Chapter VI: Part 6

Few people, I think, can ever have been impressed by the liveliness of little Killymeen, set in its nook among the lonesome mountain and moorland, its one humble street forming the nucleus of a sparse cabin-sprinkling, which strews white flecks on the far sweeping green folds hardly plentier than hailstones on a grass plot half a sunny hour after a July thunderstorm. Yet to Bridget Doran, the girl who had lately taken service with the Caseys up at the Quarry Farm, it seemed a centre of fashion and gaiety, being, indeed, the most considerable place she had seen in all her seventeen years. For they had been spent up at Loughdrumesk, a hamlet fully ten miles deeper among the wildest townlands, with only a rough cart-track threading a black bog, and climbing endless shaggy slopes, and dropping over a purple mountain shoulder to connect it with Killymeen. She had left behind there, three months ago, her feeble old grandfather and alert old grandmother, in a tiny, high-perched cabin, which felt a world too wide for its other indwellers when this third of their lives had gone. And since then there had been much travelling of thoughts to and fro between it and the Casey’s prim whitewashed farmhouse at the foot of Slieve Glasarna. At first Bridget’s had made the journey as constantly as her grandmother’s, but she was young and busy and in a new place, and as the weeks went on she became more engrossed with what lay immediately before her.

The Surree at Mahon’s, fixed for a day in Christmas week, was the most exciting of the fresh prospects that unfolded themselves, and was looked forward to with much pleased interest by Killymeen at large. There had been no Surrees in the neighbourhood during a long spell of bad times, but this year matters were looking brighter, and old Barney Mahon, who had a thrifty turn and a commodious kitchen, was encouraged to make a venture which promised fair profits at a small risk. For a Surree, which has with quaint effect borrowed its name from polite French, is a sort of subscription dance, little more elaborate in its arrangements than are the kaleys, or conversazioni, that beguile so many wintry hours in Donegal homes, when all the dark out-of-doors hurtles and splashes with wind and rain, and the neighbours drift into their places round some appointed hearth as promiscuously as a wreath of dry leaves swept rustling together by an aerial eddy. At a Surree each couple pay a shilling, but no refreshment is expected save frugally-dispensed tea; and the fiddler is content to scrape for a modest fee and his chances of small coins from the dancers. Dark Hugh M‘Evoy, being Barney’s cousin, was willing to supply the music for this occasion on specially easy terms; and, in short, circumstances conspired to make it seem desirable that Barney should meet the often-expressed wish of his younger friends by announcing the first Surree of the season.

It would be Bridget’s first taste of any formal dissipation, and Rose Casey, her master’s niece, and Kate Duffy, his ploughman’s daughter, who lived in the yard, set her expectation on tiptoe extremely by their accounts of like entertainments. Kate and she were to go together, as it is the custom to attend Surrees in couples. These often are formed of a colleen with the boy who is “spakin’” to her, but often also a brother and sister make a pair, or any other two friends. Rose Casey was to marry Peter O’Donoghue at Shrovetide, so she would, of course, go with him—a fact of which she made a little parade to Bridget, who felt, however, perfectly content with Kate’s escort: a sweetheart of her own would have seemed, indeed, an alarming possession. Her mistress had advanced her a shilling out of her quarter’s wages—a whole pound—and she had expended the sixpence left after securing her admission to the Surree upon a splendid red glass brooch, which made her think her equipment very complete.

But just when everything seemed gliding most smoothly towards the delightful goal, an obstacle suddenly cropped up and threatened to overthrow all her plans with one disastrous jolt. On a certain frost-spangled morning the postman brought to Bridget a letter, whose contents agreed with her wishes as ill as a dash of vinegar would have done with the thick cream which she was churning when the mail arrived. Her grandmother wrote to say that “she thought bad of Biddy to be trampin’ the long way her lone from Killymeen to their place, and that old Bill Molloy was slippin’ over wid his pony and a gatherin’ of eggs to the Magamore on next Thursday morning, and’d give her a lift if she’d start along wid him when he would be goin’ back. So Biddy had a right to ax lave of her mistress, and come home wid ould Bill, who’d turn a bit out of his way to pick her up? and real glad they’d be to set eyes on her again.” For Mrs Casey had promised Biddy her choice of three days in Christmas week to spend at home, dairy work being slack. Bridget had looked forward to the holiday with a glow of pleasure, and meant to take it on the Friday, which would be Christmas Eve, and the day after the Surree. But her grandmother’s injunction was not compatible with this arrangement.

“Sure I’d miss all the fun and everythin’ if I took off and went wid ould Bill—I wish he and his baste of an ugly skewbald ’d keep themselves out of botherin’ where they arn’t wanted,” she said, half-crying, to her friends Rose and Kate, as she showed them the letter in the kitchen.

“Musha, good gracious,” said Rose, “you wouldn’t ever think of goin’? Just bid the ould man step along wid himself, and say you’ll come on Friday.”

“But me grandmother’d be rale vexed if I done that, and he after goin’ out of his road to call for me,” said Bridget doubtfully.

“Well, then,” said Kate, “you might write and tell her not to send him. This is only Tuesday; there’s plenty of time yet, and I’ve a stamp in me box this long while you’re welcome to.”

“Ay, to be sure,” said Rose, “and say me aunt can’t spare you convanient afore Friday.”

“But,” said Bridget, looking disconcerted, “I’m after sendin’ her word be Judy Flynn that I’d got lave to come any day at all this week.”

“Oh, botheration to it,” said Rose. “Then say you’re too bad with a cowld, and couldn’t be thravellin’ that far. Bedad, I heard you coughin’ this mornin’ fit to fall in pieces like the head of the witherdy geranium there. Morebetoken, the red one in the windy corner’s dhroppin’ itself into the pan of buttermilk where you’ve set it; you’d better be movin’ it out of that.”

“I have a heavy cowld on me sure enough,” said Bridget, coughing to convince herself, but her disconcerted expression remained, and she fidgetted about uneasily. “For the matter of writin’,” she said, “you see the time I was gettin’ me schoolin’ I did be mostly mindin’ the sheep, and I can make some sort of an offer at the readin’ if it’s wrote pretty big, but writin’ oneself is quare nigglety work.”

“Mercy on us, girl alive, if that’s all that ails you, I’ll write a letter for you meself in a minyit and a half,” said Rose with alacrity. “Bedad will I. Sure I’ve wrote to Peter times and again when he was stoppin’ away at Manchester. So don’t bother your head about it; lave the regulation of it to me. I’ve plenty of paper meself, and Kate’ll give me her stamp.”

Bridget agreed to this plan, though not without some qualms of conscience, which made her refrain guiltily from inquiring about the details of its execution, thereby giving Rose a free hand, of which she availed herself without much scruple. She had an imaginative turn of mind, and a taste for fiction, so her story grew under her scratching pen until in the end she produced a letter purporting to come not from Bridget, but from herself, and describing Bridget’s indisposition as not a simple cold, but an attack of “plussery-newmoney.” This formidable complaint would hinder her from returning with Bill Molloy. “But she’ll come,” wrote Rose, “as soon as ever she’s able. And that won’t be before Friday anyway, if she overs it at all.” The last clause struck her as giving an effective completeness to the composition, and she read it over with a complacency which did not take into account how it might be spelled out in the bleak little hillside cabin off away at Loughdrumesk.

The evening of the Surree arrived in due course, and with it a flutter of snow, swirling on rough and unruly blasts. Silver-white threads and stitches had begun to embroider the purple folds of Slieve Glasarna before the mists descended muffling and blurring; and the paths crunched crisply under brogues, and made cold clutches at bare feet by the time that the neighbours were approaching Barney Mahon’s door. They remarked to one another that it was hardy weather, and added that they were apt to have it “sevare,” which is some degree worse than hardy. Few people, however, had been daunted into staying at home, and there was much shaking of powder flakes out of shawl-folds and off rough coat-sleeves at the entrance to Barney’s lustily flickering room.

When Rose and Kate and Bridget got there, which they did as soon as ever they could finish “readying up” after tea, most of the company had assembled, and dancing was about to begin. Rose’s temper was somewhat ruffled because Peter O’Donoghue had not kept his promise of coming to escort her. But his sisters now hastened to explain how he had been delayed by the sudden illness of their calf. “Howane’er the baste was comin’ round finely when they left,” they reported, and Peter would be after them in no time. So his _fiancée_ was appeased, and contented herself provisionally with Larry Sullivan for a partner. “Faix, now, it’s on’y an odd turn the rest of us boys gets wid you these times,” he said to her gallantly as the fiddler struck up. “Ne’er a chance we have at all, unless when the luck keeps him that’s luckier away.”

Do not suppose that the Surree danced jigs. Later on in the evening a couple might stand up and perform one while the others were recovering their breath; but at the outset it was a vigorous round dance that began to gyrate with a step which, though perhaps not recognised in any academy, kept time to Hugh’s music with much accuracy, and made light of the difficulties opposed by an uneven mud floor. The crockery on the dresser jingled merrily to the rhythmical beat of their feet; and each pair of bobbing heads that passed in front of it, might be seen to make an abrupt dip down and up again. This was caused by an unusually deep hollow which occurred in that part of the floor, and Barney Mahon, looking on with the elders from their circle round the hearth, observed it and said—“Begob, I must see to having that houle filled up before next time, or else somebody’ll be trippin’ up in it, and gettin’ a quare toss.”

The other spectators sat well content with their share of the entertainment. Pungently-puffing cutty pipes solaced the men, and the women kept their knitting-needles twinkling; in fact, they would almost as soon have left off breathing by way of rest and relaxation. For further amusement they had the affairs of the countryside to discuss, enlivened by an occasional anecdote or riddle. Dan Goligher had just propounded one of the latter which successfully puzzled everybody who had not heard it before—

_A brown lough
Wid a white strand,
Sorra the ship could sail around it,
But I can hould it in my hand_;

and he was triumphantly explaining, “Sure a cup of tea,” when two people came bolting in at the door, which they forthwith began to secure behind them, as if they were shutting out some deadly peril. They said nothing, but their speechless hurry was more suggestive than words.

“Whethen now, Peter O’Donoghue and Ned Kinsella, what’s took you at all to be flouncin’ in on the people that a-way?” said Barney Mahon, somewhat affronted at their unceremonious entrance and dealings with his fastenings and furniture. “That’s a great ould slammin’ of the door you have—and what for would you be jammin’ the bench again it, unless you’re intendin’ the next body that comes thro’ it to be breakin’ his shins?”

“Troth, I on’y hope it may—and its neck too, between us and harm—if it’s offering to come in on us—I do so,” said Peter O’Donoghue, panting. He left his comrade to finish barricading the door, and pushed himself farther into the room, until several groups interposed between him and the dangerous point. “After us it may be this minyit of time,” he said. “Och, but that was the quare fright I got; the saints look down upon us this night!”

“It’s herself below at th’ ould gate there,” said Ned Kinsella, who was calmer than Peter, though evidently much alarmed. “And more-be-token it’s not inside she is this night, but sittin’ crouched up on the bank be the path, and the grab she made at Peter going by; ’deed, I thought he’d never get his coat-tail wrenched out of her ould hand.”

“It might as well ha’ been caught in a rat-trap the way she held on,” said Peter. “I give you me word me hair’s standin’ on end yet, fit to rise me hat off the roof of me head. What wid that and the onnathural screeches she let, I won’er you didn’t hear them here. And it’s my belief she set off leggin’ after us—goodness preserve us—on’y I was afraid of me life to look round and see.”

These tidings spread general consternation among the company, as under the circumstances they well might do. For only a few hundred yards down the loaning lay an ancient burying-ground, with its ruined chapel and weed-entangled tombstones, a place whose ghostly reputation had long been established at Killymeen. In particular the wraith of a little old woman was often to be seen of an evening peering out through the rusty gate-bars, and sometimes stretching forth a fearsome hand to pluck at the unwary passer-by. But her appearance out on the roadside was a new development, and one which made Peter and Ned’s report unpleasant hearing for people who would presently be obliged to take that route home. The dance came to a standstill, and in its stead a series of dismal ghost-stories began to circle round the room. Perhaps the most gruesome of them was Nick Carolan’s. He related how he had once lived in a place where there was in the middle of the yard a deep well, out of which on certain moon-lit nights a dark figure would emerge and go gliding round and round it, making a wider and wider circuit, until she reached the house, at whose door she rapped loudly as she passed by. And whenever that happened there would be a death in the family before the twelve-month was out as sure as fate. A general shudder followed this _dénouement_, and old Mrs Linders made a particular application of it by remarking gloomily that it was a poor case to have the likes of such crathurs about; but Mrs Coleman, a comely matron, who continued to sit by the fire unperturbed, said placidly in a pause, “Sorra a bit of harm there’s in it this night I’m a-thinkin’. If the lads seen anythin’, it’s apt to ha’ just been some poor body after missin’ her way in the snow.”

“Troth and bedad, then it was the quare body altogether,” Peter asseverated, “and the hair of me head, as I was tellin’ you, bristlin’ straight wid the dhread of her the first minyit I come nigh the place.”

“Ah, sure, some people’s as ready at that as a dog at cockin’ his ears,” said Joey Nolan. “Maybe we’d a right to go look is there e’er a one in it. Some crathur might be strayin’ about perishin’, and it snowin’ again as thick as sheep’s wool.”

“Begor you won’t persuade me to go foolin’ along wid you,” said Peter; “I couldn’t be gettin’ my heels out of it fast enough. May the saints have me sowl, but I thought I’d lose me life afore ever I landed inside—and here I’ll stop. Nobody need be axin’ me, for divil a fut I’ll stir.”

“Good people are scarce,” Joe observed sarcastically; but Peter went on in a half-complacent tone, “One while it’ll be afore I’m the better of that frightenin’ I got. Every mortal bit of me’s in a thrimble wid it yet.”

“Musha, then, you gaby, can’t you whisht about it, instead of to be tellin’ everybody the sort of ould polthroon you are?” Rose Casey whispered to him fiercely, ready to cry with mortification as she saw significant smiles passing round at the expense of her happily unconscious betrothed.

As she spoke, the door resounded with a heavy thump, which made those who were standing next it hop back with a scarcely dignified haste. Some of them tried to carry it off by pretending that they were merely getting out of one another’s way, while some shrieked unfeignedly, and above all ejaculations rose Peter O’Donoghue’s voice, shrill with undissembled terror, saying: “Oh to goodness, don’t open it for your lives. Run that other form again it, you that are widin raich. Mercy be among us, she’s apt to have us all destroyed.”

“Arrah, now, will you be lettin’ us in out of that, you jackasses, you?” shouted a voice reassuringly familiar and irate. It was young Larry Sullivan, who had slipped out through the back door a few minutes before, and whose impatience at being kept waiting had nothing supernatural about it. Despite Peter’s remonstrances, the door was thrown open, and disclosed Larry, standing tall against a background of glimmering white, in a gloom which, when you looked into it anywhere steadily, grew full of wandering flakes like scattered bread-crumbs. Beside him appeared a smaller figure, whom he pulled indoors along with him before anybody well had time for terrific surmises, and whom the firelight showed to be a little old woman, wrapped up in a powdered brown shawl. She was breathless and bewildered and forlorn-looking, as she peered round from face to face, all strange, all comfortless—but no! for the moment Bridget Doran set eyes on her she sprang at her and caught her in a great hug—

“Why, granny darlint, and is it yourself?” she said. “And how at all did you come this night in the snow? It’s kilt you are entirely. You can’t ever ha’ come wid ould Bill Molloy?”

“Ah, honey, I thramped it,” said old Mrs Doran. “Sure I couldn’t rest aisy, thinkin’ me little Biddy was took that bad away all her lone among the strange people. But finely you’re looking, glory be to goodness. ’Deed now me heart’s been fit to break frettin’ ever since I got the letter this mornin’, sayin’ that belike you wouldn’t get over it.”

“An’ I to be dancin’ round like a zany bewitched, and you all the while streelin’ through the snow,” said Bridget, with acute remorse. “It’s sorry I am that I let anybody send you such owld lies. But”—looking indignantly at Rose—“I only said to say that I had a cowld.”

“And I lost me way in the dark,” went on Mrs Doran plaintively, “and what at all I’d ha’ done I dunno, on’y for the dacint boy coming by, for nought else the other two’d do but let yells at me, and run away like scared turkeys.”

“Creepin’ along under the high bank she was, the crathur, when I met her,” Larry meanwhile was telling the others, “and scarce able to contind wid the blasts of the win’. And sez she to me, ‘For the love of God, just stop to tell me am I anywhere near the Casey’s house?’ And sez I to her, ‘Is it the Quarry Farm you’re wantin’?’ And sez she to me, ‘Ay, it’s where my poor Katey’s little daughter Bridget Doran’s in service, and dyin’ wid some manner of outlandish sickness: It’s to her, I’m goin’,’ sez she. So sez I to her, if it was Bridget Doran she was wantin’, I’d seen the girl three minyits ago, and ne’er a sign of dyin’ on her whatsome’er, and I just brought her along here. It’s perished and stupid the crathur is wid the cowld. You’d a right to get her a cup of hot tay, and a warm at the fire,” concluded Larry, thereupon bestirring himself to superintend the carrying out of this prescription. And a little later he prompted his mother to offer Mrs Doran a night’s lodging at their house close by, thus entailing upon themselves more hospitality than they had foreseen.

For of the Surree at Mahon’s all’s well that ends well could not quite be said, as some of the guests were disposed to say prematurely when the assembly was breaking up. To begin with, old Mrs Doran had caught a very bad chill during her snowy wanderings, and now had a severe illness which endangered her life, and obliged Bridget to pay many an anxious and conscience-stricken hour as a fee for her deceptive letter, while a difference which she had next morning with Rose Casey about the unauthorised mendacity of its contents led to a permanent cooling down of their friendship. Moreover, Rose, on the very same day, spoke in such scathing terms to Peter O’Donoghue with reference to his panic on the night before, that even his impenetrable self-satisfaction was touched, and a violent falling out ensued. The consequence was that no wedding took place at Shrovetide; and the last time I had news from Killymeen “there was no talk of it at all, at all,” so the breach may be considered final. In fact, it is commonly supposed that he has some notion of transferring his attentions to Bridget Doran. But I happen to know that the only one among the boys she thinks anything of is Larry Sullivan, whom she always remembers gratefully as the rescuer of her grandmother. Whereas, if Larry fancies anyone, it is Kate Duffy.

Whence it appears that some rather complicated cross currents in the stream of life flowing through Killymeen have started from this Surree at Mahon’s.

THE SHORTEST WAY

THE SHORTEST WAY

District-Inspector Rochfort had risen very early on that wet August morning, to go trout-fishing along the Feltragh River. He hoped to get a couple of hours at it before breakfast; so he was not best pleased when Hugh Christie accosted him as he crossed the Ivy Bridge. Hugh was looking over the wreathed parapet up the river, and did not take his eyes off it; only put out a hand as Mr Rochfort passed, and stopped him with a touch on the arm. Undoubtedly Hugh had queer ways. His neighbours pronounced him to be “not all there,” which seemed an inappropriate description of his peculiarities, as rather there was more of him than of other people. But the more was something uncanny. He now said, still watching the water: “I was thinkin’ the Sargint might come by; howsome’er, sir, you’ll do as well.”

“That I won’t, my man,” said Mr Rochfort, “unless it can be done uncommonly smart, for I’ve no time to waste.”

“It’s as short as it’s long,” said Hugh. “But you needn’t mind about _thim_”—he pointed to the young man’s rod and creel—“there’ll be none of that work till it’s gone down, and risin’ it’ll be yet awhile.”

Mr Rochfort looked where Hugh was looking, and had reluctantly to admit the truth of this. The river ran far below them, down in a narrow steep-walled little glen, one of the many cracks that fissure Lisvaughan’s wind-swept, limestone plain. Almost each of these ravines has a stream in it, with a remnant of trees huddled together for shelter from the storms, whose stress they dare not meet in the open, and with ferns venturing out of the rock-clefts to droop ample fronds over the boulders on the margin. It is thus with Feltragh River, which rises in the moorland towards Shrole, and here, at the Ivy Bridge, comes round a sharp turn down a very stony stair. On the other side of the arch it broadens slightly, and a somewhat longer reach of it is in view; but Hugh Christie was staring up-stream, where the water rushed into sight abruptly within a pebble’s cast of his station. Swirling and tumbling it came, thrusting thick glassy strands between the boulders, or seething over the tallest of them in creamy fleeces. A roar ascended from those rapids hollowly and fitfully, so that the District-Inspector looked up and down the road occasionally, thinking a heavy cart must be lumbering along.

“There’s a strong current in it now,” said Hugh. “Man nor mortal couldn’t stand agin it. ’Twould lift a dead cow, let alone—anything else.”

“You’ve chosen a good place for a drenching,” said the District-Inspector, for the wind was driving its cold spray into their faces; “but I don’t see what else is to be got by staying in it.” And he was moving on, when Hugh said—

“Just wait a bit, till I tell you.”

Hugh’s clothes had a sodden appearance, as if they had given up trying to get any wetter, and his brown beard was all in a silvery mist of tiny drops; therefore he was not sensitive about the dampness of the weather. But what he said, though the District-Inspector did wait, was nothing more to the purpose than: “Last night was powerful dark; but it didn’t settle to rain till goin’ on for one o’clock—not to spake of, any way.”

“Well, it’s making up for lost time now, at all events,” said the District-Inspector, and had to be stopped again.

“See here, Mr Rochfort, you’re newish to the place; but ax anybody—ax his Riverence, or Mr Lennon at the public, or Sargint Moore—and every one of them’ll say I was niver known to raise a hand to do murdher on man or woman—or I might say child,” Hugh added after a pause, as if he felt that he was making large demands upon credulity.

“If I were you, Christie, I’d go home, out of the rain,” replied the District-Inspector.

“Och, no matther for that. I was goin’ to ax you, sir, did you remember the McAuliffes—the widdy and her daughter: that was all of them was in it, ever since you come to Lisvaughan.”

“Who lived at Brierly’s cottages over yonder?” the District-Inspector said, pointing towards the smooth-faced crag whose jut prevented them from seeing any farther up the Feltragh River. “I believe I do remember the old woman creeping to Mass—a little lame body; didn’t she die the other day?”

“Ay did she, last Friday week in Shrole Union; for the daughter that kep’ her out of it went wid the fever in the spring, and her son Dan that ped their rint in ’Sthralia, was niver sendin’ her a word iver since. So she made up her mind he was dead too, and she didn’t care what become of her after that; and she broke her heart fretting in the Infirm’ry. But last night Dan landed home lookin’ for her, as plased as anythin’.”

“The unlucky devil,” said the District-Inspector.

“You may say that,” said Hugh; “but there’s unluckier. Sure it was meself met him a trifle down the road, and on’y for that, ’twould ha’ been nobody’s doin’, and done all the same. And if it hadn’t been that outrageous dark, I’d never ha’ seen a sight of him. But sure up agin ourselves we foosthered on the path, and I wasn’t long then doubtin’ who had the discourse out of him about the Divil and such. So: ‘Is it after desthroyin’ you, I am, Dan?’ sez I. And sez he, ‘To your sowl, if it’s yourself, Hughey Christie,’ he sez, for he and I did be as thick as thieves in the ould times. And ‘Come a step along wid me,’ sez he, ‘for I can’t be delayin’.’ ‘Sure where’s the hurry at all?’ sez I, misdoubtin’ what might be in his mind, if he knew no betther or worser. ‘Why, man,’ sez he, ‘isn’t it goin’ on for ten year since I was at home? And like a living dhrame to me now I’m thinkin’ I’m that near her agin.’ So sez I to myself, ‘The Divil’s in it’; and sez I to himself, ‘Take care it isn’t too soon you’ll be gettin’ there, since you couldn’t conthrive it any sooner.’ Sure now, you’d ha’ supposed he’d ha’ had the wit to git a fright at that. But all he said was, ‘Ah,—the sisther, poor Lizzie, the crathur; ’deed, then, that was the great pity entirely, and a cruel loss to her for sartin. But sure that’s the raisin of me comin’ home at all, thinkin’ me mother’d be left too lonesome altogether. And what wid th’ ould stame-boat bustin’ up in her ingines,’ sez he, ‘and meself takin’ bad where they stopped for repeers, I’ve been twyste the time I’d a right to on the way. She’ll be in dhread there’s somethin’ happint me. Howane’er, sorra a much fear of that is there now, Hughey man, and me, so to spake, at the door goin’ in to her, thanks be to goodness,’ sez he.

“And niver a word out of me head to that. But I declare to you, sir, you might ha’ thought the river itself, that’s a dumb crathur, was thryin’ its best to tell him, accordin’ to the quare mutterin’ like it kep’ on wid down below. For stumpin’ up the Quarry Lane he was, that’s the nearest road to his house; ’twas just turnin’ into it I met him. Nor aisy it wouldn’t ha’ been any ways to git a word into the talk he had, and it mostly all about what he’d saved in ’Sthralia, and the fine counthry it was, and the grand thing to ha’ got away out of it. ‘But,’ sez he, ‘maybe I’d ha’ sted in it a while longer, if I hadn’t been afeard me ould woman here’d get mopin’ and frettin’ left all to herself, which I couldn’t abide the thoughts of. For right well I was doin’ out there,’ sez he, ‘and in another couple of years I’d ha’ had a goodish bit more to be bringin’ home wid me.’ And, bedad, you could see the truth of that, because every glimmer of light in the black of the night was shinin’ on the len’ths of the gould watch-chain he had wearin’ on his weskit. ‘Howiver,’ he sez, ‘I’ve plinty to be keepin’ her iligant, and what great matther about anythin’ more, when herself’s the on’y mortal crathur I have belongin’ to me in the width of the world? Sure, if I hadn’t her to be spendin’ it on,’ sez he, ‘I’d as lief be slingin’ ivery blamed ould pinny I own over the bank there into the rowlin’ river, and meself after it—faix would I, the Lord knows.’

“Well now, sir, after his sayin’ that, wouldn’t tellin’ him ha’ been as good as biddin’ him go dhrownd himself? I put it to you: wouldn’t it now?”

“It’s hard to say,” said the District-Inspector: “but what _did_ you do?”

“Stumpin’ along wid him I was, lettin’ on I was listenin’ to him, and all the while I was makin’ no more sinse of it than if he’d been a bullock I had dhrivin’ to market, that would be lettin’ a roar now and agin, at the mischief knows what. For thinkin’ to meself I was that unless I quitted foolin’ him, he’d be very prisintly walkin’ up to his door, and one of the Duggans, that he niver set eyes on in his life, shoutin’ to know who he was, and what he wanted, and tellin’ him the Union was after buryin’ his mother on him. So at last I’d twisted up me mind wid the notion I’d spake out the next time he said anythin’, and if I did, that minyit he hit me a clout on the back, and, ‘Och, Hughey, you bosthoon,’ sez he, ‘herself’ll be sittin’ this instiant of time be the fire in there, and niver thinkin’ I’m comin’ along a few perch down the ould road.’

“And sez I, ‘Tubbe sure, Dan, she’s thinkin’ no such thing at all’; and, for that matther, what truer could I ha’ said? And as sure as I’m alive, I’d ha’ gone on wid it, I would so, on’y ’twas just then we come round the turn opposite them Brierly Cottages. You know, sir, where they’re cocked up, across the river, fornint Fitzsimmons’ lime-kiln, wid ne’er a handy way of gittin’ at them except be the bridge; the next one above this it is—a wooden fut-bridge wid a hand-rail. But not a sight of it could we see in the dark, or anythin’ else, on’y the light burnin’ in the Duggans’ windy, the way it used to be afore they come there.

“And when Dan seen that, he let a sort of yell, and sez he, ‘There it is—there’s her ould bit of a lamp lightin’ the same as it was ever, and meself beholdin’ it agin—_glory be to God_.’ The Divil’s in it,” Hugh said, with a fierce clutch at the dripping ivy-sprays. “If the crathur hadn’t been so ready to be gloryin’ God, I’d ha’ found it in me heart to ha’ tould him the whole thing straight out—goodness help him!—but instead of that, I thought to be comin’ at it gradial. So I sez to him, lettin’ on I wasn’t mindin’ what he’d said, ‘Is it a star you’re lookin’ at?’ And sez he to me, ‘Musha, not at all, man; it’s somethin’ a dale nearer than a one of thim.’ And, ‘There’s things farther off than stars,’ sez I; and, ‘Belike there is,’ sez he, ‘but I’m not apt to be throublin’ me head about them when me ould woman’s waitin’ for me unbeknownst just across the sthrame. So I’ll be sayin’ good-night to you kindly, Hughey, and skytin’ over. Where at all’s the bridge? I can’t make out a stim before me. Ah, here it is!’ sez he, ‘right enough in its own place.’

“And it’s the truth I’m tellin’ you, Mr Rochfort, the truth I’m tellin’ you: not till the man was grabbin’ the rail wid one hand and mine wid the other, biddin’ me good-night, did the recollection come into me mind of anythin’ amiss. And then I dunno rightly how it was, but the same time I got considherin’ the way ’twould be, supposin’ I held me tongue for that minyit. For if I didn’t tell him the one thing, nobody’d ever tell him the other, and ’twould save throuble in a manner. Och, I dunno what come over me, but in the end all I sez to him was, ‘You’ll have to be walkin’ cautious, Dan,’—God forgive me, but for sure He won’t: that was every word I said.”

“But why should you have said more?” asked the District-Inspector. “The bridge is safe enough. Wasn’t the man sober?”

“Safe enough, begorra!” said Hugh. “If there warn’t six fut smashed slap out of the middle of it wid the big ash-tree buttin’ its head through it, that was blown off the top of the bank in the storm the night before last. Six fut clever and clane, and maybe six times six fut under it to drop down on the river and the rocks.”

“And you sent him over that in the dark?” said the District-Inspector. “What on earth possessed you?” This question, however, was merely a phrase, for he seemed to know the reason very well. “Was he killed?” he demanded, with the inquest in his mind. “Where’s the body lying?”

“It’s that I’m watchin’ for,” said Hugh, his eyes still following the rough white race below, “ever since I had light to see. He might be comin’ by any minyit now. But until the river riz wid the rain a couple of hours back, I doubt was there water enough to bring him; there was no very great dale runnin’ in it before then. So I wouldn’t think he could ha’ slipped past, and I not to notice.”

“Do you mean to say,” said the District-Inspector, “that you went off and left the unfortunate man there, without so much as ascertaining whether he was dead or alive?”

“Alive is it?” said Hugh. “Sure the wooden bridge is a good bit higher than this one; but if I tuk a standin’ lep off of the ledge here, it’s breakin’ me neck I’d be afore I knew where I was. And the jagged lumps of big stones is terrible; he might be wedged in between two of them. Och, no! for all the life’s left in him, poor Dan’ll ha’ had a paicibler night of it up there than meself had here, considherin’ quare things in the dark this long while. Ay will he, for the sort of moanin’ and screeches there was in it now and again was nothin’ on’y the win’, and the rain polthoguin’, I very well know.”

“And are you certain that the bridge hadn’t been mended?” said the District-Inspector.

“How could I help bein’ sartin sure? And I goin’ by it on’y a while before, in the grey of the light, and Mrs Duggan herself bawlin’ across to me that they were kilt thrampin’ half-a-mile or so afore they could git over anywheres.”

“But if you didn’t wait, how do you know that he mayn’t have turned back?”

“Wait? Bedad no, it’s runnin’ away down here I was, as fast as I could pelt. But what was to turn him back, and he flourishin’ off wid himself in the greatest hurry at all? You might ha’ thought it was ten fine fortin’s he was goin’ after; and not a stim to see a step before him wid. So if it isn’t a murdher, get me one. And that’s the raison I was thinkin’ I’d a right to be mentionin’ it to yourself, sir, or the Sargint.”

“It’s a very curious case,” said the District-Inspector, beginning instinctively to grope about for precedents, and finding none.

“But murdher or no,” said Hugh, “I do be thinkin’ diff’rent ways of it, and some of them’s bad. For I sez to meself, ‘In a fine disthraction poor Dan’d ha’ been, when he heard tell of th’ ould crathur breakin’ her heart in the House.’ And then again I sez to meself, ‘And supposin’? Many’s the fine disthraction you’ve been in yourself, me man, and niver tuk a lep into the river out of it.’ And arter that agin sez I to meself, ‘But sure, if some one’d ha’ up and shoved me over unbeknownst, so to spake, sorra the blame I’d ha’ blamed him.’ However, since the day’s light’nin’ overhead, little doubt I’ve had in me mind but that I’d liefer see him comin’ along the road on his feet, disthracted or not disthracted; and that’s what I’ll niver behould, if it was twyste as clear. Terrible clear it is gettin’,” he said, glancing furtively up.

The sky was all one floating, drifting greyness, dim and impenetrable even in a place rather low on the east, where many invisible hands seemed to be straining the vast web in devious directions, so that it thinned and paled. But at this moment it rent there right through, leaving a rift filled strangely with a liquid radiance of silver light glowing into amber, which suddenly darted into the eyes of the two men, and threw their shadows across the wet road, and set the puddles on fire.

“Look,” said Hugh excitedly, standing up straight and pointing towards the water.

A wave wider and wilder than the others was coming down the river, with something lapt round in it that made a dark core to its turbid brown. But this was borne along no farther than to the first ridged step in the fleeting rapids. There it halted and lay still, while the turmoil of water and foam fell away from about it in a flurry, draining off through the interstices of the boulders, or pouring over their veiled crests. It was the body of a man. One arm hung down against the straight rock-ledge, and the face looked up to the sun-gleam so naturally that when the next wave rushed by, weltering on and on and on interminably over it, the District-Inspector gave a gasp as if something had been taking his own breath.

“There he is, the very way I tould you,” said Hugh. At the sound of his voice the District-Inspector turned quickly, and, seeing that he had stepped up on to the low, ivied parapet, made a grasp at him, but was not in time to reach him. “Stop where you are, Dan, one instiant yet,” Hugh shouted: “for here I am, too!”

THE STAY-AT-HOMES

THE STAY-AT-HOMES

On the 1st of March, last year, it might have been noticed that people were continually going in and out of Letterowen Railway Station; yet the number of passengers who arrived and departed by train was certainly no larger than usual. The station is rather a new feature in the village, children of smallish growth remembering a time when its fine pink-washed gables, and brilliant flower-borders, and curious turnstile did not exist; still it had been there long enough for the charm of novelty to have been worn off, and that was not the _comether_ which on this dusty-grey, east-windy March Sunday drew thither so many visitors, who had no tickets to buy, nor other official business to transact. What they dropped in to look at was placarded upon the walls of the bare little waiting-rooms, where Jim Neligan, the porter, had been busy with a paste brush the evening before—so excessively so, indeed, being new to his post and zealous, that the station-master had inquired sarcastically whether he intended to paper the whole place over entirely, and if he didn’t think he might as well stick on another layer atop of the first. But the result of Jim’s lavishness was that wherever you turned there were the thick black letters announcing a special cheap excursion to Dublin on next Tuesday fortnight, which, as everybody well knew, would be St Patrick’s Day. Peter Carroll, who helped to clean lamps at the station, and his mother, who scrubbed floors there, had spread the report of the advertisement overnight, and it sounded so very remarkable that more people than not twirled the turnstile in the course of the morning and came down the zig-zag path to see for themselves.

The inhabitants of Letterowen are not great travellers. Their railway is only a branch of a branch line, and while most of them have not gone farther along it than Brockenbeg Junction, seven miles north, by no means few have never got even so far. It is a place where in soft weather the platform frequently takes a pattern of bare feet, and bare feet seldom set out on long journeys by rail. As for Dublin, that had hitherto seemed a goal which remoteness and magnitude made hardly accessible even to imagination. Letterowen folk considered vaguely that it would need a sight of money and a powerful length of time to bring you thither, and what might be expected to befall you there was so hard to say that your return seemed misty indeed. Yet here was a printed notice boldly promising—“To Dublin and back for two shillings,” and going into circumstantial details about a train departing at six in the morning and arriving at noon, and leaving again at midnight. “Twenty-four hours for twenty-four pence,” it ended epigrammatically, and some of its readers felt no manner of doubt that each one of them would be an hour of rapture unalloyed. Others were less confident. Old Dan Molloy had heard tell of there being such thick fogs in Dublin most whiles that people “were as apt to walk plump into the river as anywhere else, which was a terrible dangerous thing.” And the Widow Loughlin had been told that “thim quare excursion trains as often as not got shunted off into a siding before they came to any place, and the crathurs in them did be left there perishin’ for nobody knew how long.” Several of the neighbours also wondered whether the people would have to be sitting in their seats all the time she was stopping in Dublin station, for that wouldn’t be very gay at all. Mr Farrell, the station-master, was frequently called upon to clear up this or some similar perplexity, and he generally did so satisfactorily, pointing out at the same time that the terms were uncommonly reasonable. I do not think that they struck most of his hearers in just that light. The opinion rather inclined to be that they certainly offered a great deal for the money, but that the money, as certainly, was a great deal to pay. For pence are pennies at Letterowen. Thus the price specified for the four-and-twenty hours had in some cases an effect not intended by the company.

“Four-and-twinty pence—goodness guide us; sure I would be four days arnin’ meself that much at the weedin’ or stone-gatherin’ if I was on full woman’s wages itself,” said Anne Reilly, who in slack seasons often had to be content with half that amount; “and to go spind it away between one mornin’ and the next, as if you could pick it up handy along the side of the road. Musha, long life to them; I hope they’ll be gettin’ their health till I do.”

“And, mind you, the two shillin’s isn’t the whole of it—where’s your bit of food comin’ from? Or is it starvin’ you’d go there and back again?” said Anne’s niece, Katty M‘Grehan, meaning to discourage her sister Maggie, whom she suspected of harbouring extravagant ideas, which Maggie quite understood, and rejoined to, saying with some heat: “Then is it aitin’ nothin’ at all a body’d be, supposin’ they was sittin’ mopin’ at home? ’Twould be all the one thing to take it along in the ould can. For the matter of that there’s nothin’ aisier.”

“Nor wastefuller,” Katty said, sticking obdurately to her point, with her worst suspicions confirmed. She wanted to save those two shillings, having planned a treat for her crippled father, “the crathur.”

“Well, glory be to goodness, Jimmy,” old Mrs Walsh remarked to her contemporary, James M‘Evilly, who, like herself, had listened dispassionately to the little skirmish, “you and me is too ould and ancient altogether for to be botherin’ about goin’ or stayin’—the trees in the hedges is as apt to be thinkin’ of takin’ runs up the road, and it saves a power of throuble.”

This view of the situation prevailed more or less among the elders of Letterowen, but not universally. Here and there an old body held an alert and agile mind, which, according to circumstances, chafed at its restraints, or made a shift to get about in spite of them. Such was the case with Mrs Rea, whose age, never estimated at less than “rale ould entirely,” is by some people asserted to be “every day of ninety year.” She herself acquiesces cheerfully in any figure between that and threescore and ten. Certain it is, at all events, that she seems quite as active and vigorous as many of her much less venerable neighbours. Still they were surprised when, a few days later, she was amongst the first to announce that she intended to “thry her chance, and see what sort of a place Dublin might be at all at all.” Behind her back, they declared that it was “no thing for the ould crathur to take upon herself to be doin’,” and that “she might very aisy lose her life over it if she didn’t mind what she was at.” And some of them called upon her in her house at the end of the post-office row, fronting the railway embankment, for the express purpose of remonstrating with her in scarcely less outspoken terms. “Ah, woman dear,” they would say, “is it dotin’ you are, or what at all’s come over you to put such a notion in your head? Sure it’s losin’ yourself ten times you’ll be going that far, let alone breakin’ the ould bones of you clamberin’ in and out of them high carriages, and up and down them cruel steep stairs. Or else, ma’am, desthroyed you’ll surely be in the streets, where they say an ould person creepin’ about is as apt to get dhruv over as a weeny chucken that sets itself up to be runnin’ under the people’s feet, and they coming out from Mass.” But for all of these she had the same answer: “Well now, ma’am, if I amn’t ould enough to take care of meself at this time of day, I dunno when I’m likely to be.” To which piece of inconsequence they commonly replied, “that them that was wilful’d go their own way,” and took leave huffily, unconvincing and unconvinced.

Their axiom was truer in Mrs Rea’s case than might have been anticipated from her circumstances; for she was a solitary widow, and the way that such persons go is often determined by quite other considerations than their own wilfulness, especially if there be a question of as much as two shillings involved. Mrs Rea, however, had one son prospering in the States, and another long established as under-gardener to very high-up quality in the county Sligo, and both of them were “rale good lads to their mother,” which set her above anything she or her neighbours would have called want. Just now, moreover, her “odd few ould hens,” had been laying unusually well, so that her railway fare was forthcoming with little difficulty. The chief obstacle she encountered was public opinion, which, although she thought as lightly of it as might be, she could not completely disregard. It is impossible to set out on a great enterprise with an unperturbed mind in the face of unanimous prophecies that you will never come back alive; even if you do let on to consider them “all blathers and nonsense.” So Mrs Rea, while dealing summarily with the objections urged by her ordinary acquaintances, would condescend to argue the matter at much length with her especial crony, Julia Carroll.

Julia disapproved of the project rather decidedly for her, she being by no means an opinionated person. “’Deed, now, Joanna,” she said, in the course of their first discussion, “supposin’ I had the chance itself, which I havn’t, it’s long sorry I’d be to be settin’ off on any such a deminted sthravade. Sure, woman alive, them that has the age on them of you and me is bound to be travellin’ prisintly, whether or no, far enough to contint anybody, unless it was the Wanderin’ Jew. So where’s the sinse of tatterin’ about afore thin in them racketin’ smoky trains? I declare to you, I hate the noise and smell of them passin’ by there, goodness forgive me, and it only the nathur of them after all.”

“But bedad thin, Julia, that’s the very thing I was considherin’,” said Mrs Rea. “For if it’s stuck down in the one place we’re to be all the while till we’re took, we’ll get that disaccustomed to everythin’ out of the way we won’t know what to do wid ourselves anywheres else. So for that raison we’d a right to jaunt about now and agin to diff’rint places the way we’ll be a thrifle used to what we’re strange to, and not amazed and moidhered entirely wid the quareness of it.”

“Well, now, I’d never have that notion,” said Julia Carroll, “for it’s the quare quareness and the sthrange sthrangeness I’ll be throublin’ me head about when once I get the chance of goin’ the road after some of them that’s wint afore me. Sure as long as there was the ould people in it it might be the most outlandish place one could consaive and I’d niver notice it, I’d be that took up wid meetin’ them, nor you wouldn’t aither, Joanna. Morebetoken, I’m often thinkin’ these times that the old place is the sthrangest of all since they’re quit out of it—and no fear of gettin’ used to it, sorra a fear!”

“Maybe that’s very thrue for you,” said Mrs Rea. “But, talkin’ of the ould people, there’s another raison I have. Do you remimber Biddy Loughlin—thim that lived below the forge?”

“In a manner I remember her, but which of them was Biddy I couldn’t say for sure. They was only slips of girls the time they stopped here, and we never had much doin’s or dalin’s wid them.”