CHAPTER IX

PINS AND PORK

“Sure, this is blessed Erin, an’ this the same glen; The gold is on the whin-bush, the wather sings again: The Fairy Thorn’s in flower—an’ what ails my heart then?” MOIRA O’NEIL.

‟WELL—of all the deserters!”

“Is it me?” asked Wally, modestly. He made an enormous stride from a half-submerged stone into the boat, and nearly lost his balance, collapsing in the stern.

“You!” said Jim, steadying the boat, which endeavoured, under the assault, to bury her nose in a muddy bank of rushes. “You, that was going to catch several hundred trout, and instead cleared out——”

“In a plutocratic motor,” said Norah.

“With a bloated aristocrat,” added Jim.

“And never said good-bye!” finished Mr. Linton, with an artistic catch in his voice.

“I did,” said Wally: “I did it all. And I didn’t want to.”

Sounds of disbelief rose from his hearers.

“You needn’t snort,” said the victim, inelegantly.

“I don’t think it betters your case to describe our just indignation as snorting,” said Mr. Linton.

“If you were to grovel it would become you better,” said Norah.

“Not in this boat,” hastily remarked her father. “It isn’t planned for gymnastics.”

“He’s too well-fed to grovel, anyhow,” said Jim brutally. “What did you have in the ducal castle, Wal? ortolans and plovers’ eggs, and things?”

“Chops,” said Wally.

“Shades of Australia!” ejaculated Mr. Linton. “Is that what one eats in company with dukes?”

“I don’t know,” Wally answered, patiently. “He isn’t a duke, anyhow. Where did you people get your soaring ideas?”

“From a lame chauffeur who seemed to think you were getting a great deal more than you deserved——” Jim began.

“That’s what I’m getting now!” said Wally.

“Well, he said you had gone off in the mothor to the big house. We inferred from his tone that it was not merely big, but enormous. The master had tuk you, he said; we further gathered that you might come back when the master had finished with you. It sounded rather like Jack and the Giant, and if we had known who had kidnapped you we might have organized a search party. As we didn’t, we caught trout—lots of ’em.”

“Did you, indeed?” said Wally, with open envy. “Lucky beggars—I wish I had!”

“And you rioting in baronial halls!” said Norah. “Some people don’t know when they are well off.”

“If we let Wally have a word in edgeways for a few minutes we might find out a little more about the baronial halls,” said Mr. Linton. “Tell us what happened to you, Wally. Was it a duke?”

“It was not—only a poor hump backed chap with some sort of a handle to his name. He’s Sir John O’Neill, and he has a lovely place; but you never saw a man with less ‘frill,’” Wally remarked. “Simple as anyone could be. And I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry for anyone.”

“Is he badly crippled?” Jim asked.

“No—only he seems awfully delicate, and subject to beastly fits of illness. He’s got any amount of pluck—rides and shoots and fishes, and has motored half over the world. But of course he’s terribly handicapped; the wonder is that he has done half as much.”

“That must be the man Patsy was talking about—only he called him the young masther,” Norah said. “Is he quite young?”

“Oh, I’d put him down at about forty,” said Wally, to whom that age was close on senile decay: “I think the old hands here would call a man the young master until he died of old age. He’s queer: at times he’s like a kid; and then I suppose the pain gets hold of him, because, in a minute he seems to grow quite old, and he drops laughing and gets bitter.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Linton. “How did you find him, Wally?”

“Why, I nearly fell on top of him getting down a bank into a lane,” Wally answered. “He was sitting on a stone, hating himself, but he didn’t seem to mind my sudden appearance at all, though I’m sure clods hit him. Then we yarned, and I helped him back to his car, and he got me to go back to lunch with him—I didn’t want to, but——” He was silent.

“I expect he was glad of someone to talk to,” Mr. Linton said.

“That’s it—he’s just as lonely as he can be. All his people are fighting, and he’s knocked himself out over Red Cross work, and has had to come back to Ireland and get fit. He’s coming to call on you, sir—and he wants us all to go over to Rathcullen—his place—as much as we can.”

“H’m,” said Jim and Norah, together.

“I wish baronial halls appealed more to my family,” said Mr. Linton, laughing.

“I didn’t mean to be horrid; but trout and loughs and bogs appeal so much more,” said Norah. “Of course we’ll go, if he wants us.”

“Well, it’s a jolly place, and he’s horribly lonely,” Wally answered. “And I don’t know about his halls being baronial, but certainly his stables are: they’re simply topping. He hasn’t many horses left—the Government took most of them for the war; but there are two ripping hunters, and some extra good ponies. And he wants to lend ’em to us.”

“Eh!” said Jim, sitting up. “Wally, my child, how did you manage it?”

“Didn’t have to,” said Wally, grinning. “He simply threw them at me. Asked me if you could ride, Norah, so I suggested that if he had a quiet donkey it might do.”

“We have one that is not quiet,” said Norah, regarding him with a fixed eye. “Tell me the truth, Wally—is there something I can ride?”

“Wait till you see it—that’s all. And he’s going to teach us to jump banks and ditches and things.”

“Oh-h!” said Norah, blissfully, “I said this place only wanted horses to make it perfect!”

“Well, now you’re going to have the horses, little as you both deserve ’em,” said Wally; “and now, perhaps, you’ll all apologize humbly for calling me unpleasant names!”

“Certainly not,” Jim said, firmly. “If you didn’t deserve them at the moment (and I’m not sure that you didn’t), you’re sure to deserve them before long. Never mind, look at this!”

He opened his fishing-basket carefully and showed a mass of damp grass, among which could be seen glimpses of many trout. Jim dived in with his finger and thumb, and drew out a speckled beauty, which he dangled before Wally’s envious gaze.

“A pound and a half, by my patent spring-balance!” he declared, triumphantly. “I played him for what seemed like three hours, and I never was so scared of anything in my life. He got tired at last, however, and Norah officiated with the landing-net.”

“Yes, and missed him twice,” said Norah, shame-faced. “It was the greatest wonder he didn’t get off. But a big trout on the end of a little line does wobble so much when it’s coming towards the net. It’s much worse than a screwing ball at tennis.”

“I know—and you feel perfectly certain the line is going to break, if the rod doesn’t,” Wally said. “I feel like that over a quarter-pounder: I don’t know how you ever managed to make a collected effort for that big fellow.”

“It wasn’t collected at all—I just swiped wildly, and got him by the sheerest good luck,” Norah answered. “I mean to practise with a cricket ball on a string, hung from the big tree outside my window: it would be awful to miss another beauty like that.”

They were drifting down the little lough very slowly. There were purple shadows under the hills, lying across the strip of bog that stretched westward, where the curlew and golden plover were calling. A little breeze sprang up, just rippling the surface of the water. Wally got out his rod hastily; but though the conditions seemed ideal, the trout had apparently gone to sleep, and when an hour’s casting had not yielded so much as a rise, it was decided that there might be better things than fishing, and the party returned to the shore. A small boy, lurking about the landing stage, was entrusted with the rods and baskets, and disappeared slowly among the trees fringing the path that led to the hotel.

“What are we going to do?” Jim asked.

“I’m going to Gortbeg,” Norah said. “I want some pins.”

“Pins?” Jim echoed. “Why ever must you walk two miles for pins? I’m sure you don’t use one in a year.”

“No, and so I haven’t got any,” Norah said. “And I must have some, because I want to shorten my bog-lepping skirt, and I can’t turn up the edge without pins to keep it in place.”

“But you sew that sort of thing, don’t you?” Jim asked, wrestling with masculine obtuseness.

“Of course—after you’ve pinned it in place. Jimmy, you had better let me attack that skirt in my own way!” said Norah, justly incensed. “If you’d tried climbing a mountain in a too-long skirt you wouldn’t argue about making it shorter.”

“I guess I would cut a foot off it without arguing at all,” said Jim, laughing. “Skirts are fool-things out of a house. Well, lead on, my child: I suppose we’re all going pin-hunting.”

The road to Gortbeg lay between high banks, with occasional gaps through which could be seen pleasant moors and fields, and sometimes an old mansion, almost hidden by enormous beech-trees. Most of the great houses of the country were silent and closely-shuttered; the men of the family away fighting, the women doing Red Cross work in London, or nursing as near the firing-line as they could manage to establish themselves. In a few were faint signs of occupation: a white-haired old lady on a lawn, an old man, surrounded by a number of dogs, of many breeds, wandering through the woods; but even in these houses there was an air of brooding quiet and expectancy, of silent daily watching for news. The gardens were gay with summer flowers, and nothing could spoil the beauty of the trees; but there were weeds in the mould, and the paths were unkempt and moss-grown. The district was never a rich one, and now the war had taken all its men and money.

Down the road, to meet them, came a boy on a donkey: a cheery small boy, sitting very far back with his knees well in. The donkey was guiltless of bridle or saddle, obeying, with meekness, if not with alacrity, suggestions conveyed to it by the pressure of the bare knees and occasional blows with an ash cudgel.

“The asses of Ireland are a patient race,” remarked Wally.

“They had need to be,” Jim answered.

“It’s up to the ass to be patient in most places,” remarked Mr. Linton. “Life isn’t exactly a picnic to him anywhere. On the whole, the Irish donkeys seem well enough cared for; I have seen their brothers in other countries far worse treated. That’s a nice donkey you have, sonny”—to the small rider, who passed them, grinning cheerfully.

“He is, sorr”; and the grin widened.

“They’re such jolly kids in these parts,” Wally said. “They always greet you as if you were the one person they had wanted to see for years; and they’re so interested in you. It doesn’t seem like curiosity, either, but real, genuine interest.”

“So it is, as far as it goes,” Jim said.

“Well it may not go far, but it’s comforting while it lasts—and it generally lasts as long as one is there oneself. It’s just as well it doesn’t go deeper, or visitors would leave an awful trail of unrequited affection behind them. As it is, one feels they recover after one has gone, after doing all they can to make one’s stay pleasant. Yes, I think Ireland’s a nice, friendly country,” Wally finished. “And there’s Gortbeg, looking as if it had forgotten to wake up for about five hundred years.”

There was not much of Gortbeg. A busy little river flowed past it hurriedly, and the village had sprung up along one bank: one winding street, with a few cottages and a whitewashed inn which called itself the Fisherman’s Arms. Some boats were moored in the stream near the inn, where a crazy landing-stage jutted out. Scarcely anyone was to be seen except a few children, playing on the green, which they shared with numerous geese, a few donkeys, and some long-haired goats; while over the half-door of one of the cabins a knot of shawled women gossiped.

“There’s your shop, Norah,” Mr. Linton said, indicating a dingy building which bore in its window a curious assortment of cheap sweets, slates, apples, red flannel, and bacon.

“It looks a bit queer,” Norah commented, regarding the emporium rather doubtfully. “However, it’s sure to have pins.”

The shop was prudently secured, by a bolted half-door, against the ravages of predatory geese or goats. Within, it was very dark, and prolonged hammering on the counter failed to bring any response. Finally Jim found his way into a back room and cooee’d lustily, returning in some haste.

“Phew-w! There’s a gentleman in corduroys, asleep on a bed, and two dead pigs hanging by their heels,” he said. “None of them took any notice of me; but some one out at the back answered. Here he comes.”

The proprietor of the shop entered hurriedly: a plump little man, very breathless and apologetic, and more than a little damp.

“I left a bit of a young gossoon to mind the shop,” he said—“and I washin’ meself. It’s gone he is, playin’ with the other boys—sure I’ll teach him to play when I get a holt of him. Pins, miss? Is it hairpins, now, you’d be wanting?”

“No, just ordinary pins,” Norah told him.

“H’m,” said the shopman, doubtfully. “I dunno would I have them, at all. If it was hairpins, now, there’s not a place in Donegal where you’d get a finer selection. Pins . . .” He pondered deeply, and rummaged in a box that seemed sacred to extremely sticky bull’s eyes. “Well, well, we’d better look for them. It might be they’d be in some odd corner.”

The wall behind him was divided into innumerable little compartments, and he looked faithfully through them all, striking match after match to illumine his progress. There were assorted goods in the compartments: nails and screws, tin saucepan-lids, marbles, boots, soap, oranges, reels of cotton, biscuits, socks, and ass’s shoes; he searched them all, turning over the contents of each until the match burned down to his fingers, when he would throw it hastily on the floor, strike another, and move on to the next collection. The box of matches was nearly exhausted when at length he gave up his quest.

“They’re not in it at all,” he said, despondently. “I did have some, one time, but I expect they’re sold on me. When the traveller comes I could be getting some in from Belfast, if there was no hurry.”

Norah indicated that there was hurry, and asked if there were another shop.

“There’s Mary Doody’s,” said the man of business, sadly; “at the least, you might call it a shop, though it’s only herself knows what she sells. That’s the only one.” He came to the doorway, and pointed down the street. “The last house, it is. If ’twas anything in the wurruld now, except pins, I’d have it.”

A little way from the shop, he caught them up, breathless, but aflame with business enterprise.

“Is it from Moroney’s ye are? Would ye tell Mrs. Moroney that I’ve the grandest bit of pork ever she seen—killed yesterday, an’ they me own pigs that I rared on the place. Peter Grogan—sure, she’ll know me.”

“Thank you,” Jim said, hurriedly. “Good night.”

“Good night,” responded Mr. Grogan. “Tell her to-morrow’s early closing day, an’ I could bring one over in the little ass-cart as aisy as not.” The last words were uttered in a high shriek as the distance widened between himself and the Linton party.

“Pork is a good thing,” said Mr. Linton, sententiously. “Isn’t it, Jim?”

“If you’d seen the room I saw!” said his son, with feeling. “Such a bedroom: and the gentleman in bed, and I should say very drunk. No, I don’t think I’ll deliver that message.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Linton.

Mary Doody’s place of business stood back a little from the road. There was no window for the display of goods, and the door was shut. The uninitiated might, indeed, have been pardoned for failing to regard it as a shop, or for passing by, unnoticed, the brief legend over the door which stated that Mrs. Doody’s residence was a Generil Store, and added that she was further empowered to sell stout and porter. The inhabitants of Gortbeg, however, were clearly to be numbered among the initiated, for sounds of conviviality came, muffled, from within, and once a voice broke into a snatch of a song. Norah hesitated.

“I suppose I needn’t knock.”

“They might not hear you, if you did,” Jim said. He opened the door.

Within, a long, low room was dim with a mixture of turf and tobacco smoke, and heavy with the fumes of porter. A swinging lamp shed a depressed ray over the scene. As her eyes grew accustomed to the smoky twilight, Norah made out a number of men and a few women sitting on benches near the fire, each with a mug that evidently held comforting liquor. Every one seemed to be talking at once; but a dead silence fell as the door opened on the unfamiliar figures. Norah resisted an inclination to turn and seek fresh air. An immensely fat woman, with a grimy shawl pinned across her bosom, waddled forward.

“Good evening, dear,” she said, dividing the greeting impartially between Jim and Norah.

“Good evening,” Norah responded. “This is a shop, isn’t it?”

“It is, dear,” Mrs. Doody said, bridling a little at any doubt being cast on her emporium. “Were you wantin’——?”

“Pins,” Norah said hastily. “Do you keep them?”

“I dunno would I,” said Mary Doody, unconsciously echoing Mr. Grogan. “Pins. Would they be small pins, now?”

“Yes—just common pins.”

“Pins,” said Mary Doody, reflecting deeply. She turned and sought in unsavoury boxes which held a stock as varied, if not so numerous, as that of Mr. Grogan. The porter-drinkers became immensely interested. Some of the women came nearer and stared at the strangers, and one or two, catching Norah’s eye, smiled a greeting.

Mary Doody heaved her mighty form up from the box over which she had been crouching.

“I had some, wanst,” she said. “But ’tis gone they are, or may be them gerrls has them taken. Wouldn’t anything else do for you, dear?”

“No, thank you,” Norah said, hastily. She turned to go, pursued by Mrs. Doody, who suddenly became interested in the case.

“Did you try Peter Grogan?” she asked. “He have a little shop up yonder.”

Norah admitted having tried and failed.

“My, my!” said Mary Doody. “’Tis puttin’ a bad direction on a counthry when you can’t buy a paper of pins in it, isn’t it, dear?”

Norah laughed. “I’m sorry you haven’t got them,” she said.

“No. There’s no call for them here, dear. We do be using buttons,” said Mary Doody, blandly.

Under cover of this broadside Norah made a confused exit, to find Jim and Wally helpless with laughter without.

“Never did I see anyone taught her place so beautifully!” said Jim, ecstatically. “That will teach you to be tidy, young Norah!”

“Buttons!” said Norah, laughing. “I’d like to see Mary Doody shorten a skirt with the aid of buttons. Anyhow, I’ve got to do it without the aid of pins, that’s evident. Come home, you unsympathetic frivollers!”

It was two days later, that, coming in late and ravenously hungry after a long tramp across the bog, the Lintons made a hurried toilet and a still more hurried descent to the dining-room. Dinner had been kept waiting for them, and they applied themselves to it with an energy born of a long day in the open air and a sandwich lunch. It was when the first edge of appetite had been taken off, and they were toying with a mammoth apple-pie, that Mrs. Moroney bore down upon them.

“I’m afraid we were very late, Mrs. Moroney,” said Mr. Linton.

“Ah, ’tis no matter,” said the lady of the house, waving away the suggestion. “In the heighth of the season there’s many a one roaring for dinner, and it ten o’clock at night. Did you enjoy your dinner, now?”

“We did, indeed,” said Mr. Linton; “it was most excellent pork——”

He stopped, catching Jim’s eye, into which had come a sudden light of comprehension.

“Pork!” said Jim faintly. “Yes, it _was_ pork. Mrs. Moroney, . . . I wonder . . . did you . . . ?”

“Don’t tell me there was anything wrong with it,” said Mrs. Moroney, aflame in the defence of the pork. “I never see better pigs than them ones of Peter Grogan’s; and he after killing them only last Tuesday!”