Joanna Crehan, the girl who had left the four pennies, returned with
the baby, her youngest brother, to their dwelling, which is a bit down
the road on the right hand, coming into Lisconnel from Duffclane, and
was the Quigleys’ before they emigrated. It stands on a flat slab of
bare stone, which floors it evenly enough, and a low bank quilted with
heather gives it a little shelter at the back, but it fronts the widest
sweep of the bog-land just over the way. The rim of fine-textured sward
is such a frequent playing and lounging place for its tenants, that
their feet wear many equally bare brown patches, which grow rapidly
in size during the drier summer months, and shrink slowly all the
rest of the year. They were at their largest this evening, and the
little Crehans were using one of them for a game of marbles, while Mrs
Crehan and her second eldest daughter sat knitting on a big boulder,
and her elder son lay in its long shadow neither asleep nor awake.
Joanna handed her the baby, and took from her the knitting-needles with
their dangling grey woollen leg, an exchange in which she acquiesced
half-contentedly, being divided between her wish to continue “Mike the
crathur’s” sock and to welcome “Patsy the crathur’s” greeting grin.
“Where was you off to wid him?” she said to Joanna. “I never seen sight
of you goin’.”
“I went to bring Mrs M‘Gurk me fourpence towards her shillin’,” said
Joanna. “How many stitches had I a right to keep on me back needle?”
“Your four pinnies to Mrs M‘Gurk?” said her mother, “and what in the
name of fortune bewitched you to go do such a thing as that?”
“She’s distracted losin’ it,” said Joanna, “and I’d liefer than forty
fourpinnies she had it back.”
“The divil’s cure to the both of yous then,” said Mrs Crehan, “and is
that all the nature you have in you? To be slinkin’ out of the house
wid your pinnies to her that’s nothin’ to us good or bad, and your
poor brother settin’ off to-morra to the strange place, wid ne’er a
halfpenny to put in his pocket, and yourself the only one of us that
has a brass bawbee to our names, or the dear knows it’s not begrudin’
him we’d be.”
“And I thought you and Mike was always so wonderful great,” put in
Nannie Crehan, taking up the recital of her sister’s delinquencies,
“lettin’ on you were kilt if anybody said a word agin him. And to take
and give away the fourpence from him, to ould Widdy M‘Gurk, that’s as
apt as not to throw them in your face. And I thought--”
“Did you ever by chance think that you hadn’t a great dale of wit?”
said Joanna; “not that you need throuble yourself to be tellin’
anybody.”
Mike got up and sauntered off towards a group of people at a little
distance, while silence fell on his mother and sisters, who this
evening lacked spirits for vivacious altercation. Joanna sat gazing
blankly across the vast floor of the bog, as it lifted up against the
fading fires of the west; every minute its dark rim extinguished some
bright embers. She felt intensely miserable. It was the hardest grip
of the unhappiness that had been pressing on her heart almost ever
since the moment a few days ago when she had seen Mike set his foot on
something shining silverly from under a dandelion leaf on the bog there
below the knock-awn, where they all were looking for Mrs M‘Gurk’s lost
shilling.
In obedience to his warning frown she had suppressed an ecstatic
shriek, supposing that he had some plan of his own about the method of
announcing his find, and she had presently seen him slip it secretly
into his pocket. Never would she have imagined that he did not intend
to restore it; but as time slipped by, this dreadful suspicion was
forced upon her. For Mike made no sign, and when she asked him about
it in private, at first answered evasively, but finally told her to
“hould her fool’s gab, and quit meddlin’.” The mere possibility filled
her with wrath and dismay. She had always thought so much of Mike, and
she had never heard tell of anybody belonging to them behaving in such
a manner. What made it worse was that Mike would be travelling off next
day by himself all the way to the county Roscommon, where his uncle had
got him farm work. He had never left home before, and only the strong
propulsion of adverse circumstances, including a father bedridden half
the year, would now have thrust him out. For Mike, long the only grown
son in a flock of girls, was an important and cherished possession
among the Crehans, not to be parted with lightly. Everybody agreed that
none of them made such a fool of him as his eldest sister Joanna, and
she had indeed taken his going sadly to heart. She had fretted much
over the poverty which would oblige him to start almost penniless,
as after providing him with the indispensable footgear, not a spare
farthing remained in the establishment except a dwindled remnant of
the shilling which Mary had earned last Easter by doing jobs for Mrs
O’Neill down beyond Duffclane.
But though this had been bad enough, infinitely worse was it to think
of his setting forth into the wide world laden with that guilty coin.
It was apt to bring ill-luck on him, she felt. And anyhow it was “no
thing to go do,” a phrase wherein she acknowledged the supremacy of
that law which a more philosophical mind than hers had marvelled at
under the starry heavens. Various minor ingredients helped to embitter
her distress. Wounded pride and affection, disappointment, and a sense
that she had been made in some degree an accomplice. Partly this last
consideration, and partly a vague hope that Mike might thus be shamed
into right-doing, had spurred her to the desperate step of bringing
Mrs M‘Gurk her fourpence. Now that the deed was done, however, she
found, instead of relief, fears lest it should only confirm Mike in his
felonious obduracy, or possibly draw the widow’s suspicions upon him.
So she sat out a disconsolate twilight, which lingered and loitered,
giving her time to finish Mike’s sock before she went indoors.
Mike himself had strolled on, and joined the little knot of men who
were gathered at the front of Peter Ryan’s house. But he scarcely
changed into pleasanter company, for, “Musha, good gracious,” he said
to himself, “is there nothin’ in creation for people to be talkin’
about only that one’s ould shillin’?”
“Well now, that was comical enough,” Ody Rafferty was saying to Kit
Ryan. “I didn’t see herself at all, and I bringin’ my shillin’; there
was only the niece in it, but of course she would be tellin’ the widdy.
And then you to come landin’ in a while after wid a different one, and
the same lie. You’d a right to ha’ tould me what you was intindin’,
the way we might ha’ conthrived it better. But the foolishness of some
folks would surprise the bastes of the field. Shankin’ up to her they
are wid pinnies and sixpinnies, and tellin’ her they got them all on
the one bit of ground. Sure an ould blind hin ’ud have more wit than
to believe the likes of that. Howane’er, it’s right enough, so long as
she’s contint to be lettin’ on herself, and not callin’ us all liars
and thieves of the world.”
“She kep’ the shillin’ I brought her ready enough, bedad did she,” Kit
said with a rueful complacency. “‘Is that me shillin’ you’re after
findin’?’ says she the minyit she seen it, with the look of an ould
magpie on her. ‘To be sure it is, ma’am,’ says I. ‘What else would
it be at all, unless it was another one?’ says I. ‘Yourself’s the
very cliver man entirely,’ says she to me, and wid that she grabs it
up. ‘I’ll take and lose it agin,’ says she, ‘the next time I want to
be makin’ me fortin’.’ I wouldn’t put it past her, mind you, to be
meanin’ somethin’ quare. But as for findin’ her own shillin’ among them
coarse-growin’ tussocks, a body might be breakin’ his back there till
the Day of Judgment for any chance of it.”
“Take care somebody isn’t after gettin’ it, all the while, and keepin’
it quiet,” said Ody.
“Och, I wouldn’t suppose there was any person in Lisconnel would be
doin’ such a dirty trick on the poor ould woman,” said Peter Ryan.
“She’s as rich as a Jew anyway, wid half the counthryside runnin’ off
to her wid their savin’s,” said Mike. “It’s well to be her, bedad.” He
soon sauntered on, but did not attach himself to any other party, being
irked by the prevalent topic of conversation.
The next morning rose still and softly tinted, with a deep band of
mist all round the far away horizon. Mrs M‘Gurk got up unusually early
for Sunday, and set off alone to Duffclane in time for the ten o’clock
Mass, so that she got back to Lisconnel a full hour before most of her
neighbours. They found her seated on a convenient flat-topped boulder
by the side of the road, just at the highest point of the slight rise
over which it slips down to run between the few dwellings of Lisconnel.
Here the returning congregations always halt for a final gossip, before
they break up, dispersing themselves into the shadowy door-ways of
cabins to the right and left. She descried from afar their approach
along the ribbon of road, white in the afternoon sun, and singled out
among the shawls and hoods and broad-brimmed black hats the heads of
nearly all the neighbours whom she especially wished to interview.
The Crehans, indeed, were absent, owing to Mike’s imminent departure;
however, she hoped to fall in with him and Joanna by-and-by. When
everybody had come up, and all were standing or sitting about, the
widow rose, and began what was evidently a set speech in substance, if
not in form. Her great-niece, Minnie Walsh, observed her with some
trepidation, a feeling which was more or less shared by others in her
audience.
“Ody Rafferty,” she said, selecting this small old man for the object
of her address, “I was thinkin’ just now of the way me poor grandfather
would have me annoyed somewhiles, when I was a little _girsheach_, like
Biddy Ryan there wid her mouth full of the red blackberries. For if
ever I had e’er a pinny of an odd time, he would be biddin’ me run and
plant it somewheres in the bit of garden, to see would it grow into
a money-plant for me. Ragin’ I used to be, God forgive me, thinkin’
he was only makin’ a fool of me. But sure, he was right enough, poor
man, and it’s meself was the fool; for here I am after droppin’ me
shillin’ on the ground there scarce a week past, and here’s the half
of yous coming up to me yesterday wid shillin’s, and pinnies, and all
manner, that ye got growin’ in it. Bedad ’twas terrible quick goin’
to seed--for what other way could they be there? Unless it’s makin’
a fool of me ye were, and that I know right well ye wouldn’t have
the impidence to be doin’. But ’deed now it’s not keepin’ the whole
of the crop I’d be at all, and it not even raised on me own bit of
land. So I brought your share of it along; Ody, and the other people’s
too”--she drew out a little grey plaid rag of shawl, and undid a
knotted corner--“This is your shillin’, Ody,” she said. “And here’s Kit
Ryan’s and Mrs Fahy’s sixpinny.” She moved from one to the other of her
would-be benefactors, restoring their contributions with a firmness
which obviously was not to be gainsaid. Perhaps no dramatic scene at
the Ballytrave festival could well have afforded her a more enjoyable
moment. Ody Rafferty alone ventured upon an audible remonstrance,
“Begorrah now,” he said, “if it’s not a fool you are altogether,
yourself’s the proudest-minded, stubborn, steadfast ould divil of a
headstrong ould woman from this to Cork, and maybe that comes to much
the same thing, supposin’ you had the wit to know it.” But even he did
not utter this criticism until Mrs M‘Gurk was stalking away.
She wished to find Mike Crehan, whom she conjectured to be still at
home, but before she reached the Crehans’ house, she met him coming
along the road with his red cotton travelling-bag. A troop of his
younger sisters were withdrawing against their will, having been
dissuaded by forcible arguments from accompanying him further. “It’s
follyin’ me to the end of the town they’d love to be,” he had said to
himself. “Keenin’ like a pack of ould banshees, and makin’ a show of me
before the lads.” He would have much preferred to avoid an interview
with the widow, but that seemed impossible, and he halted reluctant.
“So you’re steppin’ along, Mike,” she said. “It’s well to be the likes
of you, that has the soopleness yet in your limbs. Sure now, you might
tramp the whole of Ireland before you’ll come on an ould man’s mile,
that wants the end in the middle. And look-a, Mike, here’s the pinnies
your sister Joanna was lavin’ up at my house last night by some manner
of misapperhinsion: belike you’d ha’ room for them in your pocket, and
this shillin’ along wid them. They’re the handiest sort of luggage to
be carryin’ after all, if they’re the hardest to get a hould on.”
A mixture of motives had incited Mrs M‘Gurk to bestow this gift. There
was the need to be more than even with the Crehans on the score of
Joanna’s attempted benefaction, and the desire to get rid of a coin
the possession of which did but remind her of her disappointment,
while to these was added an impulse of genuine benevolence towards
the tall, ragged lad--in her own mind she called him “a slip of a
young bosthoon”--whom she saw faring off alone into the wide, strange
world, poorly enough provided for, she presumed, though she did not
surmise the depths of his people’s penury. As she hurried away from him
her feelings were mingled still, half-satisfied, half-regretful, and
dominated by a sense that she had here definitely put off a flattering
hope.
Mike’s feeling, on the contrary, was quite simple, and of such
unfamiliar unpleasantness that he hailed with relief the sight of his
sister Joanna waiting for him at the furze gap. He would otherwise
have reprobated her for protracting the hateful farewell scenes, but,
as it was, he hastily thrust two shillings into her hand, saying,
“Och, Hanny, run after her the quickest you can--she’s just down the
road--and be givin’ them back to her.”
Joanna looked at the shillings with eyes of puzzled wonder. “Sure it
wasn’t the both of them she lost,” said she. “Where at all did you get
the other from?”
“Herself,” said Mike. “Run like the mischief now when I bid you.”
“I will that, Mike jewel,” she said, and started forthwith. Delight at
his act of restitution, of which she had utterly despaired, although
intending to make one last appeal, superseded for the moment every
other consideration; but as she caught up Mrs M‘Gurk, climbing the
steep footpath, she became suddenly aware that she had a confession to
make, and that it might put Mike’s good name at the mercy of a third
person.
“Mrs M‘Gurk, woman dear,” she said, rushing at her perilous
explanation. “Here’s your shillin’ Mike bid me be bringin’ back to you,
and thank you kindly all the same, for he couldn’t be robbin’ you of
it, and he’s got plinty of money along wid him. And the other’s the one
you dropped on the bog, ma’am; he and I found it a day or two back, and
we just kep’ it a while be way of a joke. And I hope you won’t think
bad of it, ma’am. Mike was biddin’ me this minyit to not forgit to
bring it to you.”
“Saints above, it is me own one sure enough this time,” said Mrs
M‘Gurk. “Well, now, that was the quare luck and the quare joke. And
truth to tell you, Joanna Crehan, I’m thinkin’ yourself had neither
act nor part in it, whativer you may say.” Joanna’s face corroborated
this conjecture so disconcertedly that Mrs M‘Gurk hastened to add:
“But after all there’s no harm in a joke. Like enough I might take the
notion in me head to have a bit of a one meself. Suppose I was to be
lettin’ on to the rest of them I had the shillin’ lyin’ in the corner
of me pocket all the while, and niver seen it, nobody could tell but
that was the way it happint, and ’twouldn’t be too bad a joke at all.”
“’Twould be the greatest joke ever was, and yourself’s the rael dacint
woman for that same,” Joanna declared with an enthusiasm which said
little for her sense either of morals or of humour.
Then they went their several ways. As the widow opened her door,
all her eager plans for the morrow were in brisk motion again, like
clockwork freed from some hampering hitch. Joanna, running homeward,
felt conscious of nothing except the happiness of knowing Mike to be
safely quit of the crime with which she had feared that he would burden
himself irretrievably. She found her mother and sisters looking out
from a knoll whence the last glimpse was to be had of the dwindling
road-ribbon along which Mike would presently pass from sight. Mrs
Crehan was lamenting over the poor circumstances of her departing son.
“The crathur,” she said, “trampin’ away wid himself into the width of
the world, and ne’er a pinny to his name, any more than if he was a
baste drivin’ to a fair. Not a shillin’ in his pocket has he.”
“He has not,” Joanna said, and added indiscreetly, “Glory be to God.”