Chapter III

The next morning, which was the last one of an inclement February, wore so murky and menacing an aspect that Biddy Moriarty decided upon walking over very early to the MacNees, lest if she waited till towards evening the threatened _polthogues_ of rain should catch her in her “good things.” She started in her best humour too, for Jim had just presented her with a grand blue silk scarf, and moreover, to her delighted exclamation that it was “the very same colour as the one looked so iligant on Lizzie MacNee,” had replied: “Bedad now, Biddy, you’d be twice as purty a girl as any MacNee if you done your hair a trifle tidier.” This qualified compliment was no more than the truth; but compliments of any sort had so rarely been her portion that it elated her exceedingly. Passing the turf-stack she saw Andy lounging against it, and accosted him with: “Well, Andy, do you know what Jim’s after sayin’ to me?” Andy, however, kicked over a zinc bucket which lay near, and growled amid its clatter: “Och, go to the mischief. What the divil do I care what the bosthoon’s after sayin’ to anybody?” So, inferring his mood to be unsympathetic, she huffily went her way with her news untold. Jim, who had thought of entrusting her with the surreptitious cup, which he had successfully matched, saw that she was bundle-laden, and resolved to row himself over with it at a reasonably early hour.

But by the time that it seemed late enough to set off the weather had altered seriously for the worse. Not only was the wind rising in fitful squalls, but through the nearest gap in the hills a procession of low-trailing clouds came on interminably, with the gait of winged things that chose to creep, and in a lull about noon one of these lit like an immense white moth on Beltranagh Farm, blotting out its world with blurs of blank fog. “It might take off wid itself in a couple of hours, if the wind got up agin, or it might settle down for the divil knows how long,” was Andy’s forecast when he came gloomily groping indoors and was rather anxiously consulted by Jim. “And what odds does it make one way or the other?”

“I was thinkin’ of gettin’ over to the MacNees,” said Jim.

“Then you might as well be thinkin’ of breakin’ your fool’s neck while you’re about it, steppin’ into some hole--and welcome,” said Andy, dumping himself down into the hearth corner. He had brought home yesterday, instead of one fairing that he had changed his mind about getting, a bottle of new whisky, and to-day’s evil humour was aggravated by its contents. Jim perceived that Andy did not propose to accompany him, which was inconvenient, inasmuch as an experienced guide would have been useful, sullen or no. However, he reflected that morose society might be better than none for Jack, whose cold forbade stravading about in the chilly fog. So he tied up his teacup in a large red cotton handkerchief and went out, uncertain whether to make his way by land or by lough. This question soon seemed to be decided for him by his losing himself with a thoroughness which he would have thought impossible upon a strip of ground nowhere many perches wide. The fog pressed on him so impenetrably that he could not see a hand, much less a foot, before his face, and in skirting rough, tall boulders and crossing little creeks he lost his bearings completely and irretrievably. To and fro he circuitously strayed, until he would have abandoned his expedition in despair had not home become as unapproachable as any other place.

Then at length he stumbled against something and discovered that it was the small boat in which he had made his last voyage up the lough. She was lying as usual on the little sandy patch close to the water, which he heard lapping unseen; and he forthwith felt assured that his plan could be carried out after all. He generally disliked giving up a plan, and particularly wished the teacup to arrive in good time. As he faced the water a cold blast blew steadily in his back, and he said to himself: “More power to it! That win’ ill soon raise the fog, and ’twill give me a fine lift up the lough. Me arm’s right enough anyhow for rowin’ that far; I needn’t put up the sail while it’s so thick.” He launched the boat easily, with his bundle stowed carefully under a bench, and was just pushing off when somebody chuckled startlingly close by. The fog was lightening, for he could almost imagine that he saw the outline of the somebody seated on a boulder. “Is it fishin’ you’re a-goin’ this fine evenin’?” said Andy, and laughed derisively.

“To be sure I am, all the way up to Mrs MacNee’s. Are you comin’ along?” Jim replied, choosing to assume that Andy’s sarcasm was amicably meant, but not by any means supposing that the invitation would be accepted. Andy in fact did reply: “Am I goin’ to blazes wid me great-grandmother’s cat?” But the next moment he jumped up, saying: “Och, bedad, I might as well,” and suddenly had one foot at sea.

“If you’ve drink taken, you’d a right to stop on shore,” said Jim, to whom this infirmness of purpose looked suspicious. But Andy only said: “Drink away, boys,” and swung himself on to a bench. His embarkation was immediately followed by another, which sought, and failed to be unobserved. “What’s that clattering?” said Jim. “Och to goodness is it Jack?” It was Jack, who had furtively attended Andy when he sauntered out. “Git along wid yourself home, you young rapscallion,” Andy said, making a grab at him, whereupon Jim shoved the child out of reach behind him into the bows. “He’d better stop as he’s come,” said Jim. “He might be all night findin’ the house agin.”

“Och, have it your own way,” said Andy, with another laugh, taking an oar. Jim also began to row, not rejoicing in either of his companions.

For some time he pulled on silently and gave no signs that he was growing puzzled: their progress seemed to him so inexplicably slow. The high wind certainly was with them, yet they made little way, and as if against a strong current. The blinding white fog had thinned somewhat, and lifted, but nothing came into view except dull green water, and that was strangely turbulent. “Begorra, there’s no end to it,” said Jim, at last, or rather shouted, the noisy wind prescribing loud and laconic speech. “We should ha’ been past the narrows long ago, but ne’er a sign of them; and its wilder the wather’s gettin’ on us instead of smoother.”

“Sure, now, yourself’s the quare man,” Andy shouted back. “Thinkin’ to be in the town of New York by tay-time. If you get your breakfast there you’ll be doin’ right well.”

“What at all are you romancin’ about?”

“Where else are you expectin’ to get it--and yourself rowin’ out to say as hard as you can pelt for the last half-hour or more? We’ll be off Inish Arbeen by now.”

“It’s a lie you’re tellin’. Sure, I knew you were demented wid the drink.”

“Take a sup yourself, then, boyo, of wather, and you’ll aisy see if e’er a drop like it’s in Lough Orren to wet Lizzie MacNee’s tay,” Andy yelled hoarsely, hindered by his own passion as well as the rising storm’s; and Jim involuntarily obeyed the injunctions as a splash of scudding spray was slung across his face. Tasting the sharp Atlantic brine, he was convinced that Andy, drunk or sober, had spoken the truth.

“Then I turned the wrong way and you never tould me. Of all the bedlam tricks,” he said. “But we must be gettin’ back out of this the quickest road we can, and it’s as much as we’ll do.” He stopped rowing and held water, so that as Andy continued to pull, the boat swung round with her broadside to a wave, which swooping by almost swamped them.

“Quit them fool’s antics,” commanded Andy. “We couldn’t make an offer to git back agin’ that win’, and if we could we’d only be bet to sticks on the shingle. What we’ve a right to do is thry run in under the lee of Arbween Headland over yonder.” He pointed across a field of mounded foam to where, on the more stable-seeming vapour, quivered a dim outline, showing the soft curves of silvery flower-petals, but in reality representing a bastion of black rock reared above buttresses shagged with murky weed, and hung with seething white fleeces. “It’s our best chance,” he said, “and a bad one.”

“Thry anythin’ you can; I’m a land-lubber to you,” said Jim. It was indeed no time for self-assertion. The wind was raving in a full gale as they began to struggle towards their refuge, awfully distant beyond whirling chasms and drifting cataracts. No conversation was possible, save the argument between the powers of the waters and the air, carried on with skirling shriek and moaning bellow. At last, in a brief pause, a human voice, small and futile, made itself heard. It was Jack, whose hitherto implicit faith in his elders’ capacity for managing affairs had been shaken by the fiercer plunging and battering, and who now inquired breathlessly: “Is there e’er a chance--of us goin’ down--the way the Mulhalls’ boat done wid them before Christmas?”

“The divil recaive the chance there is of any such a thing, sonny, sorra a one at all,” said Jim, with a vivid recollection of how he had decreed the child’s fate. “Take the cup out of the handkerchief there beside you, avic--’twould ha’ been in smithereens if you hadn’t kep’ a hold on it--and bale away wid it like a Trojan.” He set Jack this task as he might have blindfolded a frightened horse. But when Andy saw the cup unwrapped, his eyes glared in the black and white of his drawn face. “It’s not drinkin’ tay out of that Lizzie MacNee ’ill be this night, nor e’er another night she won’t be, I’m thinkin’, for all the fine hurry you were in takin’ off wid it to her,” he said triumphantly.

“What blatherin’ have you about Lizzie MacNee?” Jim answered. “’Twas a cup I was bringin’ her mother in place of one I broke on her.”

“And I didn’t see you colloguin’ wid Lizzie yisterday at the Fair, and she so took up wid you she couldn’t look the way anybody else was?”

“Lizzie MacNee’s nothin’ to me, alive or dead, or meself to Lizzie, there’s the whole of it. And that’s what you’ve dhrownded the three of us for--you mad divil.”

“We’re not dhrownded yit. Forby, how could I tell it was goin’ to blow a gale?” Andy rejoined half apologetically, after one more hopeless wrestle. “It’s just a quare bit of bad luck all round. Faix, there’s an end of that anyway.” For at this moment the cup, slipping from Jack’s hand, broke in two. The mishap made him look up with an apprehensiveness that in the circumstances struck Jim as singularly piteous. “Never mind, Jack, me man,” he hastened to say, “sure what matter at all? ’Twas the unlucky ould cup, and we’ll do as well widout it every atom.” He was thinking to himself: “If I could be sartin ’twas an aisier way than dhrowndin’, I’d knock him on the head wid the oar--I would so.”

Andy spoke his thoughts aloud: “I hope Biddy’ll be stoppin’ the night at the MacNees. What I do be thinkin’ worst of is her comin’ home, the crathur, to the empty house. She and Lizzie was great friends ever; Lizzie ’ud be very apt to keep her.” For further reflections they had no time. A vast wave, sweeping along to hurl itself against the cliffs, was caught and swirled round close by in a boiling crater, whence it broke forth through a flurry of smotherin’ foam, and rising higher and higher poised itself over the huddled heads in the little boat. Another instant and it fell sheer upon them, as a rearing horse falls back to crush his rider.

At this time, which was about sunset, the MacNees, in their fire-lit kitchen away at the head of the lough, made up their minds that it would be ridiculous to expect any guests on such a wild wet evening, and had begun to prepare tea. “Your brothers might be lookin’ in a bit later, when the win’ goes down,” Lizzie said to Biddy. “I wouldn’t wonder if Jim did anyway.”

“If they’d be ruled by me they’d keep off the lough after dark,” said Mrs MacNee. “The dear knows what else might be out and about on it this minyit.”

“Ah, sure, they’ll do well enough so long as they meet nothin’ worse than mother’s ould ghosts,” said Lizzie.

“They’ll maybe have little Jack along wid them,” said Maria. “And a child’s a grand thing, folk say, for keepin’ away any such. We mustn’t forget the sugar-sticks we have for him.”

“Yis, mother, I’m just puttin’ out the common cups,” said Lizzie. “What need is there to be usin’ Paddy’s good one when nobody--”

“Whisht,” Biddy interrupted, “isn’t that them outside?” She listened for a moment, and then: “I thought I heard Andy’s voice callin’,” she said, “but it must ha’ been only the howlin’ win’.”

CRAZY MICK

“So them half-dozen big giants,” said Felix the Thatcher, “did be drinkin’ off their cups of tay, as plisant as anythin’, sittin’ over yonder fornint us, every one of them cocked up on his own bit of a hill.” Felix pointed across the small round valley to a concave hill-line, which does show six more or less distinct summits. “And if they did, some fine evenin’ a one of them took and slung the grounds at the bottom of his cup slap down there into the middle of the grassland, and you may see them lyin’ on it to this day.” The end of Felix’s reaping-hook dropped till it quivered at a black patch that occupied a large space in the middle of the level green floor below, and spread with splash-like streaks towards the slopes surrounding. Amongst them a few white dots were scattered, gleaming clearly, and to these Felix referred as he continued, in an unmistakable tone of self-quotation: “Bedad now, I’m thinkin’ he must ha’ chucked out two or three grains of lump-sugar along wid them. I wonder they’re not melted agin now--unless it’s breadcrumbs they were.”

“You might wonder anybody wasn’t tired tryin’ to get a livin’ on a wet bog, and there’d be some sinse in it, begor,” Dinny Colman, who rented one of the white cabins, interpolated, rather resentfully matter-of-fact; but Felix finished his conceit perseveringly. “Bad luck to the big bosthoon. Why couldn’t he have the wit to sling th’ ould tay leaves over his shoulder into the lough, or into the say beyant, where they’d make no differ, instead of to be destroyin’ the bit of good land on us? He’d little to do, let me tell him.”

Felix the Thatcher was also, though not by trade, a _shanachie_, or story-teller of some renown in his district, and he had now produced the favourite local legend of the giants’ tea-party, ostensibly for the information of Larry Dowdall, a new-comer, but principally for the entertainment of four gossoons, who listened with unjaded interest. They, with their three elders, were sitting on a furzy bank at the foot of a very steep oat-field, which the men had been reaping all the forenoon, while the boys did such odd jobs as their size and wits permitted. Now, just as Felix had finished accounting for the existence of the black bog, another object that seemed to demand explanation presented itself--a figure moving along the lane, which at a lower level girdles the hillside. It was a tall, elderly man, in a long, ragged cotamore and battered caubeen, who walked slowly and stoopingly, with down-bent eyes, apparently talking to himself.

“Here’s Crazy Mick trapesin’ along,” said Patsy Colman, “Himself and his little brat.”

“If he’s been till now gettin’ here from Foynish, he’s took his time,” said Patsy’s father, “for I seen him halfways afore breakfast.”

“Sure he does be stoppin’ continual to rest the little _girsheach_, goodness help him,” said Felix.

“What’s he lookin’ for all the while?” said Larry Dowdall, as they watched Crazy Mick’s progress, intermittently visible between the high banks of the winding boreen. “He’s peerin’ down before him as if he had the notion he was walkin’ after a lost shillin’.”

“Och, that’s not his notion at all,” said Felix, “it’s discoorsin’ he consaits he is to a little girl he owned one time--she’s dead this twinty year and more, herself, and the mother, and another child; they all died on him in the fever widin a couple of days, and he’s wrong in his head ever since. But his belief is that he’s got Peg along wid him yet. It’s her he’s havin’ the talk wid there this minyit, you may dipind--and she in her clay maybe before you were born--and walkin’ slow he does be to humour her, or whiles carryin’ of her about.”

“If you pelt a lump of a stone, or a sod of turf, or anythin’ at him,” said Art Fitzsimon, the biggest gossoon, “he’ll be grabbin’ her up in his arms like, and lettin’ on to hide her away under his ould coat, and bawlin’ and cursin’. It’s as funny as anythin’ you ever seen. When he comes past here I’ll show you.”

“If you offer to do any such a thing I’ll clout your head,” Dinny Colman said, and poked him preliminarily with the disapproving toe of a heavy brogue. Art wriggled out of reach; but after all there was no opportunity for executing his purpose, as Crazy Mick turned off down a by-path before he came to where the lane ran beneath the party on that bank.

Crazy Mick did not go very far, only just out of sight round the spur of the hill that marks an entrance to another little valley holding a narrow water, more like a short length of river than a lough. He knew that countryside well, as he had tramped about it for the last quarter of a century almost, so that his recurring calls were quite an institution in the district, and the inhabitants of its scattered dwellings would have found their situation all the lonelier if “the crathur” had ceased to look in on them for a bit and sup, or a taste of the hearth-fire. They had learned to take it as a matter of course that he should insist upon sharing all these things with an invisible Peg, and they humoured his fancy as best they could. Experiments such as that proposed by Art Fitzsimon were strenuously discouraged, and Mick was seldom molested. He was very harmless, well-meaning, indeed, though generally self-absorbed, like one in a half-dream. Danger threatened to Peg alone could stir his wrath. The people, a diminishing number, who recollected him before his troubles, used to say that he had been always a trifle soft, but as good-natured a poor boy as you’d meet between the Seven Seas. Nobody could tell exactly how his hallucinations had begun. It was only known that for several days following his wife’s and children’s funeral he had been seen to sit “quiet and moidhered like” among the tall nettle-clumps in Kilanure burial-ground by the lough, and then for some weeks had disappeared. When he returned it soon became evident that he believed himself to have recovered his three-year-old Peg, and that he was in quest of Herself and the baby Dan, whom he expected to find in the little house where, only last spring, he had had all his wealth and pelf gathered in one glow by the flickering turf-sods, while fate and death had seemed as remote as the dim mid-day moon.

These two delusions were the source of all his solace and the cause of all his misery, the first comforting his days, and the second bringing him bitter disappointment almost every night. For dusk seldom closed in but a light gleaming from some cottage window filled him with an idle hope of what was farther beyond his reach than the evening star. It was at sun-setting that his expectation grew strongest, because the hour had been wont to bring him home from his work, when work and home were his. More than once he went back to his old tumble-down cabin, but seeing it empty of familiar faces, he declared it to be “the wrong place he was after comin’ to,” and continued his search without mistrust of ultimate success.

Though he might have had lodging for the asking among his neighbours, he did not wish to be shut up indoors. Faces and voices that were strange, or at least _other_ to him, saddened and bewildered him, so that if possible he would sleep out under ricks and hedges and banks; he said that Peg liked to be looking up at the stars. But in wet and cold weather he was obliged, on her account, to accept with reluctance the offer of bed as well as board.

A rain-storm had driven him to do so on the night before this September afternoon, and the consequence was that his sleep had been broken and scanty. Therefore now, when he sat down in the shade of a hawthorn bush on the sloping shore of the lough, a drowsiness crept swiftly over him and he was soon fast asleep. His slumber lasted for hours, and it was not far from sunset when something suddenly roused him. It was a voice and a laugh from a little further up the hill-side, along which the reapers were going home. “There’s himself and his Peg,” Art Fitzsimon was saying.

Crazy Mick started up half awake, and walked round the bush into the brightness of the long sunbeams, which were slanting across the lough. The sun had dropped low into the gap between two purple pyramids, and his rays on the smooth water had woven a strip of matting, as if with a skein of fiery golden thread. It was like a carpet for some wonderful sort of footpath, he thought, blinking at it with sleepy eyes, and he said so to Peg. But immediately afterwards he blamed himself for putting such a notion into her head; it might encourage her to run into the water some day, which would be a terrible thing entirely. And then, all in a moment, with the swift shifting of a dream, he began to see that terrible thing actually come to pass. Peg darted away from him and raced down to the edge. He made a rush, too late to stop her, and in an instant was floundering helplessly out of his depth.

Larry Dowdall was just in time to plunge in and rescue him, with no small peril from the blind “drowning grip”; but then Larry and the two other men needed all their strength to keep him from struggling back into the lough, where he averred that his little girl was being drowned dead.

At nightfall they brought him, exhausted and passive, to the District Asylum, for which he was clearly a suitable case, as he had been seen to throw himself into the water, and his looks and words bespoke unreason. However, he did not rebel against captivity. With Peg had gone all his business and desire. He did not even wish to meet his wife and little Dan now. Herself would think too bad, he said, of his losing Peg. And after moping for a while, one morning he turned his disconsolate face to the wall and unwittingly went perhaps the very way he had been in search of so long.

WIDOW FARRELL’S WONDERFUL AGE