends for being unable to do
so himself. Yet his jealous dread of a rival was a stubborn thing,
and he hesitated still. Perhaps it would ultimately have prevailed
with him, had not little Tim Daly happened just then to pass, pouring
his soul, in rapt enjoyment, through a newly-acquired penny whistle.
Tim’s face, always of a rather comic full-moon pattern, was for the
time being a caricature, because he had blown “the swoln cheek of a
trumpeter;” and the sight of the grotesque profile somehow recalled
to Cocky his mother’s visage as he had last beheld it, distorted and
woebegone. Whereupon he suddenly extended his hand, saying, “Gimme.”
He had resolved, not without an effort of difficult virtue, to try Mrs
Gildea’s remedy.
He was quite successful in administering it surreptitiously. By the
simple device of yelling: “Och, look at what’s goin’ up the road!” he
made himself an opportunity for tilting the contents of the little
bottle into his mother’s just-poured-out cup. It suited his purpose
all the better that, in her indignation at what appeared to her his
ill-timed pleasantry, she drank up her drugged tea with hurried and
heedless gulps. Even so she alarmed him once by declaring that she
“got an ugly onnathural sort of flaviour off it.” However, she
accounted for this by supposing herself to have “lost the right taste
of her mouth wid the tormentin’ cowld she had in her unlucky teeth;”
and though she left some spoonfuls in her cup, Cocky opined that she
had swallowed enough to test the efficacy of those dark-trickling
drops. His opinion was confirmed when he soon saw her begin to exhibit
unmistakable signs of drowsiness, and heard her announce that “the two
eyes of her were sinkin’ into her head,” and that as soon as he had run
off to school, “she’d lie herself down on the bed to try could she get
the chance of a sleep.” So he sugared his slices of bread with a lavish
hand, unreproved, and started for Letterowen in a sanguine frame of
mind.
Not long after his departure, Mrs Gildea knocked at the M‘Canns’ door.
She knocked pretty loudly, and receiving no answer, stepped in, and
rapped loudlier on the table. Then she coughed violently, and kicked a
can standing on the floor so as to cause a sharp clatter. But finally,
as the slumber whose depths she was gauging satisfactorily stood all
these cautious trials, she stole swiftly up to the dresser, with its
dangling jugs, and began a rapid groping behind it. “At the fut of
the bed,” she was thinking to herself, “Back of the dresser, in a
little ould tay-caddy.” But when in a few minutes she slipped quietly
out again, nobody could have guessed the presence of a small, black
japanned box hidden away under her shawl.
This was quite early in the day, a couple of hours at least before the
sluggard midsummer sun had attained his noon; but though the dusk had
spread abroad out of every corner by the time that Mrs M‘Cann had any
more visitors, they found her still sleeping heavily. They were her
near neighbours, Maggie Daly, and Anne Hunt, and Widow Kennan, who had
come with such interesting news to tell and questions to ask that they
shrilled and shook her into some sort of wakefulness after a while. But
she remained so stupid and dazed that she took in at first only a small
portion of the story they were relating. It was in substance that the
two Gildeas had suddenly made a flitting, to the best of everybody’s
belief, for good and all. Tom Gildea had been seen setting off with
himself and a bundle about sunrise that morning, and the beholders had
assumed that he was merely going on the _shaughraun_, according to
his custom, for a day or two. Andy Cole, the letter-carrier, however,
reported that about twelve o’clock he had met Mrs Gildea up beyond
Dunathy tramping towards Oughterone, and likewise laden with a large
bundle; which had suggested a different significance for the movements
of the pair. “So we was wonderin’, ma’am,” said Anne Hunt to Mrs
M‘Cann, “did Mrs Gildea herself happen to tell you they were quittin’
when you was talkin’ to her this mornin’, for the Nolans let on she
niver said a word to them of intendin’ any such a thing.”
“Is it Mrs Gildea?” Mrs M‘Cann replied perplexedly. “I never seen sight
nor light of her this day at all, let alone spakin’ to her.”
“Och, woman alive, is it in your sinses you are at all? Didn’t meself
and Mrs Kennan here see her comin’ out of your door this mornin’, wid
our own eyes, and we hangin’ up clothes?”
“Ay, bedad, did we,” corroborated Widow Kennan. “It was no great while
after Cocky goin’ to school. Sure the woman’s not rightly in her
sinses.”
“I dunno about thim,” Mrs M‘Cann said in bewilderment. “But if anybody
come in, I wasn’t mindin’ them. Ever since I took me cup of tay at
breakfast time me head’s swimmin’ off me shoulders, and ten strong men
couldn’t hould me eyes open. Ugly tay it was as ever I tasted.”
Mrs Daly pounced swiftly upon the teacup, which was still standing on
the table. “Goodness be wid us!” she exclaimed in continuation of a
prolonged sniff, “it’s lodnum she’s after takin’--enough to poison the
parish. Small blame to her to be bothered and stupid; the only wonder
is that the life’s left in her at all. Stand up on your feet, ma’am,
this minyit, and keep stirrin’ about, for it’s lost you are if you fall
off asleep agin. Sure, now, maybe the toothache had you distracted, but
’twas an awful thing to go take lodnum.”
“Sorra the sup I took,” Mrs M‘Cann said, standing up dizzily. “Glad of
it I’d ha’ been, but I hadn’t got a drop to me name.”
“Smell it, ma’am, smell it,” Mrs Daly said, handing the cup round
appealingly, and her companions both said, with confirmatory
inhalations: “Lodnum it is.”
“And some other stuff along wid it, I’m thinkin’,” Mrs Daly said after
further examination. “If it wasn’t herself, it was that Cocky at his
thricks agin, you may safely depind.”
“The poor child wouldn’t do such a thing,” his mother said feebly, a
protest which was not considered to call for notice.
“Where’d he get it?” Anne Hunt inquired more pertinently.
“I seen him colloguin’ wid Mrs Gildea this mornin’ early,” Widow Kennan
suggested, “outside of her door.”
“Then, mark my words, it was that one gave it to him,” said Mrs Daly,
“and put it into his head to be poisonin’ his poor mother’s cup of tay
wid it. She done it a-purpose, very belike, thinkin’ to have the poor
woman sleepin’ stupid if anybody come in for to ransack the house on
her, and she all alone in it by herself--the very way it happint. I’ll
bet you anythin’ Tom Gildea and she had it settled up between them,”
Mrs Daly went on, skipping from conclusion to conclusion as nimbly as a
series of dexterously-made ducks and drakes. “To be takin’ off out of
this to-day, wid whatever she was after grabbin’. A five-pound note,
ma’am, she’d find oncommonly handy, and you lyin’ there as good as a
block of wood all the while she was ferretin’ about here.”
“The five-pound note--och, to goodness, woman, don’t say so,” Mrs
M‘Cann said, pierced with dread through all her drowsiness. “Sure she
doesn’t know where I’m keepin’ it.”
“She’d get that aisy enough out of Cocky,” said Mrs Daly; “and be the
same token, here he is himself,” she added, moving quickly towards the
door.
So it befell Cocky, as he bolted headlong over his dusky threshold,
to find himself obstructed by a matronly form, and sternly addressed:
“Och, you _bould_ boy! What for did you be poisonin’ your poor mammy
wid lodnum?” The object with which Mrs Daly had adopted this attitude
and tone was completely gained by the result, for Cocky, so much taken
aback that he thought only of self-defence, replied incriminatingly:
“Git out of my road. It was nothin’ but a weeny tint out of a little
bottle Mrs Gildea gave me to make her get a wink of sleep.”
Mrs Daly wheeled round triumphant upon her gossips: “What did I tell
yous? Ay, to be sure, she had her sleepin’ rael convanient, while she
herself was layin’ hands on your fine five-pound note.”
“Y’ ould gaby,” said Cocky, recovering his confidence. “Do you imagine
or suppose I’d ha’ tould her we had it in the tay-caddy if I didn’t
know me mother kep’ the kay in her pocket, that nobody can git at, or
else yourself’d be as apt as any.” But he was dismayed by a burst of
derisive laughter. “Och, goodness pity the crathur,” said Widow Kennan.
“What differ does he think a kay makes in or out of a pocket when
there’s nothin’ to hinder any person grabbin’ the little box and away
wid it?”
And through all the other voices struck one more thrilling as Mrs
M‘Cann, who had been groping behind the dresser, rose from her knees
with a piercing wail: “Och, wirrasthrew, it’s gone sure enough--there’s
the empty place it was in. She’s took it while I was dead asleep, and
we’ll niver set eyes on it agin.”
They never have from that good day to this. The loss, with its
attendant circumstances, was intensely mortifying to Cocky M‘Cann,
and put him quite out of conceit with a medical career. Perhaps the
most unpalatable draught in his cup of afflictions was the recital
which he could not always avoid hearing his mother give to sympathetic
neighbours; and the bitterest drops were always at the bottom, for she
invariably wound up the narrative with: “But what I think baddest of
was her makin’ a fool that way of the innicent child.”
A LINGERING GUEST
When Mrs Van Herder died at her house on Marksville Avenue, New York,
leaving a legacy of a hundred dollars to each servant who had been over
three years in her employment, the Irish girl, Rose Byrne, could claim
the bequest, having scrubbed the Van Herder floors for five long years;
and ten minutes after she heard of her good fortune she had firmly made
up her mind what she would do with it: she would go home straight-way.
Home for Rose lay across the Atlantic, on the storm-beaten shore of
the County Donegal, and a dozen twelvemonths had passed since she had
seen it except in dreams. If the legacy had come sooner she might,
while waiting for the liner to sail, have spent much of her time and
not a few of her dollars in the purchase of presents and fine clothes
wherewithal to glorify her rejoining of her family circle. But by
now so many a precious stone had dropped sadly out of that ring of
hers, that she knew she would find only a small remnant safe in its
setting. An old grandmother and a married sister were all the near
relations left to welcome her back. This, and the prudence learned from
experience, made her preparations simple and thrifty. “I’m thinkin’,”
she said to herself, “that I’d do better to not be buyin’ till I get
home, for then I’ll have a notion of what’s wantin’. Buyin’ things for
them now is the same as puttin’ the right kays into the wrong holes;
there’s naught amiss wid the kays themselves only they won’t open them
locks. The stores do be oncommon iligant and tasty, but sure I’ll wait.”
Rose, in fact was thinking that the things most wanted at home would
probably be quite common, and not elegant at all; and when she reached
Kilgowran she very soon saw that her conjectures were even righter
than she had expected them to be. Her grandmother’s white-walled,
brown-thatched cabin, which looked like a weather-beaten mushroom on
the wide dark bog, was in reality still more poverty-stricken than
it had seemed in her memory. Partly, perhaps, because those lofty
and spacious chambers over seas, which you could fill with clearest
brilliance by a twirl of your finger and thumb, contrasted so strongly
with this one dark little room, where the rafters slanted low above
the uneven mud floor, and the shadows among them were seldom disturbed
by anything brighter than a stray flicker glancing from the hearth.
Its mistress had been old and gaunt as long as Rose could recollect,
and was now, of course, older and gaunter than ever. Her decrepit,
broken-down aspect struck Rose painfully as they sat opposite one
another, soon after her arrival, on small, rough, creepy-stools, by
the crumbling glow of the turf-sods. It was a sad thing, she thought,
to see an infirm old woman so poorly off that she had to wrap herself
in a ragged greatcoat as she crouched huddled up uneasily over her
fire, which she stirred with a broken spade-handle. Rose reflected with
some consolation that to provide “a dacint warm shawl” was certainly
in her power; “any sort of comfortable armchair” might be, she feared,
beyond her means.
Since Rose’s last sight of it, however, old Mrs Behan had added
something to her little dwelling’s scanty contents: another grandchild,
namely, the orphan daughter of her son Peter, a slip of a girl just
growing up. Maggie Behan was now nearly of the same age that Rose
Byrne had been when quitting the bog-land of Kilgowran, and she looked
very much as her cousin had done a dozen troublesome years ago. And it
was not long before Rose perceived that Maggie occupied the position
of prime favourite which had formerly been her own. This, indeed,
became apparent on the very first evening, despite Rose’s temporary
distinction as a newly-returned traveller, and it was made unmistakably
plain next morning, when Mrs Behan declared to Rose her opinion that
there had never been a one of them all who could hold a candle to
little Maggie for good looks, though the Behans were always as handsome
a family as any in the countryside. An impartial judge would have seen
nothing more remarkable in Maggie’s round, cheerful face than that
pleasant freshness of early youth which the Irish people, possibly with
a Danish reminiscence, call pig-beauty. So Rose knew well enough what
was betokened by such extravagant praise. But she was not left merely
to draw inferences. Their grandmother had a habit of expressing herself
frankly, and accordingly she soon spoke her mind to Rose on this point.
“Sure, now, you and me was always great, Rose, me dear,” she said.
“But little Maggie, the crathur, she’s what the heart of me’s fairly
set on, and small blame to me, for her aquil wouldn’t be aisy got. And
bedad ’twas the same way ever; ne’er a word had I agin poor Norah, your
mother, at all at all. But Pather was the lovely child--that’s your
poor uncle, Maggie’s father--ay, indeed, I always had a wonderful wish
for Pather.”
Though it was scarcely in the nature of things that Rose should
not feel somewhat aggrieved at finding herself thus superseded,
circumstances helped her to take a philosophical view of the situation,
saying to herself: “Why, it’s only natural Granny’d think a deal of
Maggie, that she’s after bringin’ up. And, sure, maybe the more she
thinks of her the better these times, for who else is there to be
stoppin’ along wid her and mindin’ her when she’s gettin’ so ould and
feeble?” Therefore, as the days went past, Rose, keeping a watchful eye
on significant trifles, was glad to see no lack on Maggie’s part of due
helpfulness and affection. “She’ll be well looked after anyhow,” she
thought, as she observed her young cousin’s energetic “reddin’ up” of
the house-room, and good-humoured ways with the querulous old woman;
and once she spoke some of these sentiments aloud.
Her grandmother and she had walked across the bog to eleven o’clock
Mass at Kilgowran Chapel, and were sitting to rest in the August
sun on the low dilapidated wall of the chapel-yard. This Kilgowran
burial-ground is a dreary, unrestful place, overlooked by the backs
of several houses, and overgrown with tall, harsh green nettles and
rusty brown docks. Among them the few grey stones, and the wooden
crosses, plentier because cheaper, are sometimes nearly lost. These
low, crookedly set crosses vary in hue from time to time, according to
the different painting jobs that have been in progress thereabouts, as
the leavings in a pot are often devoted to this purpose. A vivid canary
was just then the prevailing colour. Mrs Behan surveyed them musingly
as she and Rose sat to wait for Maggie, who had gone on a message, and
she presently remarked: “I’ve no likin’ for that yallery colour; it’s
as ugly as sin. If it was me, I’d sooner a deal have the pink one there
is yonder over young Andy FitzSimon. His father gave it a new coat the
time he was doin’ up Mr Purcell’s front palin’s a while ago. But, sure,
how would poor Maggie be stickin’ up crosses or anythin’ else over me,
the crathur, thry her best?”
“Maggie’s a very good girl,” Rose said, to give the conversation a
livelier turn. “I don’t know what you’d do widout her.”
But her commendation of her cousin, generally so eagerly taken up, had
not the usual effect upon her grandmother. For instead of replying,
“Ay, bedad,” and launching out into complacent praises, Mrs Behan
answered, firmly and gloomily: “I’d do first-rate; grand I’d do,
if I got the chance.” An unexpected response, which surprised Rose
considerably; but Maggie’s arrival just then prevented comment or
explanation.
In the course of the next week Rose was again puzzled by some of her
grandmother’s sayings and doings. What perplexed her first was a marked
disapprobation of the little purchases that she made for the benefit
of the cabin and its occupiers. The sorely-needed garments or utensils
or groceries never had a reception more gracious than: “Well, now,
yourself’s the great gaby to be bringin’ home all them contrivances,
litterin’ up the place. ’Deed it’s a pity to see you throwin’ away your
money on the likes of such ould thrash that nobody wants.” Moreover,
Mrs Behan’s manner showed plainly that these protests were not merely
polite disclaimers, but sincere utterances of her sentiments. Rose
wondered and pondered without catching sight of any plausible reason.
She well knew that none of her family had ever inclined towards
excessive thrift, either on their own or other people’s account.
Stranger still, Mrs Behan began to let fall what sounded to Rose
terribly like hints that she had outstayed her welcome and had better
end her visit. That this should have happened already, or, in truth,
could happen ever at all, was a bitter thought to Rose; and one night,
after her grandmother had been talking about the sailing of steamers
from Queenstown, she felt so badly that she ate hardly a morsel of
supper, and went to bed early, almost resolved to leave next morning.
But thereupon Mrs Behan had manifested such deep concern at these signs
of indisposition, and had so bestirred herself to totter about, making
tea and toast for the invalid, and scaring away intrusive hens whose
crawking might disturb “her honey,” that Rose found it for the time
being impossible to harbour any longer those grievous suspicions.
Then one evening, on her return from the post-office, she discovered
her grandmother alone in the kitchen. The old woman was stooping over
the table, upon which she had spread out the contents of Rose’s large
wash-leather purse. Perceiving herself detected, she attempted first to
conceal her occupation with a corner of her shawl, and next to assume
an unabashed demeanour, failing in a pitiable way that made Rose hasten
to say gaily, accepting the scrutiny as a matter of course: “Well,
Granny, it’s fine and rich I am these times, amn’t I?” And, restored
to self-respect, Mrs Behan spoke her mind without embarrassment. “Oh,
bedad are you. But it’s not very long before you won’t be so. Five
and ninepence you’re after spendin’ since this day week. You might
as well be lettin’ on to keep a sup of wather in an ould sack as in
your purse. Never your fool’s fut you set outside the door but you’ll
throw away a couple of shillin’s. Och, you needn’t be offerin’ to
hide it: I see the big lump of a parcel you have under your arm this
minyit. And the end of it ’ill be that before we know where we are the
passage-money ’ill be gone. Look there,” she said, pointing to the
coins, which she had counted into two unequal heaps, “that’s your fares
on the boat, and that other’s all you have left for wastin’; and it, by
rights, you’ll want to live on till you get places on the other side.
But you’ll keep it up, all I can do or say, till you’ll not lave enough
to take the two of yous over.”
“The two of me, Granny?” Rose said. “Sure the dear knows it’s lonesome
entirely I’ll be goin’ across, and what for in the world would I be
payin’ the double fares?”
“Where’s Maggie?” said Mrs Behan.
“_Maggie?_” said Rose. “And now what would bewitch me to be takin’
Maggie away, and she the only one you have to be doin’ e’er a hand’s
turn for over here?”
“Well enough I can be doin’ meself all the hand’s turns I want,” said
Mrs Behan. “What ’ud ail me to not? Haven’t I got the hins? And I
might be droppin’ down off me standin’ feet any minyit of the day, and
then what ’ud become of little Maggie? It’s the best chance for her
altogether.”
“Maggie’d be frettin’ woeful if she was took away from you,” said
Rose. “Ne’er a fut she’d come, it’s my belief, and anyhow ’twould be no
sort of thing to go do. I wouldn’t be thinkin’ of it at all.”
They argued the point for a long time without change of opinion on
either side, until at last Rose said: “Well, Granny, you know I’m
goin’ on Tuesday to stop a while wid me sister up at Clochranbeg, so
’twill be time enough to talk about Maggie when I come back. There’s no
hurry.” And in this adjournment Mrs Behan had to acquiesce with what
patience she could.
During her fortnight’s visit to the struggling MacAteer family, away in
the furthest corner of the wide county, Rose considered the question
much and anxiously, with the result that on her journey back to
Kilgowran she was sometimes repeating in her mind a decision at which
she had reluctantly arrived. “I’ll thry get a place in this counthry,”
she said to herself. “It’s poor livin’ and bad wages, and I well know
the best way to lend them a helpin’ hand is from across the wather. But
how would Granny, the crathur, understand? And I’ll promise her that if
anythin’ happins her I’ll take Maggie back wid me then to the States.
Maybe that ’ill contint her.”
But Rose never gave that promise. For when she reached the little brown
and white cottage in the black bog she found it more lonesome within
than without; and running in affright to the Dohertys, its far-off
nearest neighbours, she heard the worst news. Mrs Doherty, looking
scared and solemn, related how, the evening after Rose left, Mrs Behan
had asked them to take in Maggie for a little while, as she herself was
real bad and going into Ballymoyle Infirmary. And how on that day week,
when Jim Doherty had tramped over to inquire for her, he heard that she
was dead and buried. “Took very suddint, the crathur, God be good to
her!” Mrs Doherty said, “or to be sure she’d send word by some manner
of manes to poor Maggie that she set such store by, and that’s sittin’
here in desolation in the corner ever since, as quiet as a bird hunted
out of its sivin sinses.”
Maggie did indeed look so wan and woebegone that Rose’s first thought
was: “She’d never ha’ been persuaded to come away wid me. If I had but
known I might ha’ promised to take her safe enough, instead of to be
vexin’ poor Granny wid goin’ against the notion; and I’d liefer than
a great deal I had so.” However, she was obliged to mingle active
exertions with the regret that made them all dreary and wearisome. She
could not afford to linger, lest her little fortune should actually, as
poor Granny had dreaded, dwindle away, leaving her without the means
of paying her cousin’s passage. That Maggie must now accompany her was
obvious, for “Who else would be mindin’ the girl?” and Maggie herself
had apparently no wishes one way or the other. So Rose hastened to make
their preparations before the waning autumn became stormier winter, and
the long amber rays, which seemed stooping to peer in under thatched
eaves at little low windows, should be all lost among clouds and mist.
One thing that she did gave some small consolation to Maggie and
herself. She bespoke a wooden cross for their grandmother’s grave from
Jim Doherty, who was a great hand at carpentry. Jim at first made some
demur about accepting the commission, on the grounds that he might
be “bothered to find the right grave there promiscuous in the Union
corner.” But in the end he consented, and refused to take a farthing
for his work, and promised to paint the cross a fine, strong pink, and
if possible at all to set it in the proper place, though about this he
still expressed doubts. So Rose entrusted Mrs Doherty with the key of
the deserted cabin till Mrs MacAteer could take possession of its few
effects, and she and Maggie said farewell to Kilgowran.
The cousins voyaged safely to New York, and were fortunate enough to
get situations there in the same household. One day, soon after Rose
had reported their arrival to Mrs Doherty at Kilgowran, she received
an Irish letter, which she and Maggie spelled out with bewildered
amazement at first, and finally with almost incredulous joy. It was
written by the Kilgowran schoolmaster, from the dictation evidently of
more than one person, which made its style rather involved and obscure,
as we may perceive:--
“Dear Rose, and Maggie, jewel machree, that has no call to be fretting
all the while. Sure, now, Rose, you needn’t be mad wid me, for the
only plan I could contrive to get you out of it was to take off wid
meself to the Infirmary as soon as I got your back turned, for then I
well knew you wouldn’t be long quitting yourself, and bringing little
Maggie wid you. So I bid Jim Doherty let on I was the ould woman they
were after burying there on Friday. But afraid of me life I was lest
he wouldn’t have the wit to be telling you the right lies.--Dear
Miss Rose Byrne, you can bear me witness that ne’er a word of truth
I told you good or bad, except saying I couldn’t tell the very place
the grave was, and small blame to me for that same, when Herself is
sitting here by her fire this minyit, and well able to be giving
impidence as ever she was in her life. But I mean to let you know I
didn’t go back of me promise about the cross, no fear. A grand little
one it is, and I have it painted as pink as a rose, the way it had a
right to be. Dear Miss Byrne, so when I brought it over to her just
now--”
“The big _stookawn_ he was to go do such a thing,” Rose commented on
reading this.
“--nothing else would suit her but I must stick it up for her on the
wall alongside of her dresser, and an iligant apparence it has. I may
say Mr Joseph Gogarty, the National School teacher, is in a great
admiration of it altogether. (I am glad to state that I consider the
memorial cross a neatly-made and tastefully-constructed article.--J.
G.)--Indeed now, Rose, yourself was a very good girl to think of
spending your money on it, if Jim Doherty would let you, and there
will I be keeping it, dry and convanient, till whenever I want it,
plase God; and then Jim Doherty will see there will be no mistake
about where it’s put in the burying-ground. And, Maggie, alanna, you
will be getting on finely in the States; and don’t be lonesome, me
jewel, for there do be no chances in Kilgowran, and sure the hins is
grand company to me. So no more at present from your grandmother,
Honoria Behan, and Jim Doherty.”
“Saints above, but herself’s the great rogue, glory be to goodness,”
Rose said when they had at last puzzled out the real state of affairs.
“And rightly she got the better of me that time, and quare fools she
made of the two of us, that were frettin’ ourselves distracted, and she
just waitin’ ready to flourish up out of her bed like an ould cricket
leppin’, and back again wid her into her little house as soon as she
had us safely landed on board. But all the same, it’s wonderin’ I am,
Maggie, if she isn’t apt to be lost entirely widout either of us.”
“I’ll save hard,” said Maggie. “Wid such a power of dollars in me wages
it won’t be a great while till I have enough to get back to her. Ah,
Rose dear, me heart’s cold to think of her sittin’ there wid that ould
pink cross stuck up on the wall. But, plase God, that’s where I’ll find
it yet when I get home to her; and then I’ll not be long takin’ it
down.”
And at the present time Maggie is still saving hard, and the pink cross
still hangs on the wall beside her grandmother’s dresser.
LOUGHNAGLEE
Mrs Molly Whelehan told the story to her grand-daughter, Helena Mahony,
much as she herself had heard it from her own grandmother, who, having
lived at the very time and place of its end, “had a right,” as Mrs
Whelehan said, “to know the whole of it.” They were seated on a fine
swarded bank by the northern shore of Loughnaglee, and resting, that
is to say Helena was resting, for her grandmother seemed just as fresh
and brisk as when they had set out two or three hours before, which
was absurd. For Helena had been quite lately sent to stay with her,
because a family conclave had decided that “the crathur was gettin’
a great age entirely, and too ould and feeble to be left any longer
livin’ her lone.” Whereas now, the day but one after Helena’s arrival,
her grandmother had nearly “tramped the two feet off of her,” gathering
rushes to patch the roof of the calf’s shed from breakfast-time till
noon.
Loughnaglee is set in level green land, with low shores, except at
its northern end, where a little hill range sends down a spur to the
water’s edge, overlooking it with a bold, furzy crag, lifted on a
pedestal of steep grass slopes. Beneath this run very tall blackthorn
hedges, which here enclose the dwindled lake-corner, turning to either
hand in symmetrically right lines and angles, so that it is like a
small court, with three high, thick walls. Its water-floor generally
lies in shadow, looking sombrely solid and opaque, as if paved with
black flags, even when the rest is all shimmering blue or silver.
Perhaps this gloomy aspect may have conspired with an echo born of the
cliff to suggest and foster the belief whence Loughnaglee has come
by its name--the Lake of the Cries: but no one has so far found or
invented any legend to explain its origin.
Wide shadow fell heavily on the water as the old woman and the girl sat
by it, close to the last sloe bush on the eastern shore; for although
it was midsummer and midday everything scowled back sympathetically and
unseasonably at the lowering cloud-canopy overhead. “If it’s trampin’
round Loughnaglee as often as meself you were,” Mrs Whelehan said as
they sat down and her grand-daughter complained of being “kilt,” “it’s
little enough you’d think of steppin’ as far as the Fivestones for a
bundle of rushes. But sure we can be restin’ here aisy for a bit, till
it’s time to go in and put on the pitaties. And bedad if any people was
livin’ all their lives beside it as long as I am, they wouldn’t have so
much talk out of them about the quare things there do be on the lough.
Ne’er a sign of them I seen anyway.”
“I wouldn’t suppose it was any quarer than e’er another little ould
lough,” said Helena, who being momentarily out of humour threw some
disparagement into her tone.
“For the matter of that,” replied the grandmother, promptly changing
front, “them that never set fut next nor nigh it till last Monday isn’t
very apt to have any great opinion about the quareness that might or
mightn’t be in it. Sure it’s much if they know the raison it got the
name Loughnaglee on it at all.”
“It had to be called some name, I should suppose,” said Helena, who was
still inclined to suppose perversely, “and one’s as good as another.”
“Well now, indeed and bedad, the people were fine fools if they’d no
better sort of raison than that when they called it the Lough of the
Cries in the Gaelic,” said Mrs Whelehan. “But there’s some could be
tellin’ you a different story, and a one that’s no lie either, to me
certain knowledge.”
“Could they so?” said Helena, who had been cooling her hands and face
with the clear water and felt her curiosity revive.
“But before ever that happint,” said Mrs Whelehan, “I was hearin’ tell
about the cries. For they do say that if a man’s anywheres convanient
to the lough, sittin’ here beside it, maybe, or up a bit on the hill,
and if he hears anythin’ cryin’ and callin’ him by his name, he may
depind there’s some harm after befallin’ the woman he sets the most
store by in this world, whoever she may be--his mother, or his wife, or
his child, or his sweetheart, just accordin’, though it’s far enough
away she was all the while.”
“To be sure, then, that’s rael quare,” said Helena. “I wonder is it the
truth?”
“You’ll be wonderin’ a long time before you make a bowl of stirabout
wid it,” Mrs Whelehan said oracularly, “but very belike your mammy was
tellin’ you agin now what happint me grandmother’s brother in the same
identical place we’re sittin’ in this minyit, I might say.”
“She was not,” said Helena. “No great talk of Loughnaglee she has these
times. Only a slip of a _girsheach_ she says she was and she gettin’
married and quittin’ out of it.”
“Herself hasn’t much nathur in her to be disremimberin’ it, if she was
twinty _girsheachs_. But I niver had any such great wish, so to spake,
for Biddy,” Mrs Whelehan said frankly. “She always took after her poor
father’s ould sister, Nellie Whelehan, that was as contrairy as a wild
hin. However, what happint me grandmother’s brother, Jim M‘Farlane, was
before my time, when they were all livin’ in the empty house fornint
me own, and the Cavanaghs were in the next one, that’s gone to ruin.
And the ould people were very wishful to be makin’ up a match wid Jim
M‘Farlane and Norah Cavanagh, the only daughter. Me grandmother said
she knew Norah had a likin’ ever for Jim, and Jim had nothin’ agin it,
till Mrs Cavanagh’s niece, Rose Moore, come to stop wid them, and then
he seemed takin’ a notion he might be better satisfied if he got her.
Just for the sake of variety, for me grandmother said she wasn’t any
nicer than Norah, unless that might be the raison. But too young he was
to be firm in his mind. However, he was betwixt and between, and they
had nothin’ settled this way or that way, when the two girls took it in
their heads one day to go pull sloes along the hedge here, that were
just turned black. It was the grand hedge for sloes, and bedad it’s
full of them this minyit, if they were ripe. The white blossom on it
does be a sight to behould at the turn of the winter, and the sloes do
be the size of young plums, wid a bloom on them you could write your
name in. Grand wine they make. So off they set in the mornin’, and when
they came here they found Jim M‘Farlane up on the hill there wid his
tarrier after rabbits, and they only passed him the time of day, and
that was all. And Rose went wid her basket along this lough side of the
hedge, and Norah over yonder”--Mrs Whelehan pointed across the smooth
dark water--“where there’s somethin’ of a steep bank.
“Well now, after a while Jim was mindin’ the dog that had him nearly
bothered altogether wid the barkin’ and yelpin’ it kep’ up at a rabbit
hole; but all the same it seemed to him he heard somethin’ callin’ his
name wid a woeful screech. And says he to himself: ‘That’s Rose Moore
about drowndin’ herself as sure as the sun’s in the sky.’ And off wid
him to the place he’d seen her goin’. But there she was, pullin’ away
on the field side of the hedge, and sorra a pin’s points amiss wid
her, and ne’er a bit of her was after callin’ him, or hearin’ anythin’
only the little dog barkin’ and yellin’. Howane’er he stood out that
some person was screechin’ in it, and they looked through the hedge
here to try was there any signs of Norah over there. And at first they
seen nothin’, but prisintly they noticed a white strake on a bush
opposite, like as if a bough was wrenched off it; and the next minyit
they seen a white strake agin’ in the black wather, and what was that
but poor Norah’s apern, and she floatin’ across to them on the set of
the current? So Jim got her on shore by some manner of manes, but the
breath was out of her body entirely. And the crathur had the thorn
bough clutched in her hand, the way they knew she was houldin’ on to it
till it broke, and callin’ to Jim, and he runnin’ off from her after
Rose Moore, that naught ailed in the world.”
“Then she needn’t lose her life only for him bein’ mistook that way?”
said Helena.
“She need not, goodness may pity her. And only for him havin’ the story
in his head about the callin’ it’s well enough he’d know Norah’s voice,
that he was used to all the days of his life. So if there’s no raison
for what people do be sayin’ about the lough, get me a one. There was
raison enough to drownd the poor girl anyhow. But what I hope in me
heart is that the crathur wasn’t seein’ Jim, and he startin’ off and
lavin’ her that thought so much of him, for the sake of goin’ to Rosey
Moore. She might aisy catch sight of him through the hedge leppin’ down
the hill, and ’twould be fit to break her heart.”
“Sure if she was to be drownded the next minyit, that ’ud be the less
matter,” said Helena. “’Twould make no differ to her then.”
“It’s little the likes of you or anybody else knows what mightn’t make
a differ,” said her grandmother. “Some folks do be sayin’ she didn’t
die contint--God be good to her--and wasn’t restin’ aisy. I mind
meself hearin’ ould Christy Nolan and Judy Dunne sayin’ that long ago
they seen--’Twas about the time of Jim and Rose’s weddin’, for they
got married after all; but me grandmother said Rose wouldn’t look at
him for a great while she was that mad wid him for lettin’ Norah be
drownded.”
“What did they see?” said Helena.
“Ah, me dear, accordin’ to my opinion there wasn’t an atom of truth
in it. The Cavanaghs were very dacint, respectable people. I niver
heard tell of e’er another one of them walkin’. And forby that, more
betoken, look at all the years I’m livin’ alongside the lough, and
sight nor light I seen of e’er such a thing, in the daytime at anyrate,
and nobody has any call to be rovin’ about in the night. If they see
anythin’ quare then, they’ve thimselves to thank for it. I don’t
believe--”
“Och, what was that?” Helena gripped her grandmother’s arm and shrank
behind her, as a croaking chuckle approached them, breaking into a
laughter-like skirl, while a snowy gleam appeared, crossing over the
murky water.
“Sure only the big gull,” said Mrs Whelehan, pointing up to the wide
white wings as they sailed by. “But it’s no good sign for the weather
when that sort come streelin’ in so far from the say, and bedad I think
there’s a shower blowin’ up on the win’ this instant. So we’d do better
to be stirrin’ ourselves, till we get home dry.”
Indeed the first large drops were stamping circles on the capable
water, and ripples were rising and reeds bending to rub them out, as
Mrs Whelehan went with Helena home. The old woman was considering
that she must fetch in a creel of turf before the day turned out too
entirely soft on her. But her grand-daughter’s thoughts were occupied
somewhat fearfully with the story she had just been told. It seemed
to her that life at lonely Loughnaglee would henceforth have one more
shadow, thrown by the fate of Norah Cavanagh, who “didn’t die contint.”
MORIARTY’S MEADOW
For some time Johnny Quin of Letterard had been looking over the low
stone wall at his bit of young oats, which you could almost see grow in
the midsummer sunshine, when he was pulled by the sleeve, and, turning
round, beheld little Joe O’Hea with a grey kid tugging at the other end
of a string.
“Johnny, man,” said Joe, “couldn’t you take and give the baste a
lift up there for me? She’d get grand grazin’ on it.” Joe spoke
remonstrantly, as if Johnny had been neglecting an obvious duty; and he
pointed to the roof of Felix Moriarty’s cabin, which stood just across
the lane.
The cabin was very small, with one tiny window-pane in its mud-walls,
which were deeply weather-stained under the eaves, and from which the
whitewash had worn off, leaving large brown patches. But its worst
point, considering it as a dwelling-house, was the roof, for the thatch
undulated in hillocks and hollows, and also bore a luxuriant crop of
grass, almost as long and thick and green as the thriving oats over the
way. This seemed to little Joe a desirable pasture for his kid, whose
browsings along the stone-dyked lane were but scanty, and hence his
appeal to his taller friend.
Johnny, however, was of a different opinion, and replied: “Sure not at
all. The crathur’s over small sized to be cockin’ up that height off
the ground. It’s breakin’ her four legs she’s apt to be before you’d
get her down safe. Or belike she’d be losin’ herself in the long grass.
Or maybe it’s puttin’ his roof up for a meadow Moriarty is all the
while. Ay, bedad, you may depind that’s what he’s doin’. So just keep
along the road wid her steady, me son, and niver mind anythin’ growin’
where she’s no call to be trespassin’.” Accordingly Joe and the kid
sauntered on, leaving Johnny to his oats.
But Johnny’s attention had caught on Felix Moriarty’s thatch, and did
not disengage itself quickly. His own pleasantry, too, about Moriarty’s
meadow had taken his fancy, and he continued to repeat and elaborate
it in his thoughts. At last, the forenoon being long and employment
scarce, he actually went so far as to climb, sickle in hand, up on the
waving roof, where he was presently slashing vigorously.
“Bedad now,” he said, surveying the tufts which had fallen round him,
“I’m after knockin’ that same down in fine style: I did so, and wasn’t
long about it either.” Nor did he stop here.
Having raked together the crop, and added a few bundles of grass from
the bank, he carefully built up on an inconveniently sloping base a
symmetrical little cock. This he secured with a rope scientifically
twisted of the withered bents along the border of his oats, and then,
jumping down noisily into the lane, contemplated his handiwork with
complacent pride. Only one element was wanting in his satisfaction with
it. There were no spectators to share his amusement and admire his
wit. The key of the locked cabin door lurked hidden in some crevice of
the thatch, for Felix Moriarty was away at the haymaking in a district
where work seemed less slack. Nobody was about in the neighbouring
fields. Even Joe O’Hea and the kid were out of sight round the corner.
“Sure now it’s a grand joke,” Johnny repeated to himself more than
once, “and it looks as comical as anythin’ sittin’ there up over the
man’s door as if it consaited it was in the middle of a sivin-acre
field. Anybody ’ud be laughin’ at it that seen it, passin’ by.”
But of passers-by there appeared to be small prospect, as this lonely
upland lane led no-whither in particular, and the nearest dwelling was
merely his own cottage, the topmost thatch of which peered just visibly
over the edge of a long slope.
“It ’ill be twinty pities,” Johnny declared, “twinty pities and a half
if nobody sees it before it’s blew away wid the win’.” At that moment
all these pities sadly threatened to come about.
Still Johnny had a daring and ingenious turn of mind. Early the next
morning, in Rathbeg, a village some few miles from Letterard, much
excitement was awakened by the discovery of certain handbills which
had been posted up on walls and doors in several conspicuous places.
They were white foolscap sheets, written upon in a large round hand to
the following effect:--
_Men of Rathbeg! Assemble in your Thousands this Saturday evening to
Mow the Meadow of the evicted Tenant, Felix Moriarty, on the Town-land
of Gortramakilleen at Letterard. Down with Tyrants!_
These placards must have been affixed during the night, and nobody
in Rathbeg knew anything about the matter, a secrecy which, together
with the shortness of the notice given, suggested that some peculiar
urgency in Felix Moriarty’s affairs made it expedient to render
him the required assistance without incurring the observation of
the constabulary. Such a state of things was not by any means
unprecedented, and would in itself strongly dispose the men of Rathbeg
to be active on his behalf, although none of them were acquainted
with Moriarty except vaguely by name, or indeed knew much more about
little, out-of-the-way Letterard than that it had for proprietor an
ill-reputed landowner. On the other hand most people were just then
too busy getting in their hay to spare easily even the fag-end of the
lingering daylight, especially as the unsettled aspect of the weather
made every dry hour doubly precious. And to be sure, it was a long step
from Rathbeg to Letterard. Hence there were abundant materials, for
the debate which was carried on in and about Finucane’s public for a
considerable time after the finding of the summons.
Theig Ahern, the village orator, urged eloquently that it would be a
good job to lend anybody a helping hand “against the likes of such a
notorious, ould, black-hearted, naygurly, exterminatin’, widow-robbin’,
childer-starvin’ miscreant of a land-grabber as ould Warden, himself
and his sheriff’s writs.” But then Timothy Dolan argued briefly, yet
effectively, that there were plenty of as good jobs, and better, to be
done in their own bits of fields, without tramping half a dozen miles
over the country after them. The hearers who said “Ay, bedad,” and
“Thrue for you,” to this sentiment seemed nearly as numerous as those
who received it with murmurs of “mane-spirited” and “unmanly.” So the
issue remained doubtful.
Meanwhile, the originator of the discussion, seated at his favourite
post on the wall of his Letterard oat-field, was speculating about the
result. Not many hours had passed since Johnny Quin had made his way
home under the waning moonlight, through dewy fields, from his stealthy
bill-sticking at Rathbeg. He had himself composed and written and
copied the notices over-night in the emptied National schoolroom, with
some assistance from his old friend, Peter Cleary, the teacher, to whom
he did not communicate their contents. Mr Cleary, however, though he
preferred to be discreetly ignorant, may have guessed at their purport
from the words which he was occasionally called upon to spell. “Och
not at all, Johnny. There does be but one _r_ in ‘tyrant,’ and all the
_i’s_ you have is a _y_ and an _a_. You always made an oncommon bad
offer at the orthography.”
And now Johnny, blinking half-drowsily in the sunshine, spent most
of the day in looking forward hopefully to the success of his plot.
It had occurred to him yesterday, when enjoying his own wittiness
embodied in the absurd haycock, and feeling how much that enjoyment
would be enhanced by the presence of spectators. To assemble these by
a stratagem which would “raise the laugh on them” for coming was a
project with a twofold charm, and it fully occupied his mind from the
moment of its first conception until he had evolved and, so far as lay
in his power, carried out all the details.
If he had been asked what he expected to gain in case things happened
as he hoped, he might have truthfully replied, a fine shindy entirely,
for that outcome was undoubtedly uppermost in his anticipations.
Suppose that a dozen or so of the Rathbeg men were moved by his bogus
summons to tramp over with their scythes in the evening, and, upon
arriving, found their job was nothing more than simply the removal
of the pygmy cock from its ridiculous site. “Bejabers, it’s ragin’
mad they all ’ill be as sure as sure,” Johnny said, chuckling as he
rehearsed the scene. “‘Where’s Moriarty’s meadow that’s evicted?’ says
they, ‘and that we’re come to mow for?’ ‘Is it, where is it?’ says I.
‘Musha, where else but here,’ I says--for on the roof I’ll be--‘up over
your fools’ heads. And I’ll bet me brogues it’s the quarest little
meadow ever a man was evicted out of,’ says I. Leppin’ they’ll be.”
About the incidents of this promising fray Johnny felt no anxiety
at all. He did not, of course, propose to encounter the exasperated
visitors quite single-handed. The stir of their advent would, he knew,
bring plenty of the neighbours flocking to see what was up, and there
would be no lack of Letterard lads to side with him. What did cause
him some uneasiness was the doubt whether any party would actually
come. His appeal might have been disregarded. The Rathbeg farmers
might be too busy for such expeditions; or they might know enough
about Letterard affairs to be aware that there was in reality no talk
of evicting Felix Moriarty, and so perceive the hoax. For this reason
Johnny kept his own council, lest the failure of his joke should “raise
the laugh” on _him_.
But while the sunset was still unfurling in the west a wide fan of
pink-flushed feathery cloudlets, which seemed to be waving off a misty
little moon, like a white rose-leaf, fluttering up out of the faint
green east, Johnny’s fears were dispersed by what he deemed a very
joyful sight. From his coign of vantage he espied coming up the lane
something which he presently ascertained to be a troop of men, several
among whom carried scythes or sickles. And, more than this, along with
them moved a brilliant blue and scarlet object, drawn by a pair of
horses.
“Glory be! if it isn’t a mowin’-machine they’re after bringin’!” he
said in high delight. “Well now, that bangs Banagher.” And he laughed
so uncircumspectly that he almost lost his footing on the slope of
Moriarty’s thatch, to which he had mounted. A mowing-machine it was,
the fact being that Theig Ahern, the orator, in the absence of his
elder brother, a well-to-do farmer, had taken upon himself, contrary to
advice, to borrow it for the demonstration against the evictors.
With his torn straw hat flapping in the gusty breeze, Johnny stood
up tall beside his dumpy haycock, and surveyed the approach of the
cavalcade, smiling his broadest smile. But there were no smiles on
the faces that looked up at him. The party from Rathbeg were by this
time distinctly out of humour. They had failed to get any satisfactory
information about Moriarty’s meadow from the following of unoccupied
gossoons whom their progress had attracted, and this led them to
apprehend that they had somehow blundered about the road. No suspicion
of a trick had as yet occurred to them; but they were not by any means
in a mood to take one in good part.
Therefore when Johnny, grinning more broadly than ever, replied to
inquiries: “Is it Moriarty’s meadow you was lookin’ for? Sure amn’t I
meself standin’ on it before your eyes? And a grand big one it is.
Only I dunno will yous find it very handy drivin’ your pair-horse yoke
into it. Maybe it’s lucky I done the mowin’ meself,” his answer evoked
looks and language sufficiently threatening to make him glance round
rapidly, singling out the friendly faces, as he took a firmer grip
of the sturdy blackthorn, which he had providently hidden behind the
haycock.
An excited parley ensued, growing momentarily angrier and louder, while
Farmer Ahern’s fiery chestnuts fumed and fidgeted, spurning the rough
road, and flashing the set blades of their machine in restless starts
to and fro. Then on a brief pause a voice rose clear and shrill. It
proceeded from little Dan Molloy, who had perched himself on a wall
adjoining the cabin, and it said,--
“Sure, now, if _he’s_ so fond of mowin’”--Dan pointed to
Johnny--“mightn’t you take your fine yoke in there”--he pointed across
to the open gate of Johnny’s oat-field--“and give it a turn through his
bit of oats?”
This suggestion, which was received with an assenting laugh, roused
acute horror in Johnny, such peril did it threaten to his thriving
crop, the very core of his hope and pride. Down he hurled himself
with a clatter to prevent the outrage, aiming, as he passed, at the
mischievous visage of Dan Molloy a resentful cuff, which Dan adroitly
ducked. But Johnny’s action only precipitated the event he was
dreading. For the restless horses, scared by his abrupt rush towards
their heads, broke away from all control and bolted straight into the
field.
Alas for the lovely young oats as four pairs of galloping hoofs and a
pair of wide-rimmed iron wheels burst wildly into them, followed by
a throng of trampling feet which wrought hardly less grievous havoc.
Every moment was destroying among the soft green blades and haulms
with their silken ears the work of many days’ sunshine and dewy air,
when suddenly, before the careering runaways had been brought to a
standstill, another yet more alarming object diverted the attention of
their pursuers.
Johnny’s reserve on the subject of his jest had known one exception,
very unfortunately for his confidante’s peace of mind. She was his
mother, a little old widow woman, prematurely aged and crippled by
rheumatism, so that she had to be carried to and fro between her bed
and her armchair, her only journeys. Her son Johnny was most kind to
her. It had been with the best intentions that he enlivened their
morning meal by telling her all about the grand trick he had just
played on the Rathbeg lads, and how infuriated they would be when they
landed over with their scythes to cut nothing good or bad, and what
a laugh it would raise on them, and what a splendid row was certain
to follow. “It’s much,” he said, “if somebody’s head isn’t broke over
it.” And then he had gone off whistling in the highest spirits, leaving
little Mrs Quin a prey to the blackest forebodings.
All the long, lonely day she brooded uninterruptedly upon the dreadful
possibilities of the coming encounter, in which crooked, shining
scythe-blades, wielded by rash and wrathful hands, might play a
part as fatal as if they were flashes from a murky cloud. “They’ll
be murdherin’ one another up there,” she said to herself, “and me
sittin’ here all the while like an ould tabby-cat in comfort by the
chimney-corner, and no abler to do a hand’s turn agin’ it.”
Johnny’s fear that nobody might come formed her sole hope, and of
that she was bereft about the pink sunset time, when little Joe O’Hea
ran in to her with a jug of sour milk and the news that he had just
seen a great lot of men carrying scythes, and a quare big yoke of a
mowin’-machine going along up the lane towards Felix Moriarty’s. At
these tidings Mrs Quin’s heart sank. Then her mind swiftly caught at
and grasped a desperate resolution. “Joe, sonny,” she said to Joe,
who was on the point of racing off for another view of the remarkable
machine, “do you see that bucket of wather?” It was a zinc bucket set
brimful near the door. “I want you,” she continued, “to take a couple
of standin’ leps in the middle of it.”
“But sure, ma’am, wouldn’t I be splashin’ it all over the floor and
dhrowndin’ everythin’?” Joe objected, amazed.
“Never you mind, sonny; do as I bid you like a good boy. Lep away, and
I’ll give you a penny,” said Mrs Quin. Whereupon Joe, although still
puzzled, by no means loth, did jump so energetically that the contents
of the bucket were speedily dispersed in sparkling showers, a bountiful
share of which thoroughly drenched his own garments.
“That’s an iligant child,” Mrs Quin said approvingly, “ne’er a dhry
stitch there’s on you at all. Now come here till I tell you what else
I’m wantin’ you to do. You know, Joey, it’s a terrible wicked thing,”
she went on impressively, as he stood by her, dripping and expectant,
“it’s a terrible wicked, dangerous thing for childer to get meddlin’
wid the fire.”
“_I_ don’t ever meddle wid it,” Joe hastened to protest. “Biddy and
Paddy does be at it of an odd while, and I do be biddin’ them let it
alone and not be burnin’ themselves up.”
“To be sure, avic, to be sure, so you would. But now, just for this
very once, and you’re to not ever go do such a thing again _at all_
in the len’th of your life’s days, I want you--may goodness forgive
me--to take the little matchbox you’ll find behind the blue jug on the
dresser, and run out to the back of the house, where you can aisy raich
to the thatch from the high bank of the field, and strike a few of the
blue heads of the matches, jewel, on the rough side of the box--och but
I’m the ould sinner!--and stick them lightin’ into the thatch here and
there, as if you was stickin’ pins in a pincushion, and you’ll see the
fine flare-up there’ll be directly. It’s as dry as tinder.”
This commission was surprisingly to the taste of six-year-old Joe.
“And what more’ll I do after that, ma’am?” he said, eager for further
agreeable instructions. “There’s the pigsty--”
“Sure, then, you might be runnin’ up the field and screechin’ fire and
thieves and all manner,” said Mrs Quin; “it’s a sort of game, you see.”
But as Joe gleefully darted out, armed with the small yellow box, she
shook her head stiffly. “Och now meself’s the wicked ould woman. But
deed it’s murdherin’ themselves they’d be--and Johnny. And if I sent
them only a message,” she argued, “sure they might be apt to think
the crathur was romancin’, and just keep on fightin’; but seein’s
believin’. And the child’s drippin’ wet, forby his clothes bein’
woollen every thread. He couldn’t set himself alight anyhow. May
goodness forgive me. It’s killin’ me his poor mother had a right to be
for puttin’ such divilment in the crathur’s head.”
So we can easily understand how it came to pass that in the midst of
chasing the driverless mowing-machine several people became aware of a
thick smoke column rising on the edge of the slope below them, and of
red flames shooting up through the blue cloud, growing rapidly stronger
and brighter in the faded daylight. At the same time they observed a
small figure rushing about with shrill shrieks in the adjacent field.
Joe, in fact, had been so much scared by the sudden huge blaze of the
dry thatch that he performed his screaming lustily.
Among the first to see was Johnny Quin. “Mercy around!” he said,
“there’s our house blazin’ wild, and Herself inside it.”
He outstripped all the others in their rush down-hill, and reached
the scene of the conflagration none too soon, for the kitchen was a
smother of smoke, through which wisps of fiery straw had already begun
to drop fiercely about the helpless old woman as she sat distracted by
conflicting terrors. She could hardly realise her relief when she found
herself where she could breathe and see, and in the arms of her Johnny
safe and sound.
Nevertheless the mother and son spent that night uncomfortably enough,
huddled in a corner of their devastated dwelling, under an extemporised
shelter of potato-sacks, while all around them hummed and plashed
through their charred rafters the drops of a downpour which had arrived
just too late to save their roof. Johnny sat in mournful meditation.
“Well now,” he said at last, “it’s quare bad luck. There’s me oats
destroyed, that was grand, and the machine smashed, and the horse’s leg
cut woeful, and our bit of good thatch ruinated over our heads--and all
wid intendin’ a joke.”
“It’s on your knees you ought to be, me lad,” said Mrs Quin, the
incendiary, “thankin’ goodness that the feet of you aren’t raped off
wid them hijjis slashin’ scythes, and meself not burned into ashes and
cinders schemin’ to purvint yous doin’ murdher, instead of talkin’
about bad luck.”
But Johnny’s gratitude remained undemonstrative. “I’m thinkin’,” he
said, “it’s a fool’s work to be raisin’ a laugh on any people. For you
never can rightly tell what else mayn’t take and rise up along wid it.
Ay, bedad--and apter than not somethin’ you won’t like.”
DELAYED IN TRANSMISSION
When anybody in Meenaclochran gives a party, the word which goes
round to bid the neighbours often has far to travel over the wide
bog-land, and is conveyed by very miscellaneous messengers, all manner
of wayfarers being pressed into the service. This was especially
often the case with the Nolans and the M‘Nultys, two of the most
sociably-disposed families in the place, and living remotely at
opposite ends of the spacious and lonesome Cregganmore bog. Both
households, however, comprised lively young people, while both were
a shade or so more prosperous in their farming than is common in
that district, and owned the warmest hearths and the widest floors.
Consequently, among circumstances thus propitious, it was not likely
that the obstacles merely of long miles and rough walking would prove
insuperable when either wished to let the other know “there would be
dancing in it” on such or such a night. As they were on most friendly
terms they of course took care that the dates of their entertainments
should not clash; but everybody knows how difficult it occasionally is
to prevent this, and not long ago, by a chapter of those accidents
which will sometimes happen, Dinny Breen and John Hickey met on
Tackaberry’s Bridge, Dinny charged with an invitation from the Nolans
to the M‘Nultys, and John with one from the M‘Nultys to the Nolans,
both for the same Saturday evening.
Tackaberry’s Bridge is about half way between the two white farmhouses,
humping itself up in an abrupt, ungainly loop, like a travelling
caterpillar, over the Murna River, which flows through the middle of
the bog. Though roughly built it shows more traces of design, such as
it is, than the rest of the road, which seems just a track worn by feet
choosing the firmest ground as they go to and fro. Stepping-stones
occur here and there, and are found convenient by pedestrians in soft
weather, but naturally tend to discourage any other kind of traffic.
As Dinny Breen sat now on the low parapet under the only little tree,
a stooping willow, visible far and wide, he looked down into the clear
brown water and said: “If the both of them has company axed for the
one night, it stands to raison that naither of them could be goin’ out
in any case. So there’s no great good in me trampin’ on all the way to
M‘Nulty’s.”
“There is not, bedad,” said John Hickey. “Nor in meself, for the matter
of that, to be mindin’ about lavin’ word wid the Nolans.”
“Because,” said Dinny, “this is a very handy day to be borryin’ the gun
off Pat Kelly, when we have the dogs along, and the polis are away wid
themselves to Loughmore Petty Sessions. A race’s runnin’ on the whole
of them.”
“True for you; they are so bedad,” said John.
The last-named consideration was an important one, owing to the fact
that neither the proposed borrowers nor lender happened to possess
a licence, which made immunity from the chance of encounters with
inquisitive patrols appear a highly desirable feature in an afternoon’s
sport. Accordingly, the opportunity was pronounced too good to be
thrown away, and the two faithless youths were soon happily engaged
among bogholes and tussocks, and heathery boulders and golden-burning
furze bushes, with no further thought of Nolans or M‘Nultys.
Anyone whose experience has lain in places like Meenaclochran will
understand how improbably large an amount of good luck would be
needed to keep the news of an entertainment from the ears of an
uninvited neighbour. No such exceptional quantity intervened on this
occasion. Very little _contrariness_ of things, on the other hand,
commonly suffices to ensure the worst possible complexion being put
on the matter; and that was now amply supplied. A few unfortunate
remarks from tactless or ill-disposed acquaintances, a few slight
misrepresentations, inadvertent or otherwise, and the thing was done.
The seeds of offence were safely sown and might be trusted to thrive
apace. Only a short growing space was wanted to ripen the conviction
alike of Nolans and M‘Nultys that they had been treated by each
other with black ingratitude, if not insulted outrageously; and their
firm belief in their wrongs was supersaturated with bitterness. The
mood of that goddess excluded from the wedding feast, or of that
fairy forgotten at the christening, may well have been enviable in
comparison, since all the world has heard tell how they gave expression
to their resentment with a satisfactory thoroughness far beyond the
reach of any little farming folk “looking as sulky as a pig” at one
another on a lonely Donegal bog. Although the latter had certainly no
wish to conceal their state of mind, pride forbade them to manifest
it in public by utterances more explicit than enigmatical innuendoes,
coupled with the cast of countenance aforesaid; and this helped to keep
the origin of the grievance in obscurity, thereby lessening the chances
of an explanation.
Consequently, before many weeks went by, all Meenaclochran had begun to
remark with interest that “Nolans and M‘Nultys weren’t so very great
these times, whatever ailed them;” and soon afterwards it became clear
that they were “black out altogether.”
The estrangement may perhaps have gratified two or three
mischief-makers; it undoubtedly caused much distress to more than one
of the persons most concerned. Generally speaking, it was regarded as
an inconvenient and untoward occurrence, and if it had made a newspaper
paragraph, might have been said, with more than average truth, to
have thrown a gloom over the whole parish. On nobody, however, did it
produce less effect than on the pair who had brought it about. Dinny
Breen and John Hickey, being but slightly acquainted with either of
the fronted parties, and finding their chief pleasure in the company
of their terriers, stravading over the hills and bogs, were equally
ignorant and unconcerned about this detail in the social affairs of
their neighbourhood. They might have stated accurately that it was “all
one to them so long as they could be gettin’ after the rabbits, and
birds and troutses.”
But as the autumn waned into winter, diminishing their opportunities
for those favourite pursuits, they found themselves impelled to devise
other pastimes. And one tedious morning in Christmas week, said Dinny
to John: “D’you mind the day a while ago you and me was bringin’ round
word of a party to Nolans and M‘Nultys, and divil a bit of it we
brought them at all?”
“I do so, bedad,” said John. “That was the time we got the three brace
of snipe up at the end of the lough, and took them home along wid the
rabbits sittin’ in the middle of two big loads of bracken, and me hayro
of war at the barracks”--he referred to the police sergeant--“lookin’
over the gate at us and we goin’ by.”
“Because,” said Dinny, “I was thinkin’ why wouldn’t we be bringin’ it
to them now? Better late than never, as the man said when he ate the
bad egg. We needn’t be tellin’ them what Saturday it was, so they’ll
never suppose but it’s the next, that’s St Stephen’s Day. I’d like to
see what ould Anastasia M‘Nulty would say to it. There’s apt to be some
quare talk out of her, for Mick Gahan was tellin’ me she’s ragin’ mad
agin all the Nolans this while back, whatever’s took her.”
“Lookin’ as bitter as sut at one another they are this long time, sure
enough. Troth now, I wouldn’t wonder if the whole pack of them would be
leppin’ over it,” John said hopefully. “I’m passin’ by Nolan’s place
this evenin’, and I could as aisy as not look in.”
“And I’ll leg it over to M‘Nulty’s,” said Dinny, “for I might as well
be doin’ one thing as another.”
The two friends executed their design without difficulty, but, so far
as John Hickey was concerned, with somewhat disappointing results. For
when he put his head in at the Nolans’ back door, he saw nobody except
Mrs Peter, rolling out a flour cake on the table, and in reply to his
communication all she said was: “Musha, I hope they’re well,” with an
air of the utmost composure. Then to his inquiry whether he should
convey an answer for her, she rejoined simply and placidly: “Ah, go and
fish.” So that he retired with a sense of failure.
Dinny Breen’s adventures were more interesting as he found at home Mrs
Anastasia M‘Nulty who received his misleading message with a tirade
which almost came up to his expectations in vehemence and vigour. She
ended an impassioned critique upon the characters and conduct of the
Nolan family, past and present, by requesting him to tell them from her
that unless they “kep’ their impidence to themselves they would be very
apt to get it back, along wid somethin’ they might happen not to like,”
which Dinny solemnly promised to do. Whereupon, as he was passing the
haggart gate, out after him sped Molly M‘Nulty, who must have been
running along the other side of the dyke on purpose to intercept him,
and who breathlessly explained that “he needn’t repeat e’er a word her
grandmother was after sayin’, for she’d seemed in a quare cross humour
the whole day, and didn’t mane anythin’ at all, good or bad.” So Dinny
more honestly pledged himself on no account to deliver Mrs M‘Nulty’s
refusal.
Now these things would scarcely have helped the most acute and
furthest-sighted to predict what did actually happen on that next
Saturday evening, or to account for it with any certainty. Who, indeed,
can say how it came about? But whether through the genial influence
of the season, or a limited choice of gaieties, through amity or
_ennui_, _Liebe oder Langeweile_, the fact is that in a moonless
obscurity between seven and eight o’clock two parties of people, coming
from opposite directions, rushed almost into one another’s arms on
Tackaberry’s Bridge as they fled towards the willow tree for shelter
from a shower of rattling hailstones.
“Musha, good gracious! and is it yourself, Mrs M‘Nulty, ma’am?” said
Julia Nolan, becoming aware of whom she had jostled against. “Maybe
it’s too soon we are, then, steppin’ over to your place?”
“Pather Nolan, begorrah--I didn’t expec’ to see you till we got to the
farm,” said Art M‘Nulty. “And what way at all are you facin’ the now?”
Meanwhile Peter’s eldest son was shaking hands interminably with Art’s
youngest daughter, and saying: “And how’s yourself this long time,
Molly asthore? Sure I haven’t seen a sight of you for a month of
Sundays.”
“Somebody’s after makin’ fools of us, that’s the truth,” declared Joe
M‘Nulty when facts had been stated.
“And a dale our best plan then,” said Peter Nolan, “is to not be made
fools of. Just step along home wid us the whole of yous, the way you
was intindin’, and ’twill be a comical thing if we can’t get a drop out
of the bottle, and a scrape off of the fiddle handy enough.”
Well and good, as the old _shanachies_ say. Peter’s suggestion was
unanimously adopted; and since shortly afterwards the neighbours were
not only remarking how “M‘Nultys and Nolans had patched it up,” but
were also agreeably excited by the prospect of “young Pather Nolan and
Molly M‘Nulty gettin’ married at the Shrove,” we may perhaps regard the
results of this second misdeed on the part of Dinny and John as an
exception to the rule that two wrongs don’t make a right. Still, by way
of a better moral, we should bear in mind that only for the opportune
clatter of the hail-shower the consequences would probably have been
widely different. For if the two families had passed each other by
unbeknownst in the dark, to arrive cold and wet at empty, shut-up
houses, it is hard to say what complications might not have ensued. The
chances certainly are that no such wedding would have taken place at
the Shrovetide, if indeed it had not been put off hopelessly for ever
and a day. So great are the perils that environ practical jokers and
their victims.
FOR COMPANY
Larry Behan, stepping over from Loughmore to Clochranbeg, a few perches
short of the Silver Lane met with Joe Hedican, leading his sorrel mare,
and said to him: “What at all ails yous?”
“Is it what ails us?” said Joe.
“Sure what else?” said Larry. “And the mare in a lather and a thrimble,
and yourself comin’ along as unstuddy as a thing on wires. Lookin’ fit
to drop down of a hape together the two of yous are.”
“And why wouldn’t we have a right to be?” said Joe, “and ourselves just
after behouldin’ what we won’t either of us be the better for till the
day we’re waked.”
“Bedad then, that same’s the plisant talk for me to be hearin’, wid
the light darkenin’ before me every minyit,” said Larry, “And so it’s
wakin’ th’ ould mare you’ll be one of these days, says you? Well now,
I niver heard the like of that. But, to be sure, I’m not very long in
the County Donegal. I hope you’ll send me word of the buryin’, for I’d
be sorry to miss it. ’Tis the comical notion, if you come to considher
it.”
He laughed, upon considheration, with much noise, at anyrate, but as
the mare rolled her eyes wildly at him, and Joe only shook his head
the more ominously, he withdrew abruptly from their unsympathetic
countenances, though he persisted in his guffaw. When he had gone half
a dozen yards he faced round and shouted: “Might you happen to know
is the Garveys’ boat in yet?” Joe, however, was just mounting, and he
plunged off at full speed, without seeming to hear. “Fine floundherin’
and bouncin’ about he has, and be hanged to him, himself and his ould
baste,” Larry said with indignation. “If I thought the Garveys were
like to be stoppin’ out late I’d lave it till to-morra, and turn
back now, but I couldn’t tell I mightn’t lose the job altogether wid
delayin’.”
This was not the risk he chose to run, and he presently reached the
entrance of the high-banked, winding boreen, whence he threw a look
backwards in hopes that some fellow-travellers might be catching him
up. Nothing, however, moved on the lonely moorland road behind him
except the gallop of Joe Hedican’s horse hurling itself in the wrong
direction. So he went forward without the prospect of any company.
The Silver Lane twists through an undulating sea of softly heaped-up
mounds, scantily clad with bent-grass, pale and dry, and dark,
harsh-textured furzes. These are rooted in almost pure sand, silvery
hued, yet under strong sunbeams yielding dim golden glimmers that give
a faint purple to the shadow in its curves and folds. But the touch
of this March evening’s twilight left it all cold white and grey. It
lies deep and powdery on the narrow roadway, so that a man has not even
the sound of his own footsteps to reassure him, should he be disposed
to feel lonesome and apprehensive. Larry Behan was feeling both as he
passed the second sharp turn of the lane and came to a place where a
crevice-like path pierced the sandhill on his left. Here he noticed
several huge hoof-prints, some of them impressed with violence upon the
low buttresses and ledges of the banks, which, in the ordinary course
of things, no horse would have trodden.
“Hereabouts it is they seen whatever it was frighted them,” he said to
himself, “and set the mare prancin’ and dancin’. ’Twas the quare capers
she had. Between us and harm--look where she flounced right across the
road, and scraped herself up agin the furze bush: her hair’s thick on
it.”
He was hastening on, longing and dreading to be round the next corner,
when he heard close by a sound--such a homely, commonplace one that he
experienced hardly a moment of panic before out of the little by-path
ran a very small boy, swinging a large tin can. As a general rule Larry
would have seen nothing particularly attractive about the black-headed,
bare-footed, flannel-petticoated gossoon, and would probably have
allowed him to pass on unaccosted. But in the present circumstances he
could have desired no better company, for an innocent child is the
most efficacious safeguard possible when uncanny things are about.
Another encouraging reflection also occurred to him immediately: “’Twas
that now, and divil a thing else scared the two of them--the little
brat skytin’ by, clatterin’ his can, and the light shinin’ off it
on a suddint.” Still, this view of the matter, though plausible and
rational, was not quite certain enough to justify him in letting slip
the chance of an escort, and he therefore set about engaging the child
in conversation. He did so rather clumsily, for lack of the familiarity
with children’s society which would have enabled him to fill up the gap
between thirty odd and five years old with appropriate small-talk.
“Is it goin’ for water you was, sonny?” he said.
“She sent me to the well again,” said the gossoon, stopping his trot
and pointing up the little path to a tangle of briars and long grass in
a slight hollow.
“And is it gone dry on you?” said Larry, looking into the empty can.
The reply was a turning of it upside down to show a crack that ran for
several inches round the bottom rim. “I can put the top of me littlest
finger right through it,” the gossoon said and proved. “It won’t hould
e’er a sup at all. And the big jug’s broke too.”
“That’s a bad job,” said Larry.
“There’s nothin’ she can be sendin’ now unless the black kettle itself,
that’s as much as I can do to lift when it’s empty inside, let alone
full--it’s the size of meself, bedad,” averred Larry’s protector.
“Sure then, she couldn’t ax you to be carryin’ that. Is it far you
come?” Larry inquired with some anxiety.
“I dunno,” said the gossoon. “But it’s a terrible ould baste of a big
kettle for always wantin’ to be filled. I hate the sight of it sittin’
there on the fire, wid the dirty ould sutty lid tryin’ to lep off it;
and then Herself does be bawlin’ to me to run out agin and bring the
water before it’s boiled dry. I do be sick and tired of goin’ up the
lane wid the heavy can pullin’ out the arm of me all the way back; fit
to destroy me, Katty Lonergan says it is. And a while ago I was givin’
it a couple of clumps agin’ a stone, where I seen a weeny crack comin’;
so maybe that’s what beginned it. But you needn’t let on, or I’ll be
kilt. Sorra a sup it ’ill hould.”
He dropped some small handfuls of the fine sand into the can, and
holding it up watched the grains sift slowly out. This experiment he
repeated more than once, and Larry, albeit in a hurry, looked on with
prudent patience. But at last he suggested: “Mightn’t she be mad if
you’re too long delayin’?”
“She does be mad most whiles,” his companion said philosophically, “and
I don’t so much mind if she won’t be sendin’ me back wid the ugly ould
kettle.”
However, he began to walk on, rattling a couple of cockle-shells
that had remained in the can. Larry kept close beside him, and meekly
waited when he occasionally stopped to pick up pebbles, or explore
rabbit-holes, or start sand-avalanches and cascades by tugging at the
colourless roots of the grasses in the slithery banks. It was a slow
progress, and the dusk had grown perceptibly greyer by the time that
Larry emerged from between them, at a place where the road branches,
on the right towards Clochranbeg, on the left towards the great Bog of
Greilish.
“And what way are you goin’, avic?” Larry inquired with less anxiety
now, having left behind the Silver Lane, which he knew to be the most
perilous stage of his journey.
The child pointed to a small cabin standing opposite, a stone’s throw
back from the road; a reply that somewhat surprised Larry. For even
through the gathering dimness the place looked quite ruinous and
deserted, with rifted roof, and rank weeds peering in at frameless
windows.
“She’s screechin’ to me,” said the gossoon, and darted off, making for
the door. Larry heard nothing but the cockle-shells clattering in the
can. “There’s no sort of people,” he said to himself, “would be livin’
in the likes of that, unless it was tinkers stoppin’ awhile. But I see
ne’er a sign of an ass or a cart in it. Well now, he was the quare
little imp--himself and the big kettle.”
A bit further on he overtook the Widow Nolan, who was going his way,
and as they walked along together he casually asked of her how the
Silver Lane had come by its bad name. “For,” he said, “since I’m in
this parish I met wid many that do be afeared of it, but what’s wrong
wid it I niver happint to hear tell.”
“Sure it was before my time,” said Mrs Nolan. “There used to be a
woman livin’ in th’ ould empty house you seen at this end of it, and a
little boy belongin’ to her, that she gave bad treatment to. Huntin’
him off she was continual to fetch her in big cans full of water out of
the well up near the far end of the lane, that you might be noticin’
goin’ by. So one day she sent him wid a great heavy lump of a kettle he
couldn’t rightly lift, and tryin’ to fill it the crathur over-balanced
himself and fell in after his head, and was got dead-drowned. And ever
since then it does be walkin’ there now and agin; and folks say there’s
no worser bad luck goin’ than for a body to see a sight of it, or to so
much as hear the clink of the can--well, man alive, what’s took you at
all?”
“The Lord have mercy on me this day,” said Larry, “and meself just
after walkin’ alongside of it, and talkin’ to it, the len’th of the
boreen.”
And thenceforward neither of them had any breath to spare for
conversation until they at last reached distant--still cruelly
distant--Clochranbeg.
THE END
EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COMPANY LTD
PRINTERS
Mr T. FISHER UNWIN’S
POPULAR NOVELS
=MR T. FISHER UNWIN= has much pleasure in announcing the publication of
the following Novels. Notes thereon will be found overleaf:--
SIX SHILLINGS EACH.
THE DAYSPRING. A Romance WILLIAM BARRY.
A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg MRS AUBREY RICHARDSON.
THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE.
THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT ROY HORNIMAN.
ANGLO-AMERICANS LUCAS CLEEVE.
THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE MRS PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY.
HELEN ADAIR LOUIS BECKE.
ROSEMONDE BEATRICE STOTT.
LAURA’S LEGACY E. H. STRAIN.
THE BLACK SHILLING AMELIA E. BARR.
THE VINEYARD JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
THE MIS-RULE OF THREE FLORENCE WARDEN.
THROUGH SORROW’S GATES HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.
KITTY COSTELLO MRS ALEXANDER.
NYRIA MRS CAMPBELL PRAED.
COURT CARDS AUSTIN CLARE.
THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT FORREST REID.
A BACHELOR IN ARCADY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.
THE FILIGREE BALL ANNA K. GREEN.
MYRA OF THE PINES HERMAN K. VIELE.
THYRA VARRICK AMELIA E. BARR.
THE SONG OF A SINGLE NOTE AMELIA E. BARR.
A BUSH HONEYMOON LAURA M. PALMER ARCHER.
THE WATCHER ON THE TOWER A. G. HALES.
THE CARDINAL’S PAWN K. L. MONTGOMERY.
TUSSOCK LAND ARTHUR H. ADAMS.
THE FOOL-KILLER LUCAS CLEEVE.
LOVE TRIUMPHANT MRS L. T. MEADE.
MOTHERHOOD L. PARRY TRUSCOTT.
HE THAT HAD RECEIVED THE FIVE TALENTS ANGUS CLARK.
CHINKIE’S FLAT AND OTHER STORIES LOUIS BECKE.
T. FISHER UNWIN’S NEW NOVELS.
THE DAYSPRING--A Romance. By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Author of ‘The
Wizard’s Knot,’ etc., etc.
This is the lite story of an eager, earnest young soul, rising at
length above the illusion of the senses to the clear heights of faith.
Noble aims, misconstrued in the mirage of modern Paris, under the charm
of a deluding spirituality, bring us to the moment of choice between
two paths, one that of so-called Free Love, the other that of supreme
self-sacrifice. The dreamy mysticism, the sparkling humour, the sudden
brilliances, the delicate fancies which characterise the work of the
author of ‘The New Antigone’ are to be found in this newest and perhaps
most fascinating of Dr. Barry’s books. A background of adventure is set
by the last days of the Second Empire and the Commune of 1871.
A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg. By Mrs AUBREY RICHARDSON.
(First Novel Library).
A dramatic episode of life in Homburg, at the height of the English
season. The characters represent types of men and women actually to be
met with in the high social and political world of to-day. A Society
Beauty and a Sister of an Anglican Community personify the red Rose of
Love, Pride and Gaiety, and the pale Lily of Purity, Aspiration and
Repression. In the heart of the Rose, a lily bud unfolds, and in the
calyx of the Lily, a rose blossoms. The incidents of the story succeed
each other swiftly, reaching a strong _dénoûement_, and working out to
a satisfying termination.
THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA: A Satire for Idle People. By W. R. H.
TROWBRIDGE, Author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth.’
Lady Patricia is an Englishwoman of a noble but impoverished family,
whose girlhood has been spent on the Continent. Left an orphan she
comes to England with the independent intention of seeking her own
living. Sometimes under her own, sometimes under an assumed name,
she takes various situations in England and France, and is brought
in contact with many different sets of society both in the upper and
the middle classes. In this volume she relates her experiences, and
comments upon them with caustic wit. The plan of the work affords
the author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth’ an excellent
opportunity of satirising the aristocracy and the _bourgeois
gentilshommes_ of England and France, and readers of the earlier volume
will be prepared for a book full of piquancy and daring.
THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT. A Novel. By ROY HORNIMAN, Author of ‘The Living
Buddha,’ ‘The Sin of Atlantis,’ etc.
There is nothing easier for a girl who has been born in a garrison town
of hard-up Service parents than to drift, especially if, as in the case
of Philippa, she has been disappointed in her first romance and is
left a little soured and hardened. It is so easy to enjoy the tawdry
amusements that come her way; and if, like Philippa, she is beautiful,
flirtation follows flirtation, men come and go, till it becomes the
habit to talk of her as ‘that fast Miss Blount.’ She is not the sort of
girl as a rule who gets married. There is something in the atmosphere
about her which makes marrying men fight shy of her. Philippa, however,
is saved from social shipwreck by marrying in such a way as to rouse
the envy of all those who have been her traducers. The background of
the story is concerned with the family life of Captain and Mrs Blount’s
household. There are also some exciting chapters dealing with the South
African war.
ANGLO-AMERICANS. By LUCAS CLEEVE.
The main theme of this story is the fundamental antagonism existing
between two characters--an American girl educated in ideas of freedom
and independence, and of the subservience of man to woman, and her
husband, an English Lord, who expects his wife to regard his career
and interests as her own, and to devote herself to them even to the
obliteration of herself. The girl’s father is a millionaire, and the
story tells incidentally of the illicit means by which his pile was
made.
THROUGH SORROW’S GATES. A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By HALLIWELL
SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ etc.
The scene is laid in Halliwell Sutcliffe’s favourite country, the moors
of the West Riding, though in the present book he goes even further
into the heart of the heath, nearer to that simplicity of feeling and
passion which is the real mark of the moor-folk. His characters spring
from the moor, as it were, and grow out of it; and not least of these
characters is Hester, the impulsive, erring farm lass, who dreamed wild
dreams at Windy Farm, and saw herself supplanted by a little, well-born
woman rescued from the snow.
KITTY COSTELLO. By Mrs ALEXANDER.
This story--the last that was written by Mrs Alexander--tells the
experiences of a well-born, beautiful Irish girl suddenly plunged,
somewhere about the ‘forties,’ into commercial circles in a busy
English port. The attraction of the book consists rather in the
brightly-drawn contrast of the Irish and English temperaments, with
their widely differing views of life, than in exciting incidents,
though the reader can hardly fail to feel the fascination of the
heroine or to be interested in all that befalls her.
NYRIA. By Mrs CAMPBELL PRAED.
The author considers this the most important book she has yet written.
Its preparation has engaged her for a long time, and in it she gives
her readers the very best of herself. The scene is laid in Rome in
the first century A.D., and among the characters are many historical
figures. The period offers magnificent opportunities for the writer of
romance, and of Mrs Campbell Praed’s imaginative gifts and power of
vivid description it is, of course, needless to speak at this time of
day. The story, which is a lengthy one, will be found to be full of
dramatic situations and thrilling incidents.
COURT CARDS. By AUSTIN CLARE, Author of ‘The Carved Cartoon,’
‘Pandora’s Portion,’ ‘The Tideway,’ etc.
A romance dated in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and
placed on both sides of the border. The time, a stirring one, when
the old order changing had not yet wholly yielded place to the new,
admits of romantic incidents of every kind, from raiding, kidnapping
and gaol-breaking, to mysterious love-making and midnight murder.
The intrigues between the English and Scottish Courts form a plot
sufficiently intricate, which is here likened to a game of whist, the
court-cards chiefly used therein being Queen Elizabeth of England,
James VI of Scotland, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, called ‘The
Knave of Hearts,’ who by a series of extraordinary adventures, rose
from the condition of a wanderer and sheep stealer on the border side
to the position of chief jester and ruling favourite at the Scottish
Court.
THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By FORREST REID. (First Novel Library).
This is the history of the earlier half of the life of a man of genius,
following him through boyhood and youth to maturity. It is a book in
which the form, the atmosphere, count for much. Essentially the study
of a temperament--a temperament subtle, delicate, rare--it has more in
common, perhaps, with the work of D’Annunzio than that of any English
novelist; the author’s aim, at all events, having been to describe,
from within, the gradual development of a human soul--to trace the
wanderings of a spirit as it passes from light to light in search of
that great light ‘that never was on sea or land.’
A BACHELOR IN ARCADY. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of
Withens,’ ‘Mistress Barbara Cunliffe,’ etc.
In this book Mr Sutcliffe abandons his strenuous manner of adventure,
feud, swordplay and fierce wooing, and gives us an English idyll.
The bachelor is a man of some thirty odd years, who dwells in rural
peace among his animals, birds, fields and flowers, and, assisted by
his faithful henchman, sows his seeds, mows and prunes in complacent
contempt for such as have succumbed to the delights of matrimony. And
so he fares through spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, his chief
companions the squire across the fields and his young daughter, till as
time goes on he discovers that the girl is all the world to him, and
the curtain descends on the bachelor--a bachelor no more.
THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE. By Mrs PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY, Author
of ‘From behind the Arras.’
This story deals with the adventures of a man and a maid in the time
of Mary I of England. The heroine, the daughter of a wild and reckless
father, inherits his bold spirit, and by her woman’s wit and courage,
assists her lover to elude the pursuit of his enemies. She sallies
forth in man’s attire for his sake, and has many adventures, both
humorous and otherwise, before the end is attained.
HELEN ADAIR. By LOUIS BECKE.
This story, which is largely based on fact, describes the career of a
young Irish girl whose father was transported to Botany Bay for being
concerned in the publication of a ‘seditious’ newspaper. Helen Adair,
so that she may follow her father to the Antipodes, and share, or at
least alleviate, his misfortunes under the dreaded ‘Convict System,’
passes counterfeit coin in Dublin, is tried and convicted under an
assumed name, and is sent out in a transport. Her adventures in
Australia form an exciting romance.
ROSEMONDE. By BEATRICE STOTT. (First Novel Library).
This is the story of a gifted, sensitive woman, her husband who was
a genius, and the unquenchable love for each other which was their
torture and their bane.
LAURA’S LEGACY. By E. H. STRAIN, Author of ‘A Man’s Foes.’
The ‘Innocent Impostor’ of the title is a very charming girl who has
grown up in the full belief of herself and the world that she is Miss
Barclay of Eaglesfaulds; her mother dotes on her, she is seemingly
heiress to large property, even the Queen is interested in her,
how can she guess that she is in reality the daughter of a beggar
woman, and is keeping the rightful heir out of his inheritance? How
this extraordinary situation came about and the trouble and tangle
it brought into the life of a sensitive and noble-natured girl, is
narrated by E. H. Strain after the fashion which has already endeared
her to many readers.
THE BLACK SHILLING. By AMELIA E. BARR.
Critics who have read this novel in manuscript speak of it as the best
story Mrs Barr has yet written. Its central character--Cotton Mather,
preacher, scholar, philanthropist and persecutor--is one of the most
picturesque figures in American history, while the period--that of
the witchcraft scare at the opening of the eighteenth century, when
numbers of men and women suffered cruel persecution for their supposed
trafficking with the Evil One--is full of dramatic possibilities.
THE VINEYARD. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
In this novel Mrs Craigie turns from the glittering world of finance,
which she depicted so brilliantly in ‘Love and the Soul Hunters,’ and
gives us a story of life in an English provincial town. As in all her
books the love interest is strong, and under the ‘signoria d’Amore’ her
characters are led into situations of the deepest interest, demanding
for their treatment all the subtlety of insight which her previous
works have shown her to possess.
THE MIS-RULE OF THREE. By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author of ‘The House on the
Marsh,’ etc.
This is the story of three young men, living together in London
lodgings, of the ideals of womanhood which they have formed, and of the
singular fashion in which each falls a victim to the charms of a woman
in all respects the opposite to his ideal. The story takes the reader
from London to the most romantic region of the Channel Islands, and
is connected with a mystery which surrounds the owner of one of these
islands.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
THE STICKIT MINISTER AND SOME COMMON MEN
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
_Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth_, =6s.=
[Illustration]
“Here is one of the books which are at present coming singly and at
long intervals, like early swallows, to herald, it is to be hoped,
a larger flight. When the larger flight appears, the winter of our
discontent will have passed, and we shall be able to boast that the
short story can make a home east as well as west of the Atlantic. There
is plenty of human nature--of the Scottish variety, which is a very
good variety--in ‘The Stickit Minister’ and its companion stories;
plenty of humour, too, of that dry, pawky kind which is a monopoly
of ‘Caledonia, stern and wild’; and, most plentiful of all, a quiet
perception and reticent rendering of that underlying pathos of life
which is to be discovered, not in Scotland alone, but everywhere
that a man is found who can see with the heart and the imagination
as well as the brain. Mr Crockett has given us a book that is not
merely good, it is what his countrymen would call ‘by-ordinar’ good,’
which, being interpreted into a tongue understanded of the southern
herd, means that it is excellent, with a somewhat exceptional kind of
excellence.”--_Daily Chronicle._
THE LILAC SUN-BONNET
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
_Sixth Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth_, =6s.=
[Illustration]
“Mr Crockett’s ‘Lilac Sun-Bonnet’ ‘needs no bush.’ Here is a pretty
love tale, and the landscape and rural descriptions carry the exile
back into the Kingdom of Galloway. Here, indeed, is the scent of
bog-myrtle and peat. After inquiries among the fair, I learn that of
all romances, they best love, not ‘sociology,’ not ‘theology,’ still
less, open manslaughter, for a motive, but just love’s young dream,
chapter after chapter. From Mr Crockett they get what they want, ‘hot
with,’ as Thackeray admits that he liked it.”--Mr ANDREW LANG in
_Longman’s Magazine_.
11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
Recent Volumes in the
STORY OF THE NATIONS
A SERIES OF POPULAR HISTORIES.
_Each Volume complete with Maps, many Illustrations, and an Index.
Large crown 8vo, fancy cloth, gold lettered, or Library Edition, dark
cloth, burnished red top_, =5s.= _each. Or may be had in half Persian,
cloth sides, gilt tops: Price on Application._
49. =Austria.= By SIDNEY WHITMAN.
50. =Modern England before the Reform Bill.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
51. =China.= With a New Chapter on Recent Events. By Prof. R. K.
DOUGLAS.
52. =Modern England under Queen Victoria.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
53. =Modern Spain, 1878-1898.= By MARTIN A. S. HUME, F.R.H.S., Author
of “Sir Walter Ralegh,” &c.
54. =Modern Italy, 1748-1898.= By PIETRO ORSI, Professor of History in
the R. Liceo Foscarini, Venice. With over 40 Illustrations and Maps.
55. =Norway.= By Professor HJALMAR H. BOYESEN, Author of “Idylls of
Norway.”
56. =Wales.= By OWEN EDWARDS.
_IN PREPARATION._
=The United States of America, 1783-1900.= By A. C. M‘LAUGHLIN. In 2
Volumes.
=The Papal Monarchy=: From Gregory the Great to Boniface VIII. By Rev.
W. BARRY.
=Mediæval Rome.= By WILLIAM MILLER.
=Buddhist India.= By T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.
=The Story of Greece= (to the Roman Occupation). By E. S. SHUCKBURGH.
=The Story of Greece= (from the Roman Occupation to A.D. 1453). By E.
S. SHUCKBURGH.
11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN
EDITED BY
H. F. WILSON
_A Set of 10 Volumes, each with Photogravure Frontispiece, and Map,
large crown 8vo., cloth_, =5s.= _each_.
[Illustration]
The completion of the Sixtieth year of the Queen’s reign will be the
occasion of much retrospect and review, in the course of which the
great men who, under the auspices of Her Majesty and her predecessors,
have helped to make the British Empire what it is to-day, will
naturally be brought to mind. Hence the idea of the present series.
These biographies, concise but full, popular but authoritative, have
been designed with the view of giving in each case an adequate picture
of the builder in relation to his work.
The series will be under the general editorship of Mr H. F. Wilson,
formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and now private
secretary to the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain at the Colonial Office.
Each volume will be placed in competent hands, and will contain the
best portrait obtainable of its subject, and a map showing his special
contribution to the Imperial edifice. The first to appear will be
a Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by Major Hume, the learned author of
“The Year after the Armada.” Others in contemplation will deal with
the Cabots, the quarter-centenary of whose sailing from Bristol Is
has recently been celebrated in that city, as well as in Canada and
Newfoundland; Sir Thomas Maitland, the “King Tom” of the Mediterranean;
Rajah Brooke, Sir Stamford Raffles, Lord Clive, Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, Zachary Macaulay, &c., &c.
The Series has taken for its motto the Miltonic prayer:--
“Thou Who of Thy free grace didst build up this Brittanick
Empire to a glorious and enviable heights. With all her
Daughter Islands about her, stay us in this felicitie.”
=1.= =SIR WALTER RALEIGH.= By MARTIN A. S. HUME, Author of “The
Courtships of Queen Elizabeth,” &c.
=2.= =SIR THOMAS MAITLAND=; the Mastery of the Mediterranean. By
WALTER FREWEN LORD.
=3.= =JOHN CABOT AND HIS SONS=; the Discovery of North America. By C.
RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A.
=4.= =EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD=; the Colonisation of South Australia
and New Zealand. By R. GARNETT, C.B., L.L.D.
=5.= =LORD CLIVE=; the Foundation of British Rule in India. By Sir A.
J. ARBUTHNOT, K.C.S.I., C.I.E.
=RAJAH BROOKE=; the Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State. By Sir
SPENSER ST. JOHN, G.C.M.G.
=ADMIRAL PHILIP=; the Founding of New South Wales. By LOUIS BECKE and
WALTER JEFFERY.
=SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES=; England in the Far East. By the Editor.
11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
=U= The LITERARY PEN is the Best. =U=
[Illustration]
“Mr Fisher Unwin has beguiled his leisure moments with experimenting
in pens, and now ‘The Literary Pen’ is issued in a nice little booklet
box for the benefit of authors. It is guaranteed to write anything from
a sonnet to an epic, and it certainly runs very easily and quickly.
‘U’ is the letter it bears, and ‘U’ it will, doubtless, remain to a
grateful posterity.”--_Black and White._
* * * * *
“Certainly the new nibs are excellent--a great improvement on the
average ‘J.’”--JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
* * * * *
“For writing easily, legibly, and without excessive use of ink--which
is a saving of time in dipping--the ‘Literary U Pen’ which Mr Fisher
Unwin has brought out cannot be excelled. Its action is smooth, and
very like that of a quill.”--_Leeds Mercury._
* * * * *
“We like the way it writes. It is an improvement on the best pen we
have used, and will speedily become popular with those who appreciate
an easy pen to write with.”--_Sheffield Daily Independent._
* * * * *
“A new pen, the merits of which are undoubted. We have been using
one of these ‘U’ nibs for the past week, and it still writes as well
as when we first inserted it in the holder. There is certainly a
successful future in store for the ‘Literary U.’”--_Bookseller._
* * * * *
“Proves to be an easy running but not too soft pen, with which one may
write at great speed.”--_Newsagent._
* * * * *
“Anyone who loves the smooth action of the quill and the distinctness
of the finest-pointed steel nib combined, should get a box of ‘U’ Pens
at once.”--_Weekly Times and Echo._
* * * * *
“We can recommend it for the smoothness with which it passes over
paper.”--_East Anglian Daily Times._
* * * * *
“We have tried the ‘U’ and like it.”--_Academy._
* * * * *
“It is a pleasant, smooth-running pen, and altogether very agreeable
to work with. It ought to be a boon to those who write much.”--_Dublin
Daily Express._
* * * * *
“Writes very smoothly, and all who write much know that that is the
first quality desired in a pen.”--_Reynolds’ Newspaper._
* * * * *
“Altogether very agreeable to work with. It ought to be a boon to those
who write much.”--_Warder._
* * * * *
“It is a good pen and justifies its title.”--_People._
* * * * *
“Literary workers will find the Literary Pen well worth their
attention.”--_Publishers’ Circular._
=U= Smooth Running, with a Quill-like Action. =U=
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY BEACH AND BOG-LAND ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
