Larry Behan, stepping over from Loughmore to Clochranbeg, a few perches
short of the Silver Lane met with Joe Hedican, leading his sorrel mare,
and said to him: “What at all ails yous?”
“Is it what ails us?” said Joe.
“Sure what else?” said Larry. “And the mare in a lather and a thrimble,
and yourself comin’ along as unstuddy as a thing on wires. Lookin’ fit
to drop down of a hape together the two of yous are.”
“And why wouldn’t we have a right to be?” said Joe, “and ourselves just
after behouldin’ what we won’t either of us be the better for till the
day we’re waked.”
“Bedad then, that same’s the plisant talk for me to be hearin’, wid
the light darkenin’ before me every minyit,” said Larry, “And so it’s
wakin’ th’ ould mare you’ll be one of these days, says you? Well now,
I niver heard the like of that. But, to be sure, I’m not very long in
the County Donegal. I hope you’ll send me word of the buryin’, for I’d
be sorry to miss it. ’Tis the comical notion, if you come to considher
it.”
He laughed, upon considheration, with much noise, at anyrate, but as
the mare rolled her eyes wildly at him, and Joe only shook his head
the more ominously, he withdrew abruptly from their unsympathetic
countenances, though he persisted in his guffaw. When he had gone half
a dozen yards he faced round and shouted: “Might you happen to know
is the Garveys’ boat in yet?” Joe, however, was just mounting, and he
plunged off at full speed, without seeming to hear. “Fine floundherin’
and bouncin’ about he has, and be hanged to him, himself and his ould
baste,” Larry said with indignation. “If I thought the Garveys were
like to be stoppin’ out late I’d lave it till to-morra, and turn
back now, but I couldn’t tell I mightn’t lose the job altogether wid
delayin’.”
This was not the risk he chose to run, and he presently reached the
entrance of the high-banked, winding boreen, whence he threw a look
backwards in hopes that some fellow-travellers might be catching him
up. Nothing, however, moved on the lonely moorland road behind him
except the gallop of Joe Hedican’s horse hurling itself in the wrong
direction. So he went forward without the prospect of any company.
The Silver Lane twists through an undulating sea of softly heaped-up
mounds, scantily clad with bent-grass, pale and dry, and dark,
harsh-textured furzes. These are rooted in almost pure sand, silvery
hued, yet under strong sunbeams yielding dim golden glimmers that give
a faint purple to the shadow in its curves and folds. But the touch
of this March evening’s twilight left it all cold white and grey. It
lies deep and powdery on the narrow roadway, so that a man has not even
the sound of his own footsteps to reassure him, should he be disposed
to feel lonesome and apprehensive. Larry Behan was feeling both as he
passed the second sharp turn of the lane and came to a place where a
crevice-like path pierced the sandhill on his left. Here he noticed
several huge hoof-prints, some of them impressed with violence upon the
low buttresses and ledges of the banks, which, in the ordinary course
of things, no horse would have trodden.
“Hereabouts it is they seen whatever it was frighted them,” he said to
himself, “and set the mare prancin’ and dancin’. ’Twas the quare capers
she had. Between us and harm--look where she flounced right across the
road, and scraped herself up agin the furze bush: her hair’s thick on
it.”
He was hastening on, longing and dreading to be round the next corner,
when he heard close by a sound--such a homely, commonplace one that he
experienced hardly a moment of panic before out of the little by-path
ran a very small boy, swinging a large tin can. As a general rule Larry
would have seen nothing particularly attractive about the black-headed,
bare-footed, flannel-petticoated gossoon, and would probably have
allowed him to pass on unaccosted. But in the present circumstances he
could have desired no better company, for an innocent child is the
most efficacious safeguard possible when uncanny things are about.
Another encouraging reflection also occurred to him immediately: “’Twas
that now, and divil a thing else scared the two of them--the little
brat skytin’ by, clatterin’ his can, and the light shinin’ off it
on a suddint.” Still, this view of the matter, though plausible and
rational, was not quite certain enough to justify him in letting slip
the chance of an escort, and he therefore set about engaging the child
in conversation. He did so rather clumsily, for lack of the familiarity
with children’s society which would have enabled him to fill up the gap
between thirty odd and five years old with appropriate small-talk.
“Is it goin’ for water you was, sonny?” he said.
“She sent me to the well again,” said the gossoon, stopping his trot
and pointing up the little path to a tangle of briars and long grass in
a slight hollow.
“And is it gone dry on you?” said Larry, looking into the empty can.
The reply was a turning of it upside down to show a crack that ran for
several inches round the bottom rim. “I can put the top of me littlest
finger right through it,” the gossoon said and proved. “It won’t hould
e’er a sup at all. And the big jug’s broke too.”
“That’s a bad job,” said Larry.
“There’s nothin’ she can be sendin’ now unless the black kettle itself,
that’s as much as I can do to lift when it’s empty inside, let alone
full--it’s the size of meself, bedad,” averred Larry’s protector.
“Sure then, she couldn’t ax you to be carryin’ that. Is it far you
come?” Larry inquired with some anxiety.
“I dunno,” said the gossoon. “But it’s a terrible ould baste of a big
kettle for always wantin’ to be filled. I hate the sight of it sittin’
there on the fire, wid the dirty ould sutty lid tryin’ to lep off it;
and then Herself does be bawlin’ to me to run out agin and bring the
water before it’s boiled dry. I do be sick and tired of goin’ up the
lane wid the heavy can pullin’ out the arm of me all the way back; fit
to destroy me, Katty Lonergan says it is. And a while ago I was givin’
it a couple of clumps agin’ a stone, where I seen a weeny crack comin’;
so maybe that’s what beginned it. But you needn’t let on, or I’ll be
kilt. Sorra a sup it ’ill hould.”
He dropped some small handfuls of the fine sand into the can, and
holding it up watched the grains sift slowly out. This experiment he
repeated more than once, and Larry, albeit in a hurry, looked on with
prudent patience. But at last he suggested: “Mightn’t she be mad if
you’re too long delayin’?”
“She does be mad most whiles,” his companion said philosophically, “and
I don’t so much mind if she won’t be sendin’ me back wid the ugly ould
kettle.”
However, he began to walk on, rattling a couple of cockle-shells
that had remained in the can. Larry kept close beside him, and meekly
waited when he occasionally stopped to pick up pebbles, or explore
rabbit-holes, or start sand-avalanches and cascades by tugging at the
colourless roots of the grasses in the slithery banks. It was a slow
progress, and the dusk had grown perceptibly greyer by the time that
Larry emerged from between them, at a place where the road branches,
on the right towards Clochranbeg, on the left towards the great Bog of
Greilish.
“And what way are you goin’, avic?” Larry inquired with less anxiety
now, having left behind the Silver Lane, which he knew to be the most
perilous stage of his journey.
The child pointed to a small cabin standing opposite, a stone’s throw
back from the road; a reply that somewhat surprised Larry. For even
through the gathering dimness the place looked quite ruinous and
deserted, with rifted roof, and rank weeds peering in at frameless
windows.
“She’s screechin’ to me,” said the gossoon, and darted off, making for
the door. Larry heard nothing but the cockle-shells clattering in the
can. “There’s no sort of people,” he said to himself, “would be livin’
in the likes of that, unless it was tinkers stoppin’ awhile. But I see
ne’er a sign of an ass or a cart in it. Well now, he was the quare
little imp--himself and the big kettle.”
A bit further on he overtook the Widow Nolan, who was going his way,
and as they walked along together he casually asked of her how the
Silver Lane had come by its bad name. “For,” he said, “since I’m in
this parish I met wid many that do be afeared of it, but what’s wrong
wid it I niver happint to hear tell.”
“Sure it was before my time,” said Mrs Nolan. “There used to be a
woman livin’ in th’ ould empty house you seen at this end of it, and a
little boy belongin’ to her, that she gave bad treatment to. Huntin’
him off she was continual to fetch her in big cans full of water out of
the well up near the far end of the lane, that you might be noticin’
goin’ by. So one day she sent him wid a great heavy lump of a kettle he
couldn’t rightly lift, and tryin’ to fill it the crathur over-balanced
himself and fell in after his head, and was got dead-drowned. And ever
since then it does be walkin’ there now and agin; and folks say there’s
no worser bad luck goin’ than for a body to see a sight of it, or to so
much as hear the clink of the can--well, man alive, what’s took you at
all?”
“The Lord have mercy on me this day,” said Larry, “and meself just
after walkin’ alongside of it, and talkin’ to it, the len’th of the
boreen.”
And thenceforward neither of them had any breath to spare for
conversation until they at last reached distant--still cruelly
distant--Clochranbeg.