Part 8

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.