Even before her favourite son Dan went off to the States on her, some
of Mrs Mulrane’s neighbours had been thinking her partly _quare_ in
her head, and after that they thought so all the more, for it wasn’t
natural, they said, for any reasonable body to go about the way
she did, with ne’er a word out of her, looking fit to _swally_ any
folks she met, whether they spoke to her or let her alone. This new
misfortune did not befall her until three or four years had passed
since the tragical end of her father-in-law; and dismal years they were
for all the household in her cabin on the strand. Never a happy one at
the best of times, a heavier cloud seemed to have settled down upon
it, darkening the days for everybody, except perhaps helpless Maggie
Dowling, from whose life a recurring violent terror had vanished with
the departure of old Patrick. “Not but what the poor man was dacint and
good-natured enough, so long as he hadn’t the drink taken,” she said.
Like her sister, Mrs Mulrane, of course, found things quieter, but
that was for her a questionable benefit, because it gave her the more
leisure for thinking, and her thoughts were poisoned with bitter
self-reproaches. As time crept on, these might have been mitigated, if
they had sprung only from the manner of old Patrick’s death. She might
have argued them down in her own mind with a theory, more or less well
founded, that her share in the event was at worst merely an error of
judgment, if indeed an error at all; and having thus convinced herself,
she would not have deeply considered the neighbours’ view of her
proceedings, however unfavourable. But as it was, the panic-stricken
impulse, which had led her to cast upon her sons the responsibility for
that fatal delay, had in every way worsened her plight. For in addition
to the dubious guilt of her hesitation to rescue, she had burdened her
conscience with the indisputably criminal act of bearing false witness
against her nearest and dearest. That it was also an act of utter folly
she speedily learned by the experience which so punctually arrives
just too late. By allowing her sons to be accused she had more than
trebled her own share of affronts and mortifications; she had opened
a threefold inlet to the spears and arrows of disparaging looks and
speeches, that flew around her thick and fast.
Old Patrick Mulrane had been one of those people who, though generally
disapproved of, are not personally unpopular, and this made everybody
feel all the more strongly about the dolefulness of his fate, and the
worthlessness of those who had so disgracefully forborne any endeavours
to avert it. A tall, gaunt Debby Ashe, who spoke with some authority,
declared that it “put her heart across” to think of the poor old man
lying there, caught by the leg in the cruel big boulder-stones, and
watching the waves rolling in every minute to drown the life out of
him, and those three great lumps of grandsons of his all the while
standing within a goat’s tether of him, that wouldn’t so much as reach
a hand to help him, not though their unfortunate mother went down on
her two knees to them--there was that to be said for her. No indeed,
not a one of the whole of them would, for fear the water might take
them off their good-for-nothing feet. She wouldn’t have thought there
were the likes of three such young poltroons in the parish, and they
were no credit to it, or to whoever had the rearing of them. Many
other persons shared Debby Ashe’s opinion, and expressed it in still
stronger terms, which whoever had the rearing of these young poltroons
often overheard, sometimes by accident, but more times by design. Often
again she saw, or fancied that she saw, the shadow of such comments
on the downcast countenances of her sons, which were usually gloomy
enough to give her ample scope for conjectures of the kind. Amongst
these was predominant a fear that the lads were “thinking bad of her,”
grudging and resenting the ill-turn she had done them. Reasonable as
the apprehension might seem, there were little grounds or none for
it, except in the case of Dan, her favourite, and even he said never
a word. In fact the whole household kept an absolute silence upon the
subject.
It would be impossible to ascertain exactly how she at length became
aware that Dan was thinking of the Jim M‘Evoys’ eldest daughter Rose,
and that she wouldn’t have anything to say to him, and that, supposing
the girl would itself, her people wouldn’t let her, by reason of the
talk about him and his brothers at the time their grandfather got his
death, and the bad name it gave them among the neighbours. Perhaps
Maggie, the onlooker, may have dropped a hint and supplied her with
the key which enabled her to spell out from a cipher of trifles how
the matter stood. At any rate it came to her knowledge, and brought
keenlier home to her what a dire injury she had done Dan and his
brethren. For at this time there was nothing else in the Mulrane’s
circumstances to make him a despicable suitor for Rose M‘Evoy. Since
their grandfather had ceased to squander their earnings, they had
thriven fairly well on their bit of land, where Mrs Mulrane herself
worked desperately, and at sea, to which they now put out in a
fishing-boat of their own. They sometimes did so in “soft” or “dirty”
weather, which daunted their neighbours, whose commentary on such an
occasion often ran to the effect that, “Them young Mulranes was mighty
ready to be foolin’ off wid themselves in a gale of win’, when they
thought they had a chance of grabbin’ a few mackerl. They were a dale
more delicate if there was no talk of gettin’ anythin’ better out of
the water than a misfortunate ould drowndin’ crathur. Bedad it looked
very like as if they’d liefer he stopped where he was that time, and
let them be shut of him. Or maybe what made them so hardy now was
thinkin’ it wouldn’t be wid _drowndin’_ the likes of them were apt to
get their deaths, no matter where they took it into their heads to
streel off to. But sure it was a pity for ould Paddy that they didn’t
take up wid the notion of bein’ so venturesome a bit sooner, ay was
it--the young poltroons.”
Consequently Mrs Mulrane could not but clearly understand what was
implied by the M‘Evoys’ rejection of her son, and in her raging against
it she had to include herself. She brooded and fretted over it for
several weeks, till one gusty March morning, when the sight of Dan’s
haggard face at breakfast had sharpened her two most goading fears,
which were that he might make away with himself, or else run off to the
States, she formed a difficult resolve, and started up the cliff path
to call on Rose M‘Evoy’s grandmother.
The Dowlings and the O’Hagans were friends of very long standing, while
Mrs O’Hagan, a somewhat older contemporary, had known her all the
days of her life, and was now rather poorer than herself, facts which
made her errand less impossibly humiliating. Still, it needed a mighty
effort, for she was inwardly furious at the M‘Evoys’ impudence. “Cock
up the likes of them to look crooked at Dan,” and sorely perplexed
to imagine how she could set about effecting her purpose without
compromising the pride of the Dowlings and the Mulranes. Her own,
individually, she was prepared to let fall. For a task of the kind
her qualifications were but meagre, tact, patience and self-control
being by no means her strong points, and even the stubborn will with
which she was commonly credited seeming nothing more serviceable than
a habit of adhering blindly to any position she might have hurriedly
taken up in some access of fear or anger. So now in her interview with
Mrs O’Hagan, instead of approaching its delicate object gradually yet
steadily, as a skilful diplomatist would have done, she proceeded
in a series of abrupt advances and awkward retreats, certain to
draw upon her the very suspicions that she wished to shun. That she
notwithstanding did never blunder or venture very near to the matter in
hand will appear, however, from the part of their conversation which
most directly referred to it.
“’Deed now, I often heard an ould woman I knew passin’ the remark,”
Mrs Mulrane said, _apropos_ of a reported marriage, “that her sons
were well off to have ne’er a sister, the way there was no need to be
savin’ up for their linen chests, and bits of fortunes, and sellin’
stock for them, or givin’ it away off the land. It’s a great burden
girls do be in a family, ma’am, all the one thing wid the rates and the
rint.”
“That’s a bad word you’re sayin’ agin yourself and meself, a while
back, ma’am,” Mrs O’Hagan said, with a tinge of severity in her jesting
tone.
“Sorra the daughter I ever had, glory be,” Mrs Mulrane said, obtusely
missing the point in her preoccupation with her own moral, “and ne’er a
drawback me lads have at home, unless their poor aunt, that’s not apt
to last much longer, and that’s no great trouble or expinse at all.
She has a couple of pounds hid away somewhere this ten or twelve year
towards her buryin’, I well know, though it’s not grudgin’ her I’ve a
call to be, nor the lads wouldn’t either, if she hadn’t a pinny to her
name. We can afford to be keepin’ her. To be sure, you had a daughter
to marry, ma’am, and she has a good few _girsheachs_ growin’ up, and
two or three of them red-headed; I do be noticin’ them on a Sunday. But
Rose is a fine slip of a girl. I suppose they’ll be settlin’ her wid
somebody agin next Shrove, ma’am, anyway?”
“Och, they’re in no hurry,” said Mrs O’Hagan. “Did you happen to hear
tell what way the Widdy Hefferman’s sick heifer was this morning?”
“I did not. She and I aren’t very great. But as for the hurry, that’s
the very thing I do be sayin’ to Dan and his brothers at home. Sorra a
bit of a hurry there is on me to be seein’ a daughter-in-law comin’ in;
but, all the same, ne’er a word I’d say against it, supposin’ a one of
them took the notion in his head. And if by any chance it was a girl
out of his own parish belongin’ to very respectable people, that he
thought of makin’ up a match wid, all the better I’d be plased.”
“Me daughter wouldn’t be wishful to marry a girl of hers wid any people
livin’ down along the strand, that I know,” Mrs O’Hagan said hastily
and flurriedly, as if running out from beneath a dangerous roof, “she’d
liefer they went to some place inland. People don’t be gettin’ their
health so well, she says, livin’ on the edge of the cowld water.”
“There’s more than a few wouldn’t get their healths to suit them,
unless they could be takin’ away other people’s characters, and
puttin’ an ill name on a poor boy that never done them a hand’s turn
of harm,” Mrs Mulrane burst out with bitter emphasis, this obvious
evasion inciting her to one of her indiscreet rushes forward; but she
pulled herself up with a jerk. “I was thinkin’ of somethin’ I read on
the paper a while ago,” she explained, “about a couple of childer got
burnt to death in a house, I disremimber where. But the crathurs might
ha’ been took out safe enough, for there was them close by that would
ha’ gone through fire and water to raich them wid ne’er a thought of
drowndin’ or anythin’ else, only nobody seen the house was a-fire,
barrin’ a silly, dotin’ ould body, no better than meself, ma’am, and
she never had the wit to tell the other people till it was too late
altogether. So anythin’ that happint was no fau’t of theirs, ma’am,
whatever talk there might be afterwards.”
“Goodness pity us all,” said Mrs O’Hagan, “And was that the story she
had? Sure now, it’s the quare woman that wouldn’t be makin’ up lies to
rightify her own belongings, if she got the chance; and it’s the quare
ignorant people that would be blamin’ the crathur for it. Not that
you or me, Abbey, has any call to be considherin’ any such a thing.
And it’s like enough your son ’ill be bringin’ home a wife before any
great while. Would he be apt to think of gettin’s married up in Dublin?
Nannie Dwyer was tellin’ me her sister’s son was intindin’ he would,
because they have the name of ownin’ pigs, so it’s a heavy fee Father
Hely’nd have to be gettin’ off them. They’d do it a dale chaper in
Dublin.”
“As much as to say he’d better go look for a girl in a strange place,
where they know naught about him,” Mrs Mulrane said, whirling on her
brown shawl, and again her hostess protested: “Musha, not at all, not
at all. What ’ud ail anybody to be takin’ up that notion? And sure it’s
not runnin’ away wid yourself you are yet a while? Stop now, woman
dear, till I get you a sup of thick milk.”
Nevertheless Mrs Mulrane was very soon running away with herself
down the steep cliff path, against the bleak March wind; and as
she went she realised more fully than she had ever done before the
irrevocability of her false step. The druidical mist of untruth which
she had raised could not now be dispersed by any spell in her power;
confession was of no avail. She had indeed robbed her sons of a jewel,
and not only so, but had herself hopelessly lost it; she could never
restore it to them again.
And a few weeks later Dan Mulrane was voyaging, a forlorn and listless
passenger, in a big liner, across the lonely ocean-plains between
Liverpool and Boston. He had departed unbeknownst, wishing to shun a
domestic scene of lamentation and remonstrance. Beyond that circle he
had no need to apprehend any excessive regrets, for though naturally of
a sociable disposition, he had not a single friend. The sentiment of
the parish was that “It would be a good job if the other two had went
along wid him”; and his mother’s grief was embittered by the reflection
that “when the Daly’s two brats of boys set off to New York a convoy
as big as a fair saw them as far as Loughard; but her poor Dan might
travel away to the well of the World’s End, and no more talk about it
than if he was an ould stray saygull.”