Chapter V: Part 5

It was a showery evening, with a wafting to and fro of wide gusts, which made the Widdy O’Farrell wonder more than once as she sat on the form by the hearth, with the Widdy Byrne interposed buffer-wise between her and old Joe M‘Neill. What she wondered was, whether her poor Pat might be apt to be crossin’ over the say on such an ugly wild night. Just as Mrs Keogh, with an eye on the lid-bobbing kettle, was about to ask Fergus if he might happen to have e’er a drop of hot water he could spare her—that being the orthodox preface to tea-making on the occasion of a join—the house-door rattled violently, and opened with a fling. As nobody appeared at it, this was supposed to be simply the wind’s freak, and Fergus said to Mick M‘Murdo, who sat next to it, “Musha, lad, be givin’ it a clap to wid your fut.” But at that instant a voice was heard close outside, calling as if to another person a little farther off, “Molly, Molly, come along wid you; they’re all here right enough, and I wouldn’t be keepin’ the door open on them.” Whereupon there was a quick patter of approaching feet, followed by the entrance of two bundle-bearing figures. As they advanced into the flickering light, it showed that the figures were a man and a woman, and the bundles children; and in another moment there rose up recognising shrieks and shouts of “Pat” and “Molly,” and then everybody rushed together tumultuously across a chasm of half-a-dozen years.

“They tould us below at Widdy Byrne’s that we’d find yous all up here,” said Pat O’Farrell, “so we left the baby there, and stepped along. Och, mother, it’s younger you’re grown instead of oulder, and that’s a fac.’”

“And where’s the wife, Paudyeen agra?” said Pat’s mother; “or maybe she sted below wid the child?”

“And where’s himself, Molly jewel?” said Molly’s mother. “Sure you didn’t come your lone?”

“Why, here he is,” said Molly. “Pat, man, wasn’t you spakin’ to me mother?”

“Och, whethen now, and is it Pat O’Farrell?” his mother-in-law said with a half-strangled gasp.

“And who else would it be at all at all, only Pat?” said Molly, as if propounding an unanswerable argument.

“Mercy be among us all—and you niver let on—och, you rogue of the world—you niver let on, Patsy avic, it was little Molly M‘Neill you’d took up wid all the while,” said his mother.

“Sure I was writin’ to you all about her times and agin,” Pat averred stoutly.

Perhaps things might have turned out differently if people had not been delighted and taken by surprise. But as it was, how could a feud be conducted with any propriety when Mrs Neil had unprotestingly been hugged by Pat O’Farrell, and when old Joe M‘Neill and his wife and daughter were already worshipping a very fat small two-year-old girl, who unmistakably featured all the O’Farrells that ever walked? The thing was impossible.

For one moment, indeed, an unhappy resurrection seemed to be threatened. It was when everybody had got into a circle round the hearth, in expectation of the cups of tea, which were beginning to clatter in the background, and when Pat O’Farrell, who was talking over old times with Neil M‘Neill, suddenly gave his father-in-law a great thump on the back, exclaiming with a chuckle, “Och, man, and do you remimber your ould sheep that we got in the oats, and gave a coloured wash to? Faix, but she was the comical objec’—‘the tiger-sheep,’ the childer used to call her.” Whereupon all the rest looked at one another with dismayed countenances, as if they had caught sight of something uncanny. But their alarm was needless. For Neil returned Pat’s thump promptly with interest, and replied, “Haw, haw, haw! Bedad, and I do remimber her right well. Och now, man alive, I’ll bet you me best brogues that wid all you’ve been behouldin’ out there in the States you niver set eyes on e’er a baste’d aquil her for quareness—haw, haw, haw!” And the whole company took up the chorus, as if minded to make up on the spot all arrears of laughter owing on that long unappreciated joke. Amid the sound of which I have reason to believe that there fled away from Meenaclure for ever the last haunting phantasm of the unchancy tiger-sheep.

THE SNAKES AND NORAH

THE SNAKES AND NORAH

The Kennys’ little farmstead was a somewhat amphibious one, occupying the southern end of the isthmus which keeps the Atlantic foam from riding into Lough Fintragh, a small, dark-watered nook niched in the shadow of steep mountain slopes. Another murkier shadow brooded over it in the opinion of the Kennys, who, like most of their neighbours, at least half-believed that its recesses harboured a monstrous in-dweller. Their thin white house stood fronting the seashore, with a narrow grazing strip behind, while their yard and sheds lay along the dwindling isthmus, which becomes a mere reef-like bar of boulders and shingle before it again touches the mainland. In calm weather Joe Kenny might see his unimposing ricks reflected from ridge to butt, with gleams of ochre and amber and gold in both salt and fresh water; but in stormy times, which came oftener, it might befall him to witness a less pleasing spectacle of hay-wisps and straw-stooks strewn bodily, floating and soaking on the wasteful waves. So he was not surprised to find that this had happened when he walked out one December morning after a wild night whose blustering had mingled menace with his dreams. Despite its close-meshed roping and thick fringe of dangling stone weights, the more exposed haystack had been seriously wrecked and pillaged. “Och, bad cess to the ould win’ and its whillaballoos!” said Joe, as he surveyed the distorted outlines, and made a rueful estimate of the damage. “If I got the chance to slit its bastely bellows for it, ’twould be apt to keep its huffin’ and puffin’ quiet for one while—it would so.” This was not, however, the limit of his losses. Presently he stood looking vexedly over the door of a half-roofed shed, which contained a good deal of sea-water and weed; also a very small red calf, and a large jelly-fish. The calf was drowned dead, but the jelly-fish seemingly lived as much as usual. “Eyah, get out wid you, you unnathural-lookin’ blob of a baste!” said Joe, giving this unprofitable addition to his stock a contumelious flick with his blackthorn. “There’s another good fifteen shillin’s gone on me. I’d never ha’ thought ’twould ha’ tuk and slopped over the wall that way. Sorra the bit of a Christmas box I’ll be able to conthrive her this year, and that’s a fac’; and to-morra fair day and all—weary on it!”

“Her” was Rose O’Meara, Joe’s sweetheart; and since he had long looked forward to the opportunity of the Christmas gift as likely to bring about a favourable crisis in his courtship, the falling through of his plan made him feel dejectedly out of humour, in which unenjoyable mood he strolled on towards the pigstye. Traces of the spent storm lay all around him. The tide had receded some way, but the waves were fast by, still hissing and seething, and flinging themselves down with hollow booms and thuds. They had evidently been beating high against the yard-wall, for all along it they had left great masses of brown sea-wrack tossed in bales and clumps, as if loaded out of a cart; and these were connected by trails of green and black weed, skeleton branches, shells, clotted froth, driftwood, and other debris, all in an indescribable tangle. As Joe stumped through it, he trucks his foot sharply against something hard, and nearly tripped up. When he recovered his balance, he saw that the obstruction was not the boulder which he had already execrated in haste. It was a wooden box. In much excitement Joe picked it up, and set it on the top of the wall for exacter scrutiny. The tides were constantly sweeping in with miscellaneous fringes on the Kennys’ demesne, but seldom did they bring anything that might not be justly termed “quare ould rubbish.” During all the course of Joe’s life, and he was not in his first youth, no waif had been washed up so promising in appearance as this box. About ten inches square it was, and made of a fine grained dark wood, which seemed to have been very highly polished. The corners were clamped with bronze-like metal, elaborately wrought, and plates of the same inlaid the keyhole and hinges. So strong was the lock, that when he tried to wrench off the lid he seemed to have a solid block in his hands, and it shut so tightly that the lines of juncture were almost invisible. Its weight was considerable enough to increase his conviction that it held something very precious.

Joe’s first impulse was to rush home with his prize, exhibit and examine it. Immediately afterwards, however, it flashed across him like an inspiration that here was Rose’s Christmas box; and upon this followed a more leisurely resolve to keep it a secret until he should present her with it intact on Christmas morning, still distant three whole days. This course would cost him the repression of much impatient curiosity, but it was recommended to him by a sense that it would enhance the value of the gift. He would be making over to Rose all the vague and wonderful possibilities of the treasure-trove, which in his imagination were more splendid than any better-defined object, as they loomed through a haze of unseen gold and jewels. Disappointment had scanty room among his forecasts. “Sure, I’d a right to give it to her just the way it is, wid anythin’ at all inside it, for amn’t I axin’ her to take meself in a manner like that, whether good, bad, or indiff’rint comes of it?—on’y it’s scarce as apt, worse luck, to be any great things as the full of a grand lookin’ box is. But she might understand ’twas as much as to say I’d be wishful she had every chance of the best that I could git for her, the crathur, if it was all the gold and silver and diamonds that ever were dhrownded under the say-wather, and’d never think to be lookin’ to reckon them, no more than if they were so many handfuls of ould pebbles off of the strand.” Thus reflected Joe, who had a vein of sentiment, which sometimes outran his powers of expression. And thereupon, leaving the box atop of the wall, he went to look after the pigs. He found them all surviving, though the storm had caused some dilapidations in their abode, which obliged him to do a little rough carpentry, and kept him hammering and thumping for several minutes. And when he returned to the place where he had left the box, the box was gone.

He searched wildly for it among the litter on both sides of the wall, and nowhere could it be seen. Yet at that hour what man or mortal was there abroad to have stirred it? Then he thought that the weeds looked wetter than they had been, and he said to himself that “one of them waves must ha’ riz up permiscuous and swep’ it off in a flurry while his back was turned; and a fine gomeral he’d been to go lave it widin raich of such a thing happenin’ it.” So as no more satisfactory explanation was forthcoming, he turned homeward, empty-handed and crestfallen. But before he had taken many steps, he saw sitting under the lee of the yard-wall Tom O’Meara, Rose’s brother, who was generally recognised to be courting Mary Kenny, Joe’s youngest sister. The O’Mearas lived a good step beyond the other end of the isthmus, and Joe had begun to speculate what so early a visit might signify, when the greater wonder abruptly swallowed the less as he became aware that Tom had the twice-lost box in his hands.

“Look-a, Joe, at what I’m after findin’,” he called jubilantly.

“Findin’? Musha moyah! that’s fine talkin’,” said Joe. “And where at all did you find it, then?”

“Where it was to be had,” said Tom, promptly adjusting his tone to Joe’s, which was offensive.

“Then it’s sitting atop of our wall there it was,” said Joe. “Whethen, now, some people has little enough to do that they can’t keep their hands off meddlin’ wid things they find sittin’ on other people’s yard-walls.”

“And suppose it was sittin’ on anybody’s ould wall,” said Tom, “what else except a one of them rowlin’ waves set it sittin’ there wid itself, and it all dhreepin’ wet out of the say? Be the same token it’s quare if one person hasn’t got as good a right to be liftin’ it off as another. Troth and bedad, I’d somethin’ betther to do than to be standin’ star-gazin’ at it all day, waitin’ to ax lave of the likes of yous.”

“I’ll soon show you the sort of rowlin’ wave there was, me man, if you don’t throuble yourself to be handin’ it over out of that, and I after pickin’ it up this half-hour ago,” said Joe, with furious irony.

“Come on wid you, come on!” Tom shouted, jumping to his feet with a general flourish of defiance. At this point the dispute bade fair to become an argument without words, and would probably have done so had it not been that the two young men were the brothers of their sisters. As it was, a sort of Roman-Sabine complication fettered and handcuffed them. “Divil a thing else I was intendin’ to do wid it, but bring it straight ways in to your sister Mary,” said Tom, “that you need go for to be risin’ rows about the matter.”

“It’s for Rose’s Christmas box; that’s what I think bad of,” said Joe.

“Let’s halve it between the two of them, then, whatever it is,” said Tom, feeling that a compromise was the utmost he could reasonably expect from circumstances.

And so it was arranged, rather weakly on Joe’s part, he being the better man of the two, and well within his rights, if he had chosen to claim the box unconditionally. The joint presentation should take place, they agreed, on Christmas Eve, the next day but one, when Rose O’Meara would be visiting the Kennys; and then Tom departed whistling, with the pick he had come to borrow the loan of, while Joe consoled himself as best he could for this arbitrary subtraction of more than half the pleasure and romance from his morning’s find.

Late on Christmas Eve, when the Kennys’ kitchen was full of glancing firelight, and the widow Kenny, with her son and daughters and her guests, Tom and Rose O’Meara, had all had their tea, Joe and Tom were seen to often whisper and nudge one another, until at last Joe got up and produced the box from its secret hiding-place. But Tom hastened to forestall him as spokesman, placing considerable confidence in his own perspicacity and grace of diction. He said—

“See you here, Mary and Rose. This consarn’s a prisint the two of us is after gettin’ the two of yous—I mane it was Joe found it aquilly the same as me, that picked it up somethin’ later. And it’s he’s givin’ the whole of his half of the whole of it to Rose; but he’s nothin’ to say to the rest of it; and it’s meself that’s givin’ Mary the half of the whole of the half—och no, botheration! it’s the whole of the—it’s the other whole half of it—”

“You’ve got it this time,” Joe remarked in a sarcastic aside.

“—I’m givin’ Mary. So that’s the way of it, and when we’ve got the lid prized off for yous, you’ll just have to regulate it between yous, accordin’ to what there is inside.”

“And if it’s all the gold and diamonds in the riches of the world,” said Joe, “you’re kindly welcome to every grain of it, Rose jewel—ay, bedad, are you.”

“To the one half of it,” corrected Tom, with emphasis. But his sister tapped him with the pot-stick, and said, “Whisht, you big omadhawn, whisht.”

“It’s a pity of such a thing to be knockin’ about and goin’ to loss,” said Mary, rubbin’ her finger on the embossed metal-work; “and I wonder what’s gone wid whatever crathur owned it. Under the salt say he’s very apt to be lying this night—the Lord be good to him!” The rustle of the waves climbing up the shingle outside seemed to swell louder as she spoke.

“For anythin’ we can tell, he might be takin’ a look in at us through the windy there this minute to see what we’re doin’ wid it,” said Joe.

Everybody’s eyes turned towards the dark little square of the window, and Mary left off handling the box as suddenly as if it had become red-hot.

“Oh, blathers!” said Tom. “Just raich me the rippin’-chisel that’s lyin’ on the windy-stool, Norah, and we’ll soon thry what it is at all.”

Norah, the elder sister, made a very long arm, and secured the tool with as little approximation as might be to the deep-set panes. She had neither sweetheart nor Christmas box, and was disposed to take a rather languid and cynical view of affairs.

“There’s apt not to be any great things in it, I’m thinkin’,” said the widow Kenny from her elbow-chair by the hearth. The truth was that she had been reflecting with some bitterness how not so many years since Joe would have “come flourishin’ in to her wid any ould thrifle of rubbish he might ha’ picked up outside,” whereas now he had kept this valuable property silently in his possession for three days, for the purpose of bestowing it upon the O’Mearas’ slip of a girl. Consequently, Joe’s mother held aloof from the eager group round the table, and uttered disparaging predictions of the event. Tom and Mary did make a prudent attempt to fend off their collision with the disappointment which might emerge from the mists ahead by repeating, as the chisel wrestled with the stubborn hasps and springs, “Sure, all the while belike there’s on’y some quare ould stuff in it, no good to anybody.” Joe and Rose, on the contrary, chose to run under crowded sail towards the possible wreck of their hopes, and talked of sovereigns and bank-notes and jewels while the lid creaked and resisted.

But when at length it yielded with a final splinter, it disclosed what no one had anticipated—namely, nothing. The box was quite empty. Daintily lined with glossy satinwood, as if for the reception of something delicate and precious, but bare as the palm of your hand. There was not even so much vacant space as might have been expected, for the sides were disproportionately thick. Very blank faces exchanged notes with one another upon this result. Almost any contents, however inappropriate and worthless, would have been their “advantage to exclaim upon,” and more tolerable for that reason than mere nullity, about which there was little to be said. Rose was the first to rally from the general mortification, observing with forced cheerfulness that “sure ’twould make an iligant sort of workbox, at all ivints, and ’twas maybe just as handy there bein’ nothin’ in it, because ’twould hould anythin’ you plased.” To which Mary rejoined, dejectedly refusing to philosophise, “Bedad, then, you may keep it yourself, girl alive, for the lid’s every atom all smashed into smithereens.”

The young people were not, however, with one exception, in the mood for dwelling upon the dark side of things. Their depression caused by the collapse of the Christmas box was superficial, and soon passed away. When in course of the evening the two young men went out to feed the pigs, Rose and Mary accompanied them to the back door, where they all loitered so long that the patience waiting round the empty trough must have been sorely tried. Sounds of their talking and laughing came down the passage and were heard plainly in the kitchen, whence Mrs Kenny had slipped up her ladder stairs to say her rosary, so that Norah was for the time left quite alone. She was decidedly out of humour, albeit by no means on account of the others’ rapid reverse of fortune. Rather, we may apprehend, she had viewed that incident as a not regrettable check to a tide of affairs which was unduly sweeping all manner of good luck her neighbours’ way, and unjustly leaving her high and dry. This grudging spirit had forbidden her to appear interested in the examination of the box, but now she could satisfy without betraying her curiosity. As she drew her fingers aimlessly round its smooth inner surface, there was a sudden snap and jerk, and out slid a secret drawer, which had been concealed by a false bottom. It was filled with rose-pink wadding, amongst which lay the coils of a long gold snake necklace. She lifted it out amazedly, and held it up in the firelight, with jewelled head gleaming and enamelled scales, a far finer piece of workmanship than she knew, though the flash of brilliants and rubies assured even her uninstructed eyes that she had come on something of much value.

While she was still looking at it she heard steps returning up the passage, and forthwith tried hastily to replace it in the box. But at a clumsy touch the drawer flew back into its former invisibility, and her flurried fumbling failed to press the lurking spring. Then, as the steps came very near, she thrust her ornament into her pocket, and moved away from the table on which the box stood. In doing so, she was conscious only of a proud perversity which made her loth to be found meddling with what she sullenly called “no consarn of mine.” Presently, however, other motives for concealment grew clearer and stronger. Of course, the longer she retained it the more difficult would the restoring of it be. Her crossness made it impossible for her to imagine a joke as a natural explanation of her conduct. Moreover, a covetous wish to keep the beautiful thing for its own sake sprang up, and had a swift growth. She said to herself that “she didn’t see why she need have any call to be givin’ it up, after all. Wasn’t she after findin’ it in the quare little slitherin’ tray, and the rest of them wid no more notion of it bein’ there at all than ould Sally the goat had? It might be lyin’ where it was till the world’s end on’y for her? And sure, for the matter of that, the ould box itself was no more a belongin’ of the lads to give away than of any other body that might ha’ happened on it tossin’ about the shore. So if it wasn’t theirs be rights, she thought she’d be a fine fool to not keep what she’d got.” Sophistical arguments such as these convinced her reason easily enough, but her conscience was less amenable to them. They were reinforced by some further considerations which possessed no ethical value at all, and which she had the grace to be ashamed of putting into clearly outlined thoughts. She allowed herself to have only a vague sense of grievance at the fact that Rose and Mary had “presents, and people to be makin’ fools of them, and all manner,” whereas none of these desirable things were bestowed on her. Yet it formed a mental atmosphere which made the prospect of yielding up her discovery seem incongruous and odious, in the same way that a bitter wind blowing makes us loth to throw open our doors and windows.

“Cock them up to be gettin’ everythin’,” she said to herself, as she sat in a corner with her hand in her pocket, and drew through her fingers the cold, smooth coils, remembering how the gem-encrusted head had blazed in the firelight. She wished that she could venture to take it out and proudly display it as her property; but she was far from daring to do so. On the contrary, she felt herself laden with a guilty secret, and was presently beset by all the misgivings, suspicions, and surmises which infest people who carry about such a burden. Whenever anyone went near the box her heart thumped with terror lest the drawer should be detected, and its rifled condition somehow traced to her. Then she trembled to think that the lads perhaps knew all the time of the necklace’s existence, and were just reserving it for a grand surprise; or she imagined herself letting it drop accidentally and being unable to account for her possession of it. These speculations so pre-occupied her that she was obliged to explain her absent-mindedness by declaring herself “intirely disthracted wid the toothache”; upon which the condolences and sympathy of the others aggravated her uneasiness with remorseful gratitude. Her conscience nipped her shrewdly when Rose said, “Ah, the crathur, I’ll run over to-morra early and bring you the bottle ould Matt Farren gev me mother; it’s the grandest stuff at all for the toothache,”—Rose whom she was defrauding of a share in that golden marvel! At length she had resource to a plan which promised her temporary relief from urgent fears and self-reproaches. This was to hide away the necklace in some cranny of the rocks on the shore, where, if it should be rediscovered, nothing would implicate her in the matter. She said to herself, indeed, that they would have just as much chance of finding it there as in the mysterious drawer; but beneath that soothing reflection lay a resolve to minimise the chance by choosing the most unlikely chink possible. Since the evening was by this time far spent, and the O’Mearas had already taken leave, she knew that she must hurry to execute her design before Joe came in from seeing after the cattle, when the house would be shut up. So she slipped quietly out of doors.

It was a dark, gusty night, and the waves, still turbulent after their late uproar, were clattering noisily up the shingly ridges of the beach. As Norah ran along she could barely discern the glimmering of pale grey stones and white foam-crests. She kept on by the lough side of the isthmus, because the walking there was smoother, but when she thought she had come a safe distance she stopped, intending to cross over and seek a hiding-place for her spoil among a small chaos of weeded boulders. Looking for a moment athwart the black water, she saw a dim streak of light in the sky above it. The moon was glimpsing out of an eastern cloud-rift, and throwing down a meagre web of rays, which the unquiet dark surface caught fitfully and shredded into the broken coils of a writhing silver serpent. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps the golden snake-chain in her hands, that suggested the thing, but at any rate Norah suddenly bethought her of the _Piast_. For Lough Fintragh is haunted by the terror of one of these monsters, a huge and grisly worm, dwelling down in the shadowy end of the lake, where the water is said to have no bottom, and to wander in labyrinthine caverns about the roots of the mountains. The creature had not been very often seen, but Norah well knew what a direful fate had overtaken every soul to whom its shag-maned, lurid-eyed head and rood-length of livid scales had disastrously appeared. One of its least appalling habits, ran report, was to glare fixedly at its victim, until fascinated and distraught he leaped wildly into the jaws gaping for their prey. In the lonesome, murmurous dimness by the shore, Norah did not care to linger over such incidents, and she was turning away quickly, when a shock of fright almost paralysed her. Within a few yards of her feet she saw two reddish amber eyes glowing through the gloom, and from the same place came a sound of something in rustling, flapping motion.

It was, in fact, only a harmless and rather bewildered seal, who, during the past night’s turmoil, had somehow got into the lough, and who now, instinctively aware of the rising tide, had set out eager to quit the insipid fresh water for his strong-flavoured Atlantic brine. But Norah naturally jumped to the conclusion that nothing less fearsome than the _Piast_ itself was flopping towards her, and she fled away before it in a headlong panic, which culminated a moment afterwards when she ran against some large moving body. This, again, was simply her brother Joe, returned from setting his friends on their way; but Norah, with a wild shriek, gave herself up for lost, and did actually come near putting an end to herself by tumbling in frantic career over one stone, and striking her head violently on another. She had to be carried home insensible, and Christmas Day had come and gone before she found her way back gropingly to consciousness.

Meanwhile conjectures, of course, were rife as to the origin of her mishap, and the antecedents of the “iligant gold snaky chain” that she was grasping. “Sclutched that tight she had it in her sclenched fist, we were hard set to wrench it out of her hand,” Mrs Kenny volubly told her neighbours. The favourite theory held that she “was after pickin’ it up on the shore, and would be skytin’ home wid it in a hurry, not mindin’ where she was goin’, and that was the way she got the ugly toss.” And when Norah had recovered from the effects of it sufficiently to be asked for her own account of the matter, she could throw but little light thereon. Her accident had left, as so often happens, a strange misty gap in her memory, which it was vain to scan. The space between her first sight of the box and her blinding crash down on the shingle was all a confused blank. However, two results of the affair emerged, and, though their cause remained untraceable, had a distinct influence upon her future. One of them was, that she would on no account permit the snake necklace to be regarded as her property. She persistently asserted that it belonged to Mary and Rose; and when Dr Mason, who had undertaken to dispose of it in Dublin, remitted an incredible number of pounds, she would hear of no arrangement save dividing them between her sister and sister-in-law elect. The other had more important consequences to the whole course of her life. It was an abiding dread of their connecting isthmus, which had become so horrible a place to her that never again would she cross over it, even when promised the protection of the most stalwart escort. Now, as the isthmus is very much the nearest way from the Kennys’ farm to any other habitations, this peculiarity of Norah’s cut her off greatly from whatever society the neighbourhood afforded, besides gaining her a reputation for “quareness” not likely to increase her popularity. Probably, therefore, it may have been part of the reason why the years as they came and went that way found her rooted fast and growing into a settled old maid.

Those glowering yellow eyes being blurred out of her recollection, the _Piast_ did not occur to her as the object of her fear. But some people were not slow to connect it with the uncanny inhabitant of the lough, and in process of time their various imaginations hardened into a circumstantial narrative of an especially terrific appearance of the monster. To this day, indeed, so current is the story, that many a wayfarer along the bleak shingle strip goes the faster for a doubt whether such an awful experience as befell Norah Kenny may not be writhing towards him beneath the sunless waters of Lough Fintragh.

THREE PINT MEASURES

THREE PINT MEASURES

The little stream which flows southward through Ballyhoy must be one of the smallest contributions accepted anywhere by the sea, so insignificant in quantity is the water trickling over the smoothed stone step under the low arch on the shore. Yet the course of its channel can be traced, when the tide is out, in gleaming sky-coloured loops far across the mud-flats. As a rule the tide there _is_ out: some of the neighbours indeed, have a theory, no doubt scientifically untenable, that it comes in only about once a week. For this narrow creek, cut off from the Bay by the great grassy sandbank of the North Bull, is steadily silting up, so that its soundings grow shallower every year, and rarer the occasions when we see a plain of sapphire or mother-o’-pearl, threaded with paths of silver rippling, spread all the way between us and the cliffs at purple Howth. It looks as if the Bull would ultimately join the mainland without intermission. Even now, at low water, the passage to and fro can be effected fairly dry-shod by well-chosen routes. These are known to the cattle who graze on the salt herbage among the bent-grown sandhills; and at the fitting time and place, a procession red and white and black may be watched making its way thence in single file towards the strip of common-like pasture beside the sea-road. But the transit, if undertaken by the unwary or ignorant, is beset with serious peril, owing to sundry treacherous mud-holes, which lurk around. Their smothering toils have in time past engulfed much vainly floundering prey, both man and beast, and at the present day several of them are called by the names of their respective victims—Byrne’s Hole, Clancy’s Hole—obscurely commemorating tragedies not less piteous perhaps than those of the Kelpie’s Flow and the Sands of Dee.

I have never heard of any such disaster befalling a class of people who might be supposed peculiarly liable to it, since so much of their time is spent on the dangerous ground. All the shore from Ballyhoy to Portbrendan is haunted by cockle-pickers, who come out from Dublin, where they lodge among the Liberties or other purlieus, climbing down into subterranean cellars, or perhaps mounting wide oaken stairs to spacious upper chambers with the carven panels and mantelpieces and ceilings of the past commenting ironically on the inartistic rags and squalor and famine of to-day. They time their arrival to correspond with low water, so that when you meet a batch of them jogging along the road, you can infer the state of the tide from the contents of the baskets they shoulder, according as these include a heap of grey-fluted shells and a trail of brown seaweed, or nothing except a dull tin measure and a grimy little pipe. Nobody ever sees a cockle-picker apart from his or her basket, yet one of them would be recognised without it, so constant is the type in the species. All are neither young nor old, all are wind and weather-beaten, all are short of stature, any original excess in height being compensated for by a more pronounced stoop, and the garments of all reproduce the tints of blackish mud and greenish slime as accurately as if the wearers were animals whose existence depended upon the power of going invisible. This is not the case, however. Unaggressive and inoffensive in their habits, the cockle-pickers have no especial enemies save the seasons’ difference, and the dwellers by the shore regard their proceedings with hardly more suspicion than those of the white sea-gull flocks which sprinkle the neighbouring dark fields, when the lea is broken up and disturbed grubs abound. A favourite fishery is the strand along by the Black Banks, a little to the eastward of the Ballyhoy river; and on most days of the year sombre figures are to be seen there, paddling and poking, barefooted, in the mud, even when the pools have ice at the rim, and the green weed is stiff instead of slimy.

Very differently does the little Black Banks settlement view the coming of some other visitors, who put in an appearance more seldom. But the tinkers are quite used to cool receptions, and if they went only where they were welcome, would find their journeys much restricted. So as this nook offers them a camping-ground conveniently accessible from the high road, they occasionally guide their jolting donkey-cart down the shingly track, undeterred by the disapproving eyes that watch them from the adjacent cabin-cluster. One row of these has for some time past been standing roofless, a circumstance which points it out as appropriate quarters for all manner of vagrants, who have forfeited, if indeed they ever possessed, the right to expect the luxury of thatch overhead. And here the tinkers are wont to spend a few weeks every summer, seriously to the discomfort of their temporary neighbours. It must be allowed that they have righteously earned the evil repute which dogs them. Seven ordinarily ingenious magpies would be less grievous to the owners of hen-roosts and other portable property than a single tinker. On many a night odours of savoury cooking, wafted from within the ruined mud walls, have roused rueful suspicions in the proprietor of some “grand young pullet” or “iligant fat duck,” which has been mysteriously absent at the last feeding-time; and the stealthiness wherewith a youthful tinker will creep in the small hours of the morning, tin-mug in hand, to milk somebody else’s goat tethered behind a rickety-boarded fence, would discredit no Blackfoot on the hunting-trail. Also the tinker men drink and brawl, and the women storm and screech, and the children interminably romp and quarrel, while the whole confraternity use language so wildly bad that it is “fit to rise the hair up off of your head,” as scandalised matrons observe standing at their doors, and calling Biddy and Pat and Larry and Rose to “come in out of that and not be listening to such ungovernable talk.” And to atone for these causes of offence the tinkers bring no social advantages, if you except now and then the excitement of a stand-up fight between a couple of the men, who have grown pugnacious over their whisky, or the thrilling spectacle of an arrest, which sometimes occurs when the proceedings of the band have come under the consideration of the constabulary in the whitewashed barracks above at Ballyhoy. Dramatic incidents are, be it said, very highly valued hereabouts; but the price of the tinker’s performance is more than can be paid without repining.

One day in the course of their last visit, it did seem as if they were going to produce a satisfyingly strong sensation. It came about in this way. Foxy Cullen, their recognised chief, had returned late in the warm afternoon to the Black Banks from a tramp round the district with a basket of tinware. He had not invidiously omitted to call at the various “publics” which he passed, and the consequence was that he now “had drink taken,” a state more perilously conducive to rash and reprehensible acts than downright drunkenness. On the present occasion, however, nothing more erratic suggested itself to Foxy than an idea that he would before he went home “just step across to the Bull and see what sort of a place at all it was over there.” He had often wished to do that, and as the tide had gone black out, leaving no water visibly intervening, save the river’s fine-drawn thread, the opportunity appeared favourable. So he set down his basket on the wayside sward, kept close-shaven by the goats, and he called to his daughter Peg, whom he saw at hand, to come along with him. Peg, a queer, monkey-like little figure in a scarlet print frock, wore gleeful grins as she obeyed, for her ragged red-bearded father was to her the flower and sum of things; and the pair walked on over the grass until its daisies turned into sea-pinks, and until the seaweedy shingle which succeeded them gave place to a breadth of glistening mud.

By the time they had got so far, Bill Duffy came round the turn of the road, faring homewards with his load of cockles. Bill had had good luck with his fishing that day, and had filled his basket almost before the tide was at its lowest ebb, and it should perhaps be accounted a prolongation of his luckiness that the shimmering tin things in Foxy’s basket now beckoned to him from the sunny bank. He concluded that some of the tinkers were about, but he saw nobody near. The tinkers were slight acquaintances of his, and he had in fact just been trying to negotiate the sale of some of his stock with Mrs Foxy up at the roofless cabin. Unsuccessfully, for she told him with regret that she was “stone broke, and until himself come home, you might all as well be lookin’ to find a penny in a cockle-shell as in her ould pocket.” To which Bill replied, “Och sure you don’t get that on’y in an odd one or so,” and departed acquiescent. But this derelict basketful of tinware proved to be a matter less easily dealt with. At first indeed he seemed about to pass it by with merely a casual glance, which, however, suddenly took on fixity and meaning, as he stopped short and stood looking earnestly at the contents. These were mostly tin pint measures, a dozen of them, maybe, all very new and clean and shiny.

Now it so happened that at this time Bill badly wanted such an article. Anybody might have inferred as much from the dingy, battered aspect of the little vessel lying atop of his blackish-grey cockle-heap. In truth, ever since an accident which it had sustained a good while ago, it could only by sheer courtesy be described as a measure at all. For a dray-horse in Capel Street had set his shaggy foot upon it, treatment which no bit of white metal could be expected to endure, and it had accordingly collapsed into a great dinge, rendering its capacity henceforth a question of intricate calculations, far beyond the tether of Bill or his clients. This unchancy distortion had only the night before lost him a customer, a housewife who had “priced” his wares as he passed her half-door, and showed every symptom of coming to terms, when an over-officious friend nudged her elbow, observing “Laws bless us, woman, look at what he’s be way of measurin’ them wid. Sure it wouldn’t hold a skimpy handful, let alone a pint.” Bill protested that it held the biggest pint in the County Dublin, and that he, inconsistently, always allowed the half full of it over and above, to make up for any possible deficiency; nevertheless the prudent matron transferred her patronage to Mary Cassidy, who just then came by, and he was left in the lurch with his damaged mug. But now, when he felt keenly alive both to its shortcomings and to the difficulties of mustering the few pence needed to replace it, here he was all at once confronted with an assortment ready to his hand, nothing apparently interposing to hinder him from acting on the principle that Heaven helps those who help themselves.

Bill Duffy was, as things go, at least indifferent honest; yet his integrity made but a brief stand against the assault thus suddenly sprung upon it. He cast a furtive glance around, and then, with a rapid dive, clutched a measure, and thrust it over his shoulder down deep among his cockles, which rattled clatteringly together to hide the stealth. The next moment he started violently, and felt certain that he was caught. For at no great distance there rose up a skirl of shrieking shriller than had ever issued from sea-fowl’s throat, and looking in the direction of the sound, he saw a small and gaudy figure running towards him. It advanced in short rushes, now and then stopping to dance up and down as if in an ecstasy of rage or terror, but it screamed unintermittently, so that Bill could not be sure whether or no he did hear basser shouts the while proceeding from a point somewhat farther off. Presently, however, the note of terror grew predominant enough to change his opinion about the cause of the outcry, and set him off trotting to meet it. This red-frocked screeching child turned out to be Peg Cullen, and the burden of her lamentations was something unintelligible concerning “Daddy,” whose bawls in the background here became, fortunately for him, so distinct as to furnish an explanatory note. Foxy had evidently blundered into a mud-hole, which was now, in conformity with its agreeable custom, taking prompt steps to secure and secrete him. Bill rapidly grasped the situation, and unhitching his heavy basket he detached its long strap, and sped to the rescue, which, as Foxy was not yet very deeply engaged, he found himself able to effect. A few frantic plunges and desperate hauls set Foxy on firm ground, exceedingly miry and alarmed, and quite sober; Peg left off screaming and dancing, and they all returned to the road, stepping gingerly while they were on the mud, but stamping boldly once they felt the dry sod under their feet.

When they came where the tinker’s basket was, Foxy fell to emptying his black-oozing brogues, whilst Bill, case-hardened by much wading, began to splice his strap, which had nearly marred all with symptoms of fracture during the last critical tug. He had for the time being forgotten all about the pint measure. By-and-by, however, Foxy, flinging away the grass-wisp he had used to wipe off the mud, and shuffling uncomfortably in his soaked boots, said with a dissatisfied grunt, “Augh, bad luck to it for a deceptionable ould brash. I may go now and get another sup of somethin’ or else it’s destroyed I’ll be wid the could creeps in me bones agin mornin’; wud you take a glass, man?”

“Sure, no,” said Bill; “I’m shankin’ into town meself as soon as I can get th’ ould strap mended.”

“That’s not much of a concern you’ve got there,” said Foxy, pointing to Bill’s old mug as it lay dinted side uppermost on his cockles; “past mendin’ it is, I should say. Look-a, here’s a somethin’ better quality you’d be welcome to.” He held out one of his measures to Bill, who shrank back as if its glittering surface had been incandescent with white-heat. The consciousness of what was hidden in the depths of his basket seemed to scorch his face and dazzle his eyes.

“Och, not at all, thank ’ee,” he said; “sure this I have usin’ does grand; it’s the handiest one I ever owned. And I have a couple or so of spare ones lyin’ about at home if I would be wantin’ them. Och, not at all.”

“It’s a quare fancy you’d be havin’, then, to go about wid the likes of that,” said Foxy. “Musha, man, how ready you are to make a lie and tell it. Sure it’s no compliment to be takin’ such a trifle off me, when I’ve got a basket full of them, and more-be-token I couldn’t say how many quarts of the bastely black mud I mightn’t be after swallyin’ down agin now if it wasn’t only for you lendin’ me a hand out—bejabers it was the sizeablest cockle you ever landed. Bad cess to the could wather, it’s at the bottom of every manner of mischief. I’m steppin’ along for a drop of spirits, and I’ll lave the bit of a mug wid you, whether or no.” He thrust it into Bill’s basket and went off, followed jealously by Peg.

For a moment Bill stood staring blankly after them, but then an idea suggested itself, and hoisting his basket on his arm he started in the opposite direction.

At his goal, which was the tinker’s cabin, he found Mrs Foxy stooping over her smoky driftwood fire, in a “quare ugly temper,” as her family could have told him. “Whethen now and is it yourself botherin’ back agin?” she said upon seeing him; “didn’t I tell you a while ago as plain as I could spake that we weren’t wantin’ cockles to-day?”

“Ah whisht, honey, and don’t be strikin’ up ahead of the fiddler,” said Bill suavely. “Amn’t I just after meetin’ himself out there, and he biddin’ me be bringin’ you up three pints for your suppers?”

Mrs Foxy’s countenance cleared up. “Well, tubbe sure,” she said; “it’s not often the man has the wit or the money left to do anythin’ so raisonable wid this hour of the evenin’. But they’ll come in oncommon handy, for it’s cleared out we are to-night intirely. What all I have for the supper wouldn’t pacify a scutty wren.”

The whole Cullen family looked on with a sense of brightened prospects while Bill dropped the cockles resonantly into a tin can. It is part of Fate’s irony towards the tinkers that, however plentiful may be the lack of viands in their larder, they are always abundantly provided with cooking utensils. He meted out his three pints with a reckless liberality which convinced Mrs Foxy that her husband must have ordered, and paid for, a couple of quarts at least. And when he took his departure, he successfully accomplished the stratagem, which had been the main object of his visit, by laying down, unperceived, Foxy’s glowing gift upon a nettle-girt stone just inside the threshold. This done, he went on his way greatly relieved and self-conciliated.

But he had not trudged many paces before scurrying feet pursued and overtook him. Somebody had espied the purposely forgotten measure, and had remarked: “Och, he’s after lavin’ his mug behind him”; upon which somebody else rejoined: “’Deed, then, we’ve slathers of them litterin’ about widout it, so there’s no good keepin’ it on the man. Skyte after him wid it, Lizzie.” And Lizzie skyted, sped by a desire to be but briefly absent from the scene of preparations for supper, so that she tossed the mug into Bill’s basket with scant ceremony, and was off again ere he well knew what had befallen. When it grew clear, a leaden conviction dumped down on him that he might give up setting his wits against Destiny. “Sure it was to be,” he said to himself drearily, as he resumed his plodding, bent dejectedly under a heavier weight than his moist basket. He resorted rather frequently to this obvious truth, whence we may infer that his stock of consolatory reflections was not extensive.

When he came once more where the road crossed the river, he, according to custom in warm weather, climbed down the grassy bank for a drink. On this occasion, however, his first act was to take all his three pint measures out of the basket and set them in a row—the one he had been given, and the one he had stolen, and the battered old one that had, in a manner, caused the whole difficulty. Bill eyed them gloomily as they glinted in the long rays. “Troth, it’s themselves are the iligant lookin’ collection,” he said to himself with some resentment, “and a grand ould slieveen’s trick it was to be thievin’ a poor man’s bit of property, and he all the time widin two twos of dhrowndin’ dead, scarce a stone’s-throw away. Ay, bedad, it was so. But, musha, it was to be.” As he mused mutteringly, he picked up a mug at random and dipped it carelessly in the stream, but something surprising followed. For the water it scooped up straightway plashed out of it again, as if poured through a funnel. Of course, Bill investigated the reason of this, and the result was a discovery which lit up his face with a broad grin. Through some defect in the soldering, the bottom of the vessel had almost detached itself from the rim, and flapped out like a swing door at the slightest touch. It could, clearly, hold nothing; and it was the stolen mug—he recognised it by the handle.

“Bless me ould bones, look at that now,” Bill said gleefully, “you might all as well be axin’ wather to stop aisy in the holes of me ould basket here. Sure it wouldn’t hould e’er a hap’orth of anythin’ wet or dhry”—he dropped a handful of cockles into it, and triumphantly watched them slip through and fall with tiny thuds on the grass. “Ay, begorra, it’d ha’ never been a thraneen of use to man or mortal; ne’er a brass bawbee was it worth all the time, glory be to God.”

He gloated over its dilapidations for a while longer, and at last poked it in behind a stone under the arch, where, for aught I know, it may remain to the present day. Then he gathered up the rest of his effects, and finally resumed his interrupted journey Dublin-wards, facing a sky where the sunset grew as golden as the light in a crocus-cup. But he no longer muttered: “It was to be.” The burden of his meditations was: “Bedad now, it’s a good job I happened to be widin hearin’ of their roars, or else they might be lettin’ them yet. And belike I wouldn’t ha’ been, if it wasn’t only be raison of me stoppin’ to—to—to look at them pint mugs.”

THE SURREE AT MAHON’S

THE SURREE AT MAHON’S