Part 4
“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.”