Chapter II (3)

But when, by-and-by, not many yards away, she overtook Cocky M‘Cann at the pump, her manner and speech were bland and suave. Mrs M‘Cann, she said to him, was a very lucky woman to own a sinsible, handy boy, that would be fetchin’ her in her jugs of wather, let alone findin’ her a pocketful of money, and handin’ her ivery pinny of it to keep, which was more than many a one would ha’ done. This flattery was especially refreshing to Cocky, who had missed his usual household affluence of it, and he responded by pumping for Mrs Gildea so vigourously that her jug suddenly overflowed into her shoes. “Och, bad luck to you--to the ould spout of it that’s quare,” she said, with a jump backwards. “But sure there’s no harm meant or done. Is it wetted you are, sonny dear? Well, now, you’re a good boy, and the next time you get anythin’ on the road, I only hope you’ll be bringin’ it in to me. I might be chance have a load of sweeties to swap for it.”

“There mightn’t ever be anythin’ more on the road again,” Cocky said, discreetly avoiding a committal of himself to this barter.

“Ah, sure it’s just jokin’ I am,” said Mrs Gildea, “for, of coorse, you’d be a-bringin’ whatever it was home to your mammy, to put up somewhere safe, the way she’s after doin’ wid the five-pound note, I’ll be bound.”

“We have so,” said Cocky.

“I wouldn’t suppose she’d be apt to be tellin’ _you_, now, what place she’s keepin’ it in,” said Mrs Gildea. “She’d liefer not, for fear you’d be meddlin’ wid it, and losin’ it on her.”

“Oh, wouldn’t she not?” said Cocky. “When only for me she’d never ha’ thought of the little ould black tay-caddy in the houle in the wall, back of the dresser, by the fut of the bed, that’s a dale the best place to be keepin’ it in.”

“Why, tubbe sure, and so it is. Yourself was the cute one to be thinkin’ of it. Back of the dresser, be the fut of the bed--so that’s where she has it, and a very handy, safe place entirely. You needn’t be lettin’ on to her that you was tellin’ me; not that I’d be passing any remarks about it, no fear. It’s nothin’ to me where other people do be keepin’ their ould tay-caddies. And what’ll your poor mammy do widout you at all, to be runnin’ her messages for her, when you’re prisintly goin’ back again to the school?”

“To-morra I’m goin’,” said Cocky. “But she’s well able to be fetching the wathur and everythin’ herself, only she’s bad these two days wid the toothache, and as cross as the cats. Not a bit of her would thry the cowld starch poultice I bid her, or I daresay she’d be well agin now. But she might be better in the mornin’.”

On the contrary, however, in the morning Mrs M‘Cann was worse, or at anyrate looked so, because her face had swelled all on one side; “as big as two sizeable heads of cabbage,” Cocky assured Mrs Gildea, whom he found waiting for him when he passed her door on his way back from the pump, before breakfast, with a can of water. At this time Cocky was under some concern about his mother’s affliction, and this from fairly disinterested motives, as his absence all day at school would make her doleful and irascible mood a matter of small importance to himself personally. His wish for her relief was, therefore, mainly not a self-regarding sentiment, though he did in some measure consider the possible effect upon the replenishing of his dinner-basket.

“The face of her swelled up awful, and got ne’er a wink of sleep the whole night?” Mrs Gildea repeated upon hearing these symptoms. “Deed now, the poor woman’s to be pitied. But look here, sonny, I’ve got a little drop of stuff here, you might be givin’ her, would make her sleep grand, and do her all the benefit ever was.” She showed, from beneath her shawl, a hand holding a small, nearly empty bottle. “It always sent me poor father-in-law off like a top, when he was bad a couple of years ago, every time he took it; you might as well ha’ been offerin’ to wake up a one of the hearth-stones as him, ten minyits after he’d had his dose of it. Little enough of it he left behind him; but there’s somethin’ better than a small-sized spoonful in the bottle yet, and that ’ud do her finely. So just bring it home to her, there’s a good boy, and bid her dhrink it straight off, the way she may git somethin’ you may call a sleep, and as like as not be quit of the ugly toothache agin she wakes.”

“There wouldn’t be an atom of use biddin’ her take it,” said Cocky, “or anythin’ else there wouldn’t. I tould her of plinty of things to cure herself wid, but she won’t touch e’er a one of them. As headstrong as can be she is over it. She’s past _my_ conthrol,” Cocky asserted, solemnly, adopting a somewhat familiar phrase, not without enjoyment of it. “So you may be keepin’ the little ould bottle.” He was not quite sure whether he regretted or rejoiced to have this reason for rejecting Mrs Gildea’s offer. Certainly he did wish for his mother’s cure; but that it should be wrought by another person’s advice and assistance, when his own was disregarded and disparaged, would have seemed a very undesirable fulfilment of his desire. On the whole, probably, he was glad of the excuse. But Mrs Gildea persisted. “Sure people do often be conthrairy like in themselves when they’re sick,” said she. “It’s humourin’ them one must be in a way. Wouldn’t she be takin’ e’er a sup of tay now?”

“And what else would I be fetchin’ the wather for if it wasn’t to boil the kettle?” said Cocky. “She says a hot sup might be apt to do her good.”

“Well, thin, I’ll tell you how you could conthrive. Just git her attintion disthracted a bit, and slip what’s in the bottle, body and bones, into her cup, when she isn’t lookin’. Ne’er a taste she’ll get off it in the strong tay, but drink it down iligant unbeknownst, if you do the way I bid you, like a clever boy. And when you run home this evenin’ you’ll find she’s after sleepin’ beautiful all the while you were away, and sorra the talk of any more toothache,” Mrs Gildea predicted, holding out the little bottle.

Cocky stood irresolute. The plan had an attractive aroma of practical joking, while the promise of a mother once more cheerful and laudatory was undeniably alluring; but the conditions galled his professional pride.

“And you needn’t ever be lettin’ on I gave it to you, or anything about it,” Mrs Gildea continued, “for very belike she might be mad wid us.” This hint perceptibly strengthened Cocky’s inclination towards compliance, for it showed that she did not propose to claim any credit from the cure, which seemed to him some amends for being unable to do so himself. Yet his jealous dread of a rival was a stubborn thing, and he hesitated still. Perhaps it would ultimately have prevailed with him, had not little Tim Daly happened just then to pass, pouring his soul, in rapt enjoyment, through a newly-acquired penny whistle. Tim’s face, always of a rather comic full-moon pattern, was for the time being a caricature, because he had blown “the swoln cheek of a trumpeter;” and the sight of the grotesque profile somehow recalled to Cocky his mother’s visage as he had last beheld it, distorted and woebegone. Whereupon he suddenly extended his hand, saying, “Gimme.” He had resolved, not without an effort of difficult virtue, to try Mrs Gildea’s remedy.

He was quite successful in administering it surreptitiously. By the simple device of yelling: “Och, look at what’s goin’ up the road!” he made himself an opportunity for tilting the contents of the little bottle into his mother’s just-poured-out cup. It suited his purpose all the better that, in her indignation at what appeared to her his ill-timed pleasantry, she drank up her drugged tea with hurried and heedless gulps. Even so she alarmed him once by declaring that she “got an ugly onnathural sort of flaviour off it.” However, she accounted for this by supposing herself to have “lost the right taste of her mouth wid the tormentin’ cowld she had in her unlucky teeth;” and though she left some spoonfuls in her cup, Cocky opined that she had swallowed enough to test the efficacy of those dark-trickling drops. His opinion was confirmed when he soon saw her begin to exhibit unmistakable signs of drowsiness, and heard her announce that “the two eyes of her were sinkin’ into her head,” and that as soon as he had run off to school, “she’d lie herself down on the bed to try could she get the chance of a sleep.” So he sugared his slices of bread with a lavish hand, unreproved, and started for Letterowen in a sanguine frame of mind.

Not long after his departure, Mrs Gildea knocked at the M‘Canns’ door. She knocked pretty loudly, and receiving no answer, stepped in, and rapped loudlier on the table. Then she coughed violently, and kicked a can standing on the floor so as to cause a sharp clatter. But finally, as the slumber whose depths she was gauging satisfactorily stood all these cautious trials, she stole swiftly up to the dresser, with its dangling jugs, and began a rapid groping behind it. “At the fut of the bed,” she was thinking to herself, “Back of the dresser, in a little ould tay-caddy.” But when in a few minutes she slipped quietly out again, nobody could have guessed the presence of a small, black japanned box hidden away under her shawl.

This was quite early in the day, a couple of hours at least before the sluggard midsummer sun had attained his noon; but though the dusk had spread abroad out of every corner by the time that Mrs M‘Cann had any more visitors, they found her still sleeping heavily. They were her near neighbours, Maggie Daly, and Anne Hunt, and Widow Kennan, who had come with such interesting news to tell and questions to ask that they shrilled and shook her into some sort of wakefulness after a while. But she remained so stupid and dazed that she took in at first only a small portion of the story they were relating. It was in substance that the two Gildeas had suddenly made a flitting, to the best of everybody’s belief, for good and all. Tom Gildea had been seen setting off with himself and a bundle about sunrise that morning, and the beholders had assumed that he was merely going on the _shaughraun_, according to his custom, for a day or two. Andy Cole, the letter-carrier, however, reported that about twelve o’clock he had met Mrs Gildea up beyond Dunathy tramping towards Oughterone, and likewise laden with a large bundle; which had suggested a different significance for the movements of the pair. “So we was wonderin’, ma’am,” said Anne Hunt to Mrs M‘Cann, “did Mrs Gildea herself happen to tell you they were quittin’ when you was talkin’ to her this mornin’, for the Nolans let on she niver said a word to them of intendin’ any such a thing.”

“Is it Mrs Gildea?” Mrs M‘Cann replied perplexedly. “I never seen sight nor light of her this day at all, let alone spakin’ to her.”

“Och, woman alive, is it in your sinses you are at all? Didn’t meself and Mrs Kennan here see her comin’ out of your door this mornin’, wid our own eyes, and we hangin’ up clothes?”

“Ay, bedad, did we,” corroborated Widow Kennan. “It was no great while after Cocky goin’ to school. Sure the woman’s not rightly in her sinses.”

“I dunno about thim,” Mrs M‘Cann said in bewilderment. “But if anybody come in, I wasn’t mindin’ them. Ever since I took me cup of tay at breakfast time me head’s swimmin’ off me shoulders, and ten strong men couldn’t hould me eyes open. Ugly tay it was as ever I tasted.”

Mrs Daly pounced swiftly upon the teacup, which was still standing on the table. “Goodness be wid us!” she exclaimed in continuation of a prolonged sniff, “it’s lodnum she’s after takin’--enough to poison the parish. Small blame to her to be bothered and stupid; the only wonder is that the life’s left in her at all. Stand up on your feet, ma’am, this minyit, and keep stirrin’ about, for it’s lost you are if you fall off asleep agin. Sure, now, maybe the toothache had you distracted, but ’twas an awful thing to go take lodnum.”

“Sorra the sup I took,” Mrs M‘Cann said, standing up dizzily. “Glad of it I’d ha’ been, but I hadn’t got a drop to me name.”

“Smell it, ma’am, smell it,” Mrs Daly said, handing the cup round appealingly, and her companions both said, with confirmatory inhalations: “Lodnum it is.”

“And some other stuff along wid it, I’m thinkin’,” Mrs Daly said after further examination. “If it wasn’t herself, it was that Cocky at his thricks agin, you may safely depind.”

“The poor child wouldn’t do such a thing,” his mother said feebly, a protest which was not considered to call for notice.

“Where’d he get it?” Anne Hunt inquired more pertinently.

“I seen him colloguin’ wid Mrs Gildea this mornin’ early,” Widow Kennan suggested, “outside of her door.”

“Then, mark my words, it was that one gave it to him,” said Mrs Daly, “and put it into his head to be poisonin’ his poor mother’s cup of tay wid it. She done it a-purpose, very belike, thinkin’ to have the poor woman sleepin’ stupid if anybody come in for to ransack the house on her, and she all alone in it by herself--the very way it happint. I’ll bet you anythin’ Tom Gildea and she had it settled up between them,” Mrs Daly went on, skipping from conclusion to conclusion as nimbly as a series of dexterously-made ducks and drakes. “To be takin’ off out of this to-day, wid whatever she was after grabbin’. A five-pound note, ma’am, she’d find oncommonly handy, and you lyin’ there as good as a block of wood all the while she was ferretin’ about here.”

“The five-pound note--och, to goodness, woman, don’t say so,” Mrs M‘Cann said, pierced with dread through all her drowsiness. “Sure she doesn’t know where I’m keepin’ it.”

“She’d get that aisy enough out of Cocky,” said Mrs Daly; “and be the same token, here he is himself,” she added, moving quickly towards the door.

So it befell Cocky, as he bolted headlong over his dusky threshold, to find himself obstructed by a matronly form, and sternly addressed: “Och, you _bould_ boy! What for did you be poisonin’ your poor mammy wid lodnum?” The object with which Mrs Daly had adopted this attitude and tone was completely gained by the result, for Cocky, so much taken aback that he thought only of self-defence, replied incriminatingly: “Git out of my road. It was nothin’ but a weeny tint out of a little bottle Mrs Gildea gave me to make her get a wink of sleep.”

Mrs Daly wheeled round triumphant upon her gossips: “What did I tell yous? Ay, to be sure, she had her sleepin’ rael convanient, while she herself was layin’ hands on your fine five-pound note.”

“Y’ ould gaby,” said Cocky, recovering his confidence. “Do you imagine or suppose I’d ha’ tould her we had it in the tay-caddy if I didn’t know me mother kep’ the kay in her pocket, that nobody can git at, or else yourself’d be as apt as any.” But he was dismayed by a burst of derisive laughter. “Och, goodness pity the crathur,” said Widow Kennan. “What differ does he think a kay makes in or out of a pocket when there’s nothin’ to hinder any person grabbin’ the little box and away wid it?”

And through all the other voices struck one more thrilling as Mrs M‘Cann, who had been groping behind the dresser, rose from her knees with a piercing wail: “Och, wirrasthrew, it’s gone sure enough--there’s the empty place it was in. She’s took it while I was dead asleep, and we’ll niver set eyes on it agin.”

They never have from that good day to this. The loss, with its attendant circumstances, was intensely mortifying to Cocky M‘Cann, and put him quite out of conceit with a medical career. Perhaps the most unpalatable draught in his cup of afflictions was the recital which he could not always avoid hearing his mother give to sympathetic neighbours; and the bitterest drops were always at the bottom, for she invariably wound up the narrative with: “But what I think baddest of was her makin’ a fool that way of the innicent child.”

A LINGERING GUEST

When Mrs Van Herder died at her house on Marksville Avenue, New York, leaving a legacy of a hundred dollars to each servant who had been over three years in her employment, the Irish girl, Rose Byrne, could claim the bequest, having scrubbed the Van Herder floors for five long years; and ten minutes after she heard of her good fortune she had firmly made up her mind what she would do with it: she would go home straight-way. Home for Rose lay across the Atlantic, on the storm-beaten shore of the County Donegal, and a dozen twelvemonths had passed since she had seen it except in dreams. If the legacy had come sooner she might, while waiting for the liner to sail, have spent much of her time and not a few of her dollars in the purchase of presents and fine clothes wherewithal to glorify her rejoining of her family circle. But by now so many a precious stone had dropped sadly out of that ring of hers, that she knew she would find only a small remnant safe in its setting. An old grandmother and a married sister were all the near relations left to welcome her back. This, and the prudence learned from experience, made her preparations simple and thrifty. “I’m thinkin’,” she said to herself, “that I’d do better to not be buyin’ till I get home, for then I’ll have a notion of what’s wantin’. Buyin’ things for them now is the same as puttin’ the right kays into the wrong holes; there’s naught amiss wid the kays themselves only they won’t open them locks. The stores do be oncommon iligant and tasty, but sure I’ll wait.”

Rose, in fact was thinking that the things most wanted at home would probably be quite common, and not elegant at all; and when she reached Kilgowran she very soon saw that her conjectures were even righter than she had expected them to be. Her grandmother’s white-walled, brown-thatched cabin, which looked like a weather-beaten mushroom on the wide dark bog, was in reality still more poverty-stricken than it had seemed in her memory. Partly, perhaps, because those lofty and spacious chambers over seas, which you could fill with clearest brilliance by a twirl of your finger and thumb, contrasted so strongly with this one dark little room, where the rafters slanted low above the uneven mud floor, and the shadows among them were seldom disturbed by anything brighter than a stray flicker glancing from the hearth. Its mistress had been old and gaunt as long as Rose could recollect, and was now, of course, older and gaunter than ever. Her decrepit, broken-down aspect struck Rose painfully as they sat opposite one another, soon after her arrival, on small, rough, creepy-stools, by the crumbling glow of the turf-sods. It was a sad thing, she thought, to see an infirm old woman so poorly off that she had to wrap herself in a ragged greatcoat as she crouched huddled up uneasily over her fire, which she stirred with a broken spade-handle. Rose reflected with some consolation that to provide “a dacint warm shawl” was certainly in her power; “any sort of comfortable armchair” might be, she feared, beyond her means.

Since Rose’s last sight of it, however, old Mrs Behan had added something to her little dwelling’s scanty contents: another grandchild, namely, the orphan daughter of her son Peter, a slip of a girl just growing up. Maggie Behan was now nearly of the same age that Rose Byrne had been when quitting the bog-land of Kilgowran, and she looked very much as her cousin had done a dozen troublesome years ago. And it was not long before Rose perceived that Maggie occupied the position of prime favourite which had formerly been her own. This, indeed, became apparent on the very first evening, despite Rose’s temporary distinction as a newly-returned traveller, and it was made unmistakably plain next morning, when Mrs Behan declared to Rose her opinion that there had never been a one of them all who could hold a candle to little Maggie for good looks, though the Behans were always as handsome a family as any in the countryside. An impartial judge would have seen nothing more remarkable in Maggie’s round, cheerful face than that pleasant freshness of early youth which the Irish people, possibly with a Danish reminiscence, call pig-beauty. So Rose knew well enough what was betokened by such extravagant praise. But she was not left merely to draw inferences. Their grandmother had a habit of expressing herself frankly, and accordingly she soon spoke her mind to Rose on this point. “Sure, now, you and me was always great, Rose, me dear,” she said. “But little Maggie, the crathur, she’s what the heart of me’s fairly set on, and small blame to me, for her aquil wouldn’t be aisy got. And bedad ’twas the same way ever; ne’er a word had I agin poor Norah, your mother, at all at all. But Pather was the lovely child--that’s your poor uncle, Maggie’s father--ay, indeed, I always had a wonderful wish for Pather.”

Though it was scarcely in the nature of things that Rose should not feel somewhat aggrieved at finding herself thus superseded, circumstances helped her to take a philosophical view of the situation, saying to herself: “Why, it’s only natural Granny’d think a deal of Maggie, that she’s after bringin’ up. And, sure, maybe the more she thinks of her the better these times, for who else is there to be stoppin’ along wid her and mindin’ her when she’s gettin’ so ould and feeble?” Therefore, as the days went past, Rose, keeping a watchful eye on significant trifles, was glad to see no lack on Maggie’s part of due helpfulness and affection. “She’ll be well looked after anyhow,” she thought, as she observed her young cousin’s energetic “reddin’ up” of the house-room, and good-humoured ways with the querulous old woman; and once she spoke some of these sentiments aloud.

Her grandmother and she had walked across the bog to eleven o’clock Mass at Kilgowran Chapel, and were sitting to rest in the August sun on the low dilapidated wall of the chapel-yard. This Kilgowran burial-ground is a dreary, unrestful place, overlooked by the backs of several houses, and overgrown with tall, harsh green nettles and rusty brown docks. Among them the few grey stones, and the wooden crosses, plentier because cheaper, are sometimes nearly lost. These low, crookedly set crosses vary in hue from time to time, according to the different painting jobs that have been in progress thereabouts, as the leavings in a pot are often devoted to this purpose. A vivid canary was just then the prevailing colour. Mrs Behan surveyed them musingly as she and Rose sat to wait for Maggie, who had gone on a message, and she presently remarked: “I’ve no likin’ for that yallery colour; it’s as ugly as sin. If it was me, I’d sooner a deal have the pink one there is yonder over young Andy FitzSimon. His father gave it a new coat the time he was doin’ up Mr Purcell’s front palin’s a while ago. But, sure, how would poor Maggie be stickin’ up crosses or anythin’ else over me, the crathur, thry her best?”

“Maggie’s a very good girl,” Rose said, to give the conversation a livelier turn. “I don’t know what you’d do widout her.”

But her commendation of her cousin, generally so eagerly taken up, had not the usual effect upon her grandmother. For instead of replying, “Ay, bedad,” and launching out into complacent praises, Mrs Behan answered, firmly and gloomily: “I’d do first-rate; grand I’d do, if I got the chance.” An unexpected response, which surprised Rose considerably; but Maggie’s arrival just then prevented comment or explanation.

In the course of the next week Rose was again puzzled by some of her grandmother’s sayings and doings. What perplexed her first was a marked disapprobation of the little purchases that she made for the benefit of the cabin and its occupiers. The sorely-needed garments or utensils or groceries never had a reception more gracious than: “Well, now, yourself’s the great gaby to be bringin’ home all them contrivances, litterin’ up the place. ’Deed it’s a pity to see you throwin’ away your money on the likes of such ould thrash that nobody wants.” Moreover, Mrs Behan’s manner showed plainly that these protests were not merely polite disclaimers, but sincere utterances of her sentiments. Rose wondered and pondered without catching sight of any plausible reason. She well knew that none of her family had ever inclined towards excessive thrift, either on their own or other people’s account. Stranger still, Mrs Behan began to let fall what sounded to Rose terribly like hints that she had outstayed her welcome and had better end her visit. That this should have happened already, or, in truth, could happen ever at all, was a bitter thought to Rose; and one night, after her grandmother had been talking about the sailing of steamers from Queenstown, she felt so badly that she ate hardly a morsel of supper, and went to bed early, almost resolved to leave next morning. But thereupon Mrs Behan had manifested such deep concern at these signs of indisposition, and had so bestirred herself to totter about, making tea and toast for the invalid, and scaring away intrusive hens whose crawking might disturb “her honey,” that Rose found it for the time being impossible to harbour any longer those grievous suspicions.

Then one evening, on her return from the post-office, she discovered her grandmother alone in the kitchen. The old woman was stooping over the table, upon which she had spread out the contents of Rose’s large wash-leather purse. Perceiving herself detected, she attempted first to conceal her occupation with a corner of her shawl, and next to assume an unabashed demeanour, failing in a pitiable way that made Rose hasten to say gaily, accepting the scrutiny as a matter of course: “Well, Granny, it’s fine and rich I am these times, amn’t I?” And, restored to self-respect, Mrs Behan spoke her mind without embarrassment. “Oh, bedad are you. But it’s not very long before you won’t be so. Five and ninepence you’re after spendin’ since this day week. You might as well be lettin’ on to keep a sup of wather in an ould sack as in your purse. Never your fool’s fut you set outside the door but you’ll throw away a couple of shillin’s. Och, you needn’t be offerin’ to hide it: I see the big lump of a parcel you have under your arm this minyit. And the end of it ’ill be that before we know where we are the passage-money ’ill be gone. Look there,” she said, pointing to the coins, which she had counted into two unequal heaps, “that’s your fares on the boat, and that other’s all you have left for wastin’; and it, by rights, you’ll want to live on till you get places on the other side. But you’ll keep it up, all I can do or say, till you’ll not lave enough to take the two of yous over.”

“The two of me, Granny?” Rose said. “Sure the dear knows it’s lonesome entirely I’ll be goin’ across, and what for in the world would I be payin’ the double fares?”

“Where’s Maggie?” said Mrs Behan.

“_Maggie?_” said Rose. “And now what would bewitch me to be takin’ Maggie away, and she the only one you have to be doin’ e’er a hand’s turn for over here?”

“Well enough I can be doin’ meself all the hand’s turns I want,” said Mrs Behan. “What ’ud ail me to not? Haven’t I got the hins? And I might be droppin’ down off me standin’ feet any minyit of the day, and then what ’ud become of little Maggie? It’s the best chance for her altogether.”

“Maggie’d be frettin’ woeful if she was took away from you,” said Rose. “Ne’er a fut she’d come, it’s my belief, and anyhow ’twould be no sort of thing to go do. I wouldn’t be thinkin’ of it at all.”

They argued the point for a long time without change of opinion on either side, until at last Rose said: “Well, Granny, you know I’m goin’ on Tuesday to stop a while wid me sister up at Clochranbeg, so ’twill be time enough to talk about Maggie when I come back. There’s no hurry.” And in this adjournment Mrs Behan had to acquiesce with what patience she could.

During her fortnight’s visit to the struggling MacAteer family, away in the furthest corner of the wide county, Rose considered the question much and anxiously, with the result that on her journey back to Kilgowran she was sometimes repeating in her mind a decision at which she had reluctantly arrived. “I’ll thry get a place in this counthry,” she said to herself. “It’s poor livin’ and bad wages, and I well know the best way to lend them a helpin’ hand is from across the wather. But how would Granny, the crathur, understand? And I’ll promise her that if anythin’ happins her I’ll take Maggie back wid me then to the States. Maybe that ’ill contint her.”

But Rose never gave that promise. For when she reached the little brown and white cottage in the black bog she found it more lonesome within than without; and running in affright to the Dohertys, its far-off nearest neighbours, she heard the worst news. Mrs Doherty, looking scared and solemn, related how, the evening after Rose left, Mrs Behan had asked them to take in Maggie for a little while, as she herself was real bad and going into Ballymoyle Infirmary. And how on that day week, when Jim Doherty had tramped over to inquire for her, he heard that she was dead and buried. “Took very suddint, the crathur, God be good to her!” Mrs Doherty said, “or to be sure she’d send word by some manner of manes to poor Maggie that she set such store by, and that’s sittin’ here in desolation in the corner ever since, as quiet as a bird hunted out of its sivin sinses.”

Maggie did indeed look so wan and woebegone that Rose’s first thought was: “She’d never ha’ been persuaded to come away wid me. If I had but known I might ha’ promised to take her safe enough, instead of to be vexin’ poor Granny wid goin’ against the notion; and I’d liefer than a great deal I had so.” However, she was obliged to mingle active exertions with the regret that made them all dreary and wearisome. She could not afford to linger, lest her little fortune should actually, as poor Granny had dreaded, dwindle away, leaving her without the means of paying her cousin’s passage. That Maggie must now accompany her was obvious, for “Who else would be mindin’ the girl?” and Maggie herself had apparently no wishes one way or the other. So Rose hastened to make their preparations before the waning autumn became stormier winter, and the long amber rays, which seemed stooping to peer in under thatched eaves at little low windows, should be all lost among clouds and mist.

One thing that she did gave some small consolation to Maggie and herself. She bespoke a wooden cross for their grandmother’s grave from Jim Doherty, who was a great hand at carpentry. Jim at first made some demur about accepting the commission, on the grounds that he might be “bothered to find the right grave there promiscuous in the Union corner.” But in the end he consented, and refused to take a farthing for his work, and promised to paint the cross a fine, strong pink, and if possible at all to set it in the proper place, though about this he still expressed doubts. So Rose entrusted Mrs Doherty with the key of the deserted cabin till Mrs MacAteer could take possession of its few effects, and she and Maggie said farewell to Kilgowran.

The cousins voyaged safely to New York, and were fortunate enough to get situations there in the same household. One day, soon after Rose had reported their arrival to Mrs Doherty at Kilgowran, she received an Irish letter, which she and Maggie spelled out with bewildered amazement at first, and finally with almost incredulous joy. It was written by the Kilgowran schoolmaster, from the dictation evidently of more than one person, which made its style rather involved and obscure, as we may perceive:--

“Dear Rose, and Maggie, jewel machree, that has no call to be fretting all the while. Sure, now, Rose, you needn’t be mad wid me, for the only plan I could contrive to get you out of it was to take off wid meself to the Infirmary as soon as I got your back turned, for then I well knew you wouldn’t be long quitting yourself, and bringing little Maggie wid you. So I bid Jim Doherty let on I was the ould woman they were after burying there on Friday. But afraid of me life I was lest he wouldn’t have the wit to be telling you the right lies.--Dear Miss Rose Byrne, you can bear me witness that ne’er a word of truth I told you good or bad, except saying I couldn’t tell the very place the grave was, and small blame to me for that same, when Herself is sitting here by her fire this minyit, and well able to be giving impidence as ever she was in her life. But I mean to let you know I didn’t go back of me promise about the cross, no fear. A grand little one it is, and I have it painted as pink as a rose, the way it had a right to be. Dear Miss Byrne, so when I brought it over to her just now--”

“The big _stookawn_ he was to go do such a thing,” Rose commented on reading this.

“--nothing else would suit her but I must stick it up for her on the wall alongside of her dresser, and an iligant apparence it has. I may say Mr Joseph Gogarty, the National School teacher, is in a great admiration of it altogether. (I am glad to state that I consider the memorial cross a neatly-made and tastefully-constructed article.--J. G.)--Indeed now, Rose, yourself was a very good girl to think of spending your money on it, if Jim Doherty would let you, and there will I be keeping it, dry and convanient, till whenever I want it, plase God; and then Jim Doherty will see there will be no mistake about where it’s put in the burying-ground. And, Maggie, alanna, you will be getting on finely in the States; and don’t be lonesome, me jewel, for there do be no chances in Kilgowran, and sure the hins is grand company to me. So no more at present from your grandmother, Honoria Behan, and Jim Doherty.”

“Saints above, but herself’s the great rogue, glory be to goodness,” Rose said when they had at last puzzled out the real state of affairs. “And rightly she got the better of me that time, and quare fools she made of the two of us, that were frettin’ ourselves distracted, and she just waitin’ ready to flourish up out of her bed like an ould cricket leppin’, and back again wid her into her little house as soon as she had us safely landed on board. But all the same, it’s wonderin’ I am, Maggie, if she isn’t apt to be lost entirely widout either of us.”

“I’ll save hard,” said Maggie. “Wid such a power of dollars in me wages it won’t be a great while till I have enough to get back to her. Ah, Rose dear, me heart’s cold to think of her sittin’ there wid that ould pink cross stuck up on the wall. But, plase God, that’s where I’ll find it yet when I get home to her; and then I’ll not be long takin’ it down.”

And at the present time Maggie is still saving hard, and the pink cross still hangs on the wall beside her grandmother’s dresser.

LOUGHNAGLEE

Mrs Molly Whelehan told the story to her grand-daughter, Helena Mahony, much as she herself had heard it from her own grandmother, who, having lived at the very time and place of its end, “had a right,” as Mrs Whelehan said, “to know the whole of it.” They were seated on a fine swarded bank by the northern shore of Loughnaglee, and resting, that is to say Helena was resting, for her grandmother seemed just as fresh and brisk as when they had set out two or three hours before, which was absurd. For Helena had been quite lately sent to stay with her, because a family conclave had decided that “the crathur was gettin’ a great age entirely, and too ould and feeble to be left any longer livin’ her lone.” Whereas now, the day but one after Helena’s arrival, her grandmother had nearly “tramped the two feet off of her,” gathering rushes to patch the roof of the calf’s shed from breakfast-time till noon.

Loughnaglee is set in level green land, with low shores, except at its northern end, where a little hill range sends down a spur to the water’s edge, overlooking it with a bold, furzy crag, lifted on a pedestal of steep grass slopes. Beneath this run very tall blackthorn hedges, which here enclose the dwindled lake-corner, turning to either hand in symmetrically right lines and angles, so that it is like a small court, with three high, thick walls. Its water-floor generally lies in shadow, looking sombrely solid and opaque, as if paved with black flags, even when the rest is all shimmering blue or silver. Perhaps this gloomy aspect may have conspired with an echo born of the cliff to suggest and foster the belief whence Loughnaglee has come by its name--the Lake of the Cries: but no one has so far found or invented any legend to explain its origin.

Wide shadow fell heavily on the water as the old woman and the girl sat by it, close to the last sloe bush on the eastern shore; for although it was midsummer and midday everything scowled back sympathetically and unseasonably at the lowering cloud-canopy overhead. “If it’s trampin’ round Loughnaglee as often as meself you were,” Mrs Whelehan said as they sat down and her grand-daughter complained of being “kilt,” “it’s little enough you’d think of steppin’ as far as the Fivestones for a bundle of rushes. But sure we can be restin’ here aisy for a bit, till it’s time to go in and put on the pitaties. And bedad if any people was livin’ all their lives beside it as long as I am, they wouldn’t have so much talk out of them about the quare things there do be on the lough. Ne’er a sign of them I seen anyway.”

“I wouldn’t suppose it was any quarer than e’er another little ould lough,” said Helena, who being momentarily out of humour threw some disparagement into her tone.

“For the matter of that,” replied the grandmother, promptly changing front, “them that never set fut next nor nigh it till last Monday isn’t very apt to have any great opinion about the quareness that might or mightn’t be in it. Sure it’s much if they know the raison it got the name Loughnaglee on it at all.”

“It had to be called some name, I should suppose,” said Helena, who was still inclined to suppose perversely, “and one’s as good as another.”

“Well now, indeed and bedad, the people were fine fools if they’d no better sort of raison than that when they called it the Lough of the Cries in the Gaelic,” said Mrs Whelehan. “But there’s some could be tellin’ you a different story, and a one that’s no lie either, to me certain knowledge.”

“Could they so?” said Helena, who had been cooling her hands and face with the clear water and felt her curiosity revive.

“But before ever that happint,” said Mrs Whelehan, “I was hearin’ tell about the cries. For they do say that if a man’s anywheres convanient to the lough, sittin’ here beside it, maybe, or up a bit on the hill, and if he hears anythin’ cryin’ and callin’ him by his name, he may depind there’s some harm after befallin’ the woman he sets the most store by in this world, whoever she may be--his mother, or his wife, or his child, or his sweetheart, just accordin’, though it’s far enough away she was all the while.”

“To be sure, then, that’s rael quare,” said Helena. “I wonder is it the truth?”

“You’ll be wonderin’ a long time before you make a bowl of stirabout wid it,” Mrs Whelehan said oracularly, “but very belike your mammy was tellin’ you agin now what happint me grandmother’s brother in the same identical place we’re sittin’ in this minyit, I might say.”

“She was not,” said Helena. “No great talk of Loughnaglee she has these times. Only a slip of a _girsheach_ she says she was and she gettin’ married and quittin’ out of it.”

“Herself hasn’t much nathur in her to be disremimberin’ it, if she was twinty _girsheachs_. But I niver had any such great wish, so to spake, for Biddy,” Mrs Whelehan said frankly. “She always took after her poor father’s ould sister, Nellie Whelehan, that was as contrairy as a wild hin. However, what happint me grandmother’s brother, Jim M‘Farlane, was before my time, when they were all livin’ in the empty house fornint me own, and the Cavanaghs were in the next one, that’s gone to ruin. And the ould people were very wishful to be makin’ up a match wid Jim M‘Farlane and Norah Cavanagh, the only daughter. Me grandmother said she knew Norah had a likin’ ever for Jim, and Jim had nothin’ agin it, till Mrs Cavanagh’s niece, Rose Moore, come to stop wid them, and then he seemed takin’ a notion he might be better satisfied if he got her. Just for the sake of variety, for me grandmother said she wasn’t any nicer than Norah, unless that might be the raison. But too young he was to be firm in his mind. However, he was betwixt and between, and they had nothin’ settled this way or that way, when the two girls took it in their heads one day to go pull sloes along the hedge here, that were just turned black. It was the grand hedge for sloes, and bedad it’s full of them this minyit, if they were ripe. The white blossom on it does be a sight to behould at the turn of the winter, and the sloes do be the size of young plums, wid a bloom on them you could write your name in. Grand wine they make. So off they set in the mornin’, and when they came here they found Jim M‘Farlane up on the hill there wid his tarrier after rabbits, and they only passed him the time of day, and that was all. And Rose went wid her basket along this lough side of the hedge, and Norah over yonder”--Mrs Whelehan pointed across the smooth dark water--“where there’s somethin’ of a steep bank.

“Well now, after a while Jim was mindin’ the dog that had him nearly bothered altogether wid the barkin’ and yelpin’ it kep’ up at a rabbit hole; but all the same it seemed to him he heard somethin’ callin’ his name wid a woeful screech. And says he to himself: ‘That’s Rose Moore about drowndin’ herself as sure as the sun’s in the sky.’ And off wid him to the place he’d seen her goin’. But there she was, pullin’ away on the field side of the hedge, and sorra a pin’s points amiss wid her, and ne’er a bit of her was after callin’ him, or hearin’ anythin’ only the little dog barkin’ and yellin’. Howane’er he stood out that some person was screechin’ in it, and they looked through the hedge here to try was there any signs of Norah over there. And at first they seen nothin’, but prisintly they noticed a white strake on a bush opposite, like as if a bough was wrenched off it; and the next minyit they seen a white strake agin’ in the black wather, and what was that but poor Norah’s apern, and she floatin’ across to them on the set of the current? So Jim got her on shore by some manner of manes, but the breath was out of her body entirely. And the crathur had the thorn bough clutched in her hand, the way they knew she was houldin’ on to it till it broke, and callin’ to Jim, and he runnin’ off from her after Rose Moore, that naught ailed in the world.”

“Then she needn’t lose her life only for him bein’ mistook that way?” said Helena.

“She need not, goodness may pity her. And only for him havin’ the story in his head about the callin’ it’s well enough he’d know Norah’s voice, that he was used to all the days of his life. So if there’s no raison for what people do be sayin’ about the lough, get me a one. There was raison enough to drownd the poor girl anyhow. But what I hope in me heart is that the crathur wasn’t seein’ Jim, and he startin’ off and lavin’ her that thought so much of him, for the sake of goin’ to Rosey Moore. She might aisy catch sight of him through the hedge leppin’ down the hill, and ’twould be fit to break her heart.”

“Sure if she was to be drownded the next minyit, that ’ud be the less matter,” said Helena. “’Twould make no differ to her then.”

“It’s little the likes of you or anybody else knows what mightn’t make a differ,” said her grandmother. “Some folks do be sayin’ she didn’t die contint--God be good to her--and wasn’t restin’ aisy. I mind meself hearin’ ould Christy Nolan and Judy Dunne sayin’ that long ago they seen--’Twas about the time of Jim and Rose’s weddin’, for they got married after all; but me grandmother said Rose wouldn’t look at him for a great while she was that mad wid him for lettin’ Norah be drownded.”

“What did they see?” said Helena.

“Ah, me dear, accordin’ to my opinion there wasn’t an atom of truth in it. The Cavanaghs were very dacint, respectable people. I niver heard tell of e’er another one of them walkin’. And forby that, more betoken, look at all the years I’m livin’ alongside the lough, and sight nor light I seen of e’er such a thing, in the daytime at anyrate, and nobody has any call to be rovin’ about in the night. If they see anythin’ quare then, they’ve thimselves to thank for it. I don’t believe--”

“Och, what was that?” Helena gripped her grandmother’s arm and shrank behind her, as a croaking chuckle approached them, breaking into a laughter-like skirl, while a snowy gleam appeared, crossing over the murky water.

“Sure only the big gull,” said Mrs Whelehan, pointing up to the wide white wings as they sailed by. “But it’s no good sign for the weather when that sort come streelin’ in so far from the say, and bedad I think there’s a shower blowin’ up on the win’ this instant. So we’d do better to be stirrin’ ourselves, till we get home dry.”

Indeed the first large drops were stamping circles on the capable water, and ripples were rising and reeds bending to rub them out, as Mrs Whelehan went with Helena home. The old woman was considering that she must fetch in a creel of turf before the day turned out too entirely soft on her. But her grand-daughter’s thoughts were occupied somewhat fearfully with the story she had just been told. It seemed to her that life at lonely Loughnaglee would henceforth have one more shadow, thrown by the fate of Norah Cavanagh, who “didn’t die contint.”

MORIARTY’S MEADOW

For some time Johnny Quin of Letterard had been looking over the low stone wall at his bit of young oats, which you could almost see grow in the midsummer sunshine, when he was pulled by the sleeve, and, turning round, beheld little Joe O’Hea with a grey kid tugging at the other end of a string.

“Johnny, man,” said Joe, “couldn’t you take and give the baste a lift up there for me? She’d get grand grazin’ on it.” Joe spoke remonstrantly, as if Johnny had been neglecting an obvious duty; and he pointed to the roof of Felix Moriarty’s cabin, which stood just across the lane.

The cabin was very small, with one tiny window-pane in its mud-walls, which were deeply weather-stained under the eaves, and from which the whitewash had worn off, leaving large brown patches. But its worst point, considering it as a dwelling-house, was the roof, for the thatch undulated in hillocks and hollows, and also bore a luxuriant crop of grass, almost as long and thick and green as the thriving oats over the way. This seemed to little Joe a desirable pasture for his kid, whose browsings along the stone-dyked lane were but scanty, and hence his appeal to his taller friend.

Johnny, however, was of a different opinion, and replied: “Sure not at all. The crathur’s over small sized to be cockin’ up that height off the ground. It’s breakin’ her four legs she’s apt to be before you’d get her down safe. Or belike she’d be losin’ herself in the long grass. Or maybe it’s puttin’ his roof up for a meadow Moriarty is all the while. Ay, bedad, you may depind that’s what he’s doin’. So just keep along the road wid her steady, me son, and niver mind anythin’ growin’ where she’s no call to be trespassin’.” Accordingly Joe and the kid sauntered on, leaving Johnny to his oats.

But Johnny’s attention had caught on Felix Moriarty’s thatch, and did not disengage itself quickly. His own pleasantry, too, about Moriarty’s meadow had taken his fancy, and he continued to repeat and elaborate it in his thoughts. At last, the forenoon being long and employment scarce, he actually went so far as to climb, sickle in hand, up on the waving roof, where he was presently slashing vigorously.

“Bedad now,” he said, surveying the tufts which had fallen round him, “I’m after knockin’ that same down in fine style: I did so, and wasn’t long about it either.” Nor did he stop here.

Having raked together the crop, and added a few bundles of grass from the bank, he carefully built up on an inconveniently sloping base a symmetrical little cock. This he secured with a rope scientifically twisted of the withered bents along the border of his oats, and then, jumping down noisily into the lane, contemplated his handiwork with complacent pride. Only one element was wanting in his satisfaction with it. There were no spectators to share his amusement and admire his wit. The key of the locked cabin door lurked hidden in some crevice of the thatch, for Felix Moriarty was away at the haymaking in a district where work seemed less slack. Nobody was about in the neighbouring fields. Even Joe O’Hea and the kid were out of sight round the corner.

“Sure now it’s a grand joke,” Johnny repeated to himself more than once, “and it looks as comical as anythin’ sittin’ there up over the man’s door as if it consaited it was in the middle of a sivin-acre field. Anybody ’ud be laughin’ at it that seen it, passin’ by.”

But of passers-by there appeared to be small prospect, as this lonely upland lane led no-whither in particular, and the nearest dwelling was merely his own cottage, the topmost thatch of which peered just visibly over the edge of a long slope.

“It ’ill be twinty pities,” Johnny declared, “twinty pities and a half if nobody sees it before it’s blew away wid the win’.” At that moment all these pities sadly threatened to come about.