Part 15

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.