It was early in July when her neighbours discovered the Widow Farrell’s
wonderful age, and three months later found her beginning almost to
look the character of a bi-centenarian, so bent, wizened and decrepit
had she grown. Not that anything definite ailed her: the change was
wrought partly by her own melancholy imaginations, and partly by other
people’s alarming speeches. She told herself that she needn’t expect
to have the use of her limbs any while longer, and everybody she met
told her how surprising it was to see her able to be going about at
all; and the consequence was that she daily felt herself becoming more
feeble and incapable. On Sunday mornings she sometimes cheered up a
bit, because she could not help feeling flattered by all the attention
she received as she climbed the steep boreen to Mass, among a troop
of sympathetic acquaintances, who contended with one another for the
privilege of offering so distinguished a personage an arm. But even
then she heard and overheard many observations which, however kindly
meant, were by no means encouraging, and through the long week, when
she lacked any such excitement, she sat brooding and moping, until her
strength waned with her spirits. Out of doors she seldom stirred.
One mild autumn afternoon, however, the mellow golden light tempted
her to lift her old shawl over her head and creep as far as the John
Phelans, who lived close by, just across a loop of smooth firm sand at
the mouth of a boreen. Down this a stream of people had been wending
on their way back from Rathcroskery fair, and as several of them had
turned into the Phelans’ kitchen, the widow arrived amid quite a large
party of neighbours. Nannie Phelan, maiden sister to the man of the
house, welcomed her kindly, and sat down with her in a quiet corner,
noticing that the old woman looked what she would have described as
“skeery and desolit like.”
“Sure, I dunno is there one thing amiss wid me more than the other,”
Mrs Farrell explained lugubriously, “only I was dramin’ all last night
a dale about the little round musheroons we did be gettin’ in the
fields at home, and they made me think of me sisther Rose, that had an
oncommon fancy for them ever. I’d bring her any ones I could find, and
she’d be puttin’ them in among the hot ashes for to broil. I mind the
smell of them this minyit, and she pokin’ them out wid a bit of stick,
and sittin’ cocked up on the end of th’ ould settle a-nibblin’ of them,
the crathur, like a wild rabbit wid a weeny white turnip stole for
itself. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe a sort of sign.”
“She’s away this great while, I should suppose? The Lord be good to
her,” Nannie said with interest. It was a new departure for Mrs Farrell
to mention this long-vanished elder sister, of whose very existence
many of her friends had never heard.
“Ay is she that,” she replied to Nannie, “for what else would she be
after all this while? And Christy Dann as well--the back of me hand to
him; nobody thought anythin’ of them Danns. But sorra tale or tidings
ever I got of what become of her since then. I dunno if any of them did
at home, and I question would they let on to me even so, they were that
mad about it all. Many’s the time I would be frettin’ and wonderin’,
for I always had a great wish for poor Rose ever since I was no size to
spake of. As pretty as anythin’ she was, and rael good-nathured. ’Twas
twinty-siven pities--But sure it was to be, and belike it’s all one now
which of them she took.”
“What happint her, ma’am?” Nannie inquired eagerly; but before she
could be answered the open door all at once admitted sounds of
such shouting and clattering and trampling that curiosity about the
immediate present expelled curiosity about the remoter past, and she
rushed out like the rest to see what was going on.
Everybody considered that if Joe Mulcahy had not taken more than was
good for him he would never have trotted his horse and car down the
steep and deep-rutted boreen; and nobody thought it otherwise than very
natural that the result of his rashness was an upset at the foot of the
hill. The horse tripped, and Joe and his two fares were pitched off.
But they all fell softly, and only the harness was damaged. While it
was a-mending with fishing-line the stranger passengers were invited
to take a seat at the Phelans’ fire, the circle round which was thus
enlarged by the addition of a middle-aged, black-bearded gentleman in
light grey, and a little girl in navy blue with a curly-feathered hat.
Elderly Terence Lalor from Moyloughlin, who was visiting his married
sister, Mrs Phelan, under-took, as the person of most consequence
present, to entertain the new-comer, whose “furrinness” appeared
plainly in his accent, even before he remarked, in the course of
conversation, that he had had little experience of side-cars, as they
were pretty considerable scarce on the streets of New York City, which
he had but lately left.
“They’re the quare ould awkward yokes, bedad,” Terence asserted with
polite self-depreciation. “’Tis only in a poor, backward counthry
people would be bothered usin’ them at all. We ourselves has to make a
shift wid them to be gettin’ to fairs and funerals and such. Deed now
I mind the big loads there did be on our ould rattlethrap at home of
a Sunday mornin’, drivin’ over to Mass at Cranmore; and, by the same
token, I mind me poor mother had a sayin’ that a jauntin’-car was a
terrible secret-thrap. For, says she, the people sittin’ back to back
on the two sates might be talkin’ away about diff’rint things, widout
a notion that e’er a word ’ud get across the well from one side to the
other. But then maybe all of a suddint the horse ’ud come to a stand,
or throt over a soft place, where there wasn’t a sound of his feet or
the wheels, and wid that every word they were sayin’ ’ud rise up clear
on the air, before they could stop themselves spakin’ loud, like as
if they intinded it for the whole of Ireland. Begob, I knew that to
happen meself before now. But most whiles, when you’re peltin’ along
the hard road, you couldn’t tell what anybody might be sayin’ or doin’
on the far side, more especially if there was e’er a big box, or a
couple of sacks, or anythin’ sizeable, sittin’ stuck up between yous
on the well. There’s a story I’m hearin’ all the days of me life shows
the truth of that same, sir; and morebetoken you was passin’ the very
place it happint to-day, drivin’ over here from Moyloughlin, as you was
a-sayin’.”
“So we did, sir,” said the stranger, “and I seldom ran across a
lonelier-looking prospect than you have lying around most of the way.”
“Well, sir,” said Terence, “it was before me own recollection
altogether, but I wisht I had a pound-note for every time I heard
tell of it. ’Twas when the Carmodys of Moyloughlin, very respectable,
dacint people, that are all gone now, were after makin’ up a match
for the eldest daughter wid a strong farmer of the name of Lawrence
M‘Nelis, that owned a good bit of land, and was a warm man. But this
Rose Carmody couldn’t abide the thoughts of him at all. The work of the
world they had gettin’ her persuaded, and in the end nothin’ ’ud suit
her but she’d be married away over at Carrick, where her grandmother
lived. So to satisfy her they settled it that way, and the day before
the weddin’ she and her father set off drivin’ to Carrick on their car,
wid herself on the one side and a big box of new clothes beside her,
and her father on the other sate, and the well between them piled up
high wid a cartload of things belongin’ to Rose that they were bringin’
over. Well and good, sir, they come as far as a cross-roads you might
remimber, where the Carrick road turns off the bog, and there’s a
collection of quare big lumps of boulder-stones scattered just in the
corner. And thereabouts ould Carmody and the driver seen another car
standin’ a bit down the Kilanure road wid nobody mindin’ it; so they
passed the remark that that was no way to be lavin’ it; and that was
all they noticed then. But when they got to Carrick, sorra a bit of
Rose was on the car, and sight nor light they ever seen of the girl
agin. For what did she do, if you plase, but took and slipped herself
off unbeknownst there at the cross corner, where Christy Dann was
waitin’ for her, lurkin’ behind the big stones--a young rapscallion
widout a brass bawbee to his name that she took a fancy to--and away
wid the pair of them to the States before man or baste could purvint
it. Finely distracted her people were, that’s sartin. But what become
of her nobody knows from that good day to this--Any more than I know
what the mischief you’re riefin’ the sleeve out of me coat for, Kate.
Is it wantin’ anythin’ you are?”
“If you had aught better than a pair of ould owl’s eyes in the ass’s
head of you, ’tisn’t makin’ a fool of yourself you’d be tellin’ stories
agin the Carmodys and ould Widdy Farrell sittin’ fornint you listenin’
to the whole of it,” his sister remonstrated in an indignant whisper.
But his attention, and indeed everybody else’s, was diverted to the
American gentleman, who had jumped up and stood facing the semi-circle
of neighbours with an air of no small importance and excitement.
“I’ll tell you what’s become of her, sir--you and all your friends,”
he said. “She’s alive and well this day in her son’s house on Congress
Avenue, Corneliusville, the widow of a highly-respected citizen, and
the grandmother of myself, Christopher P. Dann. I was named for my
paternal grandfather. Yes, sir, he mayn’t have been very flush of cash
at the time when he carried off Rose Carmody from the folk who were
for buying, and selling, and breaking her heart among them all, but he
made his pile out West, and left a good business to his children and
his children’s children. Often she’s told me how she slithered off the
car and crawled on her hands and knees through the furze bushes, afraid
of her life that her father might look behind him before she got to the
shelter of the big stones. And she’s never regretted it, she claims,
not for half-an-hour. But now I’ll trouble you to present me to the
Widow Farrell that good lady mentioned, for it was to look her up that
I’ve driven over from Moyloughlin, where I called at the Carmody house
and could get no information relating to any member of the family,
except the Widow Farrell of Clochranbeg--my great-aunt Norah, I take
it, born Carmody.”
“Well I declare to goodness if that doesn’t bate anythin’ ever was! And
here’s Mrs Farrell herself--step along, woman alive,” Nannie Phelan
said, pushing forward the widow.
“Musha then, you done well, sir, to not be delayin’ any longer, if
that’s what you’re after,” said Matt Caffrey. “When a body comes to
be goin’ on for a couple of hunderd year ould it stands to raison
them that’s intendin’ to visit her has a right to set their best foot
foremost.”
“Indeed it’s a very ould, ould crathur I am, sir,” the widow said in
her tremulous high piping; “a hunderd and fifty year’s a quare great
age for a lone widdy woman to be lastin’ to, wid ne’er a one left in
this world. And it’s true for them that I’m apt to quit very prisently.
Sure I’m scarce able to stand on me two feet these times, let alone
walkin’. But what talk have you about me sister, Rose Carmody. Och,
but that was the notorious young villin to entice her away from us.
How-an-e’er, it’s oulder agin than meself she was, and in her clay she
is this many a long year, God save us all; ay is she, for sure.”
“You’re wrong there, ma’am,” said Mr Christopher Dann, beginning
to shake hands with her vigorously. “As I stated, she’s alive and
well; has never had a day’s sickness since I knew her, and that’s
over forty years. But as for the advanced age you claim, Aunt Norah,
you’re mistaken there again; you put it at too large a figure by a
very long chalk. Why, it’s some seventy odd years since my grandfather
and grandmother Dann crossed the fish-pond, and she says she left the
sister Norah, that she’s talking about all the time, only a little
slip of a girl of ten or eleven. So if you’re eighty-five, ma’am,
this day, it’s the very most you can total up to. Grandmother Dann
herself’s something just short of ninety, and a fine woman still.
If you’ll excuse the remark, I think she’s better preserved than
yourself--fresher and robuster looking. But there’s considerable of a
family likeness all the same. Rosette, come here and tell me whether
this old lady reminds you of anyone at home.”
The little girl, who seemed to be about seven years old, came and
stared hard for a moment with very large dark blue eyes, which were
overcast occasionally by a drift of soft black hair. “Why, certainly,”
she said with confidence, “if she had a red shawl, and not such wide
ruffles to her cap, she’d be a little like great-grandma Dann.”
“That’s so. What Miss Rosette Dann misses seeing correctly don’t amount
to a lot,” her father said with pride. “But, talking of the shawl,
don’t you feel like fetching it out of the strap on the brown handbag
over there by the door?”
As Rosette ran off Mrs Farrell said: “Woman dear, I give you me word
she’s the livin’ moral of me sisther; the very eyes of her, and the
toss of her head to keep the hair out of them. Me brothers would be
sayin’: ‘Way there, Captain,’ to her, and biddin’ her stand steady,
lettin’ on ’twas our ould plough-horse she was like. Well now, to think
of me behouldin’ such a thing, and gettin’ news of Rose, after all
the frettin’ I had and wonderin’ what was become of her, and if it’s
drownded she was crossin’ over the water, or starved dead maybe rovin’
about the world wid that young miscreant--beggin’ your pardon, sir, if
he was somethin’ to you, but it’s dog’s abuse we did always be givin’
Christy Dann. And so Rose is all this while livin’ grand in the States,
and no such outlandish ages on the two of us whatever. They had me
torminted here, sir, addin’ up this way and that way till they found
out I’m the ouldest ever was. Scarce the heart I’d have to be as much
as throwin’ their bit of food to me poor hins, when I’d be thinkin’ of
the show I was makin’ of meself livin’ that onnathural len’th of time.
But now--it’s as surprisin’ as can be.”
Yet she considered it a degree more surprising a moment afterwards
when Rosette returned with an ample shawl overflowing her short arms,
and was helped by her father to wrap her great-grand-aunt in the soft,
scarlet cashmere folds. They made of the little old woman an object
more brilliant than the red sods’ glimmer through the dusky room, as
her friends clustered round her, testing the fabric with finger and
thumb, exclaiming and conjecturing about price and material. Rosette,
however, planted herself in front of the widow, and looked fixedly
at her for a minute or two. “Was it you really that used to bring
great-grandma the cunning little musheroons?” she said at last. “I wish
you’d show me where they grow, I’d like to find some myself.”
“There, that’s me drame,” said Mrs Farrell, clapping her hand
impressively on Nannie Phelan’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you it was a sign
of somethin’? ’Deed, jewel, I’m afeard it’s a trifle late in the saison
for musheroons, but there might be an odd few yet in the high fields up
above me house. I’ll skyte up wid you to thry is there, and welcome.”
“Is your house near by?” said Rosette, “for I guess we might go round
there and have tea. We’ve brought it in a hamper, because father said
we didn’t know what circumstances the Carmody family might be in. And I
think _these_ circumstances are real poky and smoky. Father can carry
the hamper; it’s heavy.”
Miss Rosette Dann was a young person whose wishes were complied with as
a rule. She might presently have been seen crossing the curved sweep
of sand towards Mrs Farrell’s cottage, walking hand-in-hand with her
great-grand-aunt, at a brisk rate, enlivened by skips and hops, to
which the old woman adapted her paces quite nimbly and cheerfully.
Towards dusk that evening Mrs Doherty called on Mrs Hickey in a state
of serious perturbation. “I’m after gettin’ a quare turn,” she said,
“for I looked in just now at the Widdy Farrell’s door on me way up
here, thinkin’ she might be apt to be after takin’ a wakeness. And if
I did, there was the ould crathur dressed out in I dunno what sort of
deminted red rags, dancin’ her steps like a three-year-ould--a jig, if
you plase--in the middle of the floor, wid a couple of strange people,
as well as I could see, sittin’ inside and laughin’ at her; tinker
tramps belike. It’s daft entirely the poor ould body’s gone.”
“Sorra a bit daft is she,” said Mrs Hickey. “Didn’t you hear tell?
Sure there’s some people belongin’ to her just after landin’ over here
from the States, and they as rich as Jews; and accordin’ to what they
say the sisther of her that run away from her own weddin’ this great
while back’s livin’ out there yet as fit as a fiddler; and it’s all
a mistake about the widdy herself bein’ any wonderful ould age to
spake of. The American gentleman says ’twas her grandmother owned the
prayer-book wid her name in it, and he knows the Widdy wasn’t so much
as born for better than forty year after the war about the tay. She’s
raison to dance jigs bedad. They brought her the iligantist shawl you
ever witnessed.”
“It’s well to be her,” said Mrs Doherty. “But here am I braggin’ away
this day to everybody at the fair that we had the wonderfulest ould
ancient woman at all livin’ here in Clochranbeg. And now it seems she’s
no oulder than plinty of other people.”
“Ah well, she won’t be so one of these days,” said Mrs Hickey, “if she
lives long enough.”
And with that consideration Clochranbeg has so far had to remain
content.