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THE VALLEY OF THE
SQUINTING WINDOWS
BY
BRINSLEY MACNAMARA
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
1920
Copyright, 1919, by
BRENTANO'S
_All rights reserved_
To
ONE WHO WAITED
FOR THIS STORY
_And the Lord spake unto Moses saying_:
_Speak unto Aaron saying whosoever he be of thy seed in their
generations that hath any blemish let him not approach to offer the
bread of his God._
LEVITICUS xxi. 16-17.
PREFATORY NOTE
In the parlor, as they call it, or best room of every Irish farmhouse,
one may come upon a certain number of books that are never read, laid
there in lonely repose upon the big square table on the middle of the
floor. A novel entitled "Knocknagow" is almost always certain to be
amongst them, yet scarcely as the result of selection, although its
constant occurrence cannot be considered purely accidental. There must
lurk an explanation somewhere about these quiet Irish houses connecting
the very atmosphere with "Knocknagow". A stranger, thinking of some of
the great books of the world, would almost feel inclined to believe
that this story of the quiet homesteads of Ireland must be one of them,
a book full of inspiration and truth and beauty, a story sprung from
the bleeding realities which were before the present comfort of these
homes. Yet for all the expectations which might be raised up in one
by this most popular, this typical Irish novel, it is most certainly
the book with which the new Irish novelist would endeavor to contrast
his own. For he would be writing of life, as the modern novelist's art
is essentially a realistic one, and not of the queer, distant, half
pleasing, half saddening thing which could make one Irish farmer's
daughter say to another at any time within the past forty years:
"And you'd often see things happening nearly in real life like in
'Knocknagow.' Now wouldn't you?"
Nearer by a long way than Charles Joseph Kickham to what the Irish
novelist should have been was William Carleton in his great, gloomy,
melodramatic stories of the land. He was prevented by the agrarian
obsession of his time from having the clear vision and wide pity, in
keeping with his vehemence, which might have made him the Irish Balzac.
Even in Ireland Lever and Lover have become unpopular. They are read
only by Englishmen who still try to perpetuate their comic convention
when they write newspaper articles about Ireland.
As with Kickham, largely in his treatment of the Irish peasant, Gerald
Griffin in "The Collegians" did not succeed in giving his Irish middle
or "strong farmer" class characters the spiritual energy so necessary
to the literary subject.
Here are five writers then, who included in their work such exact
opposites as saints and sinners, heroes and _omadhanns_, earnest
passionate men and _broths of bhoys_. And somehow between them, between
those who wrote to degrade us and those who have idealized us, the real
Irishman did not come to be set down. From its fiction, reality was
absent, as from most other aspects of Irish life.
To a certain extent the realistic method has been employed by the
dramatists of the Irish Literary Movement, but necessarily limited by
the scope and conventions of the stage and by the narrower appeal of
the spoken word in the mouth of an actor. The stage, too, has a way of
developing cults and conventions and of its very nature must display
a certain amount of artificiality, even in the handling of realistic
material. Thus comes a sudden stagnation, a sudden completion always
of a literary movement developed mostly upon the dramatic side, as has
come upon the work of the Abbey Theater.
It appears rather accidental, but perhaps on the whole to its benefit,
that the dramatic form should have been adopted by J. M. Synge and not
the epical form of the novel. Synge fell with a lash of surprise upon
the Ireland of his time, for the Irish play had been as fully degraded
as the Irish novel. Furthermore the shock of his genius created an
opportunity which made possible the realistic Irish novelist. At the
Abbey Theater they performed plays dealing with subjects which no Irish
novelist, thinking of a public, would have dreamt of handling. Somehow
their plays have come to be known and accepted throughout Ireland. Thus
a reading public for this realistic Irish novel has been slowly created
and the urge to write like this has come to many storytellers.
Of necessity, as part of the reaction from the work of the feeble
masters we have known, the first examples of the new Irish novel
were bound to be a little savage and pitiless. In former pictures of
Irish life there was heavy labor always to give us the shade at the
expense of the light, in fact at the expense of the truth which is
life itself. In Ireland the protest of the realist is not so much
against Romanticism as against an attempt made to place before us a
pseudo-realism. According as the Irish people resign themselves to the
fact that this is not a thing which should not be done, the work of
the Irish realist will approximate more nearly to the quality of the
Russian novelists, in which there are neither exaggerations of Light
nor of Shade, but a picture of life all gray and quiet, and brightened
only by the beauty of tragic reality.
It leaves room for interesting speculation, that at a time of political
chaos, at a time when in Ireland there is a great coming and going of
politicians of all brands, dreamers, sages and mystics, the decline
of the Irish Literary Movement on its dramatic side should have given
the realistic Irish novelist his opportunity to appear. The urgent
necessity of reality in Irish life at the moment fills one with the
thought that a school of Irish realists might have brought finer things
to the heart of Ireland than the Hy Brazil of the politicians.
The function of the Irish novelist to evoke reality has been proved in
the case of "The Valley of the Squinting Windows." Upon its appearance
the people of that part of Ireland with whom I deal in my writings
became highly incensed. They burned my book after the best medieval
fashion and resorted to acts of healthy violence. The romantic period
seemed to have been cut out of their lives and they were full of
life again. The story of my story became widely exaggerated through
gradually increasing venom and my book, which had been well received
by the official Irish Press,--whose reviewers generally read the books
they write about--was supposed by some of my own people to contain the
most frightful things. To the peasant mind, fed so long upon unreal
tales of itself, the thing I had done became identified after the most
incongruous fashion and very curiously with an aspect of the very
literary association from which I had sprung. Language out of Synge's
"Playboy of the Western World" came to my ears from every side during
the days in which I was made to suffer for having written "The Valley
of the Squinting Windows."
"And saving your presence, sir, are you the man that killed your
father?"
"I am, God help me!"
"Well then, my thousand blessings to you!"
The country as a whole did not dislike my picture of Irish life or say
it was untrue. It was only the particular section of life which was
pictured that still asserted its right to the consolation of romantic
treatment, but in its very attempt to retain romance in theory it
became realistic in practise. It did exactly what it should have done
a great many years ago with the kind of books from which it drew a
certain poisonous comfort towards its own intellectual and political
enslavement. The rest of Ireland was amused by the performance of those
who did not think, with Mr. Yeats, that romantic Ireland was dead and
gone. The realist had begun to evoke reality and no longer did a great
screech sound through the land that this kind of thing should not be
done. A change had come, by miraculous coincidence, upon the soul
of Ireland. It was not afraid of realism now,--for it had faced the
tragic reality of the travail which comes before a healthy national
consciousness can be born. No longer would the realist be described
in his own country as merely a morbid scoundrel or an enemy of the
Irish people. They would not need again the solace of the sentimental
novelist for all the offenses of the caricaturists in Irish fiction,
because, with the wider and clearer vision of their own souls fully
realized, had they already begun to look out upon the world.
BRINSLEY MACNAMARA.
Dublin, March 1st, 1919.
THE VALLEY OF THE SQUINTING WINDOWS
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Brennan took her seat again at the sewing-machine by the window.
She sighed as she turned her tired eyes in search of some inducement
to solace down the white road through the valley of Tullahanogue. The
day was already bright above the fields and groups of children were
beginning to pass through the morning on their way to school. Mrs.
Brennan beheld their passage, yet now as always she seemed to miss the
small beauty of the little pageant.
"God help them, the poor little things!" she condoled to herself, "and
may He enlighten the unfortunate parents who send them to that quare,
ould, ignorant pair, Master Donnellan and Mrs. Wyse, the mistress.
Musha, sure they're no teachers!"
From this it might seem that Mrs. Brennan, the dressmaker of the valley
and one well entitled to be giving out an opinion, did not think very
highly of National Education. Yet it was not true that she failed
to regard the lofty fact of education with all a peasant's stupid
reverence, for was she not the mother of John Brennan, who was now
preparing for the priesthood at a grand college in England? A priest,
mind you! That was what you might call something for a woman to be!
The pride of her motherhood struck a high and resounding note in the
life of the valley. Furthermore, it gave her authority to assert
herself as a woman of remarkable standing amongst the people. She
devoted her prerogative to the advancement of the Catholic Church. She
manifested herself as one intensely interested in its welfare. There
was no cheap religious periodical, from _The Catholic Times_ to _The
Messenger_, that she did not regularly purchase. All these she read to
her husband, Ned Brennan, in the long quiet evenings after the manner
of one discharging a religious duty.
This was a curious side of her. She kept him in comfort and in ease,
and yet when his body had been contented she must needs apply herself
to the welfare of his soul. For, although he spent many a penny of
her money in the village of Garradrimna, was he not the father of
John Brennan, who was going to be a priest of God? She forgave him
everything on this account, even the coarse and blasphemous expressions
he continually let fly from his mouth the while she read for him the
most holy stories by Jesuit Fathers.
Just now she had given him two shillings with which to entertain
himself. He had threatened to strike her in the event of her
refusal.... That was why she had been sighing and why the tears were
now creeping into her great tired eyes as she began to set her machine
in motion for the tasks of the day. Dear, dear, wasn't he the cruel,
hard man?... Yet beyond all this thought of him was her bright dream of
the day when, with the few pounds she had saved so secretly from the
wide grasp of his thirst, she must fit him out in a rich suit of black
and go by his side proudly to attend the ordination of their son John.
It was because she so dearly loved her dream that she bore him with
immense patience.
Also it was because she had been thinking of that grand day and of the
descending splendor of her son that she now commented so strongly upon
the passage of the children to school. She had spoken bitterly to her
own heart, but in that heart of hers she was a bitter woman.
This was such a sunny, lovely morning. It was the day of the June Races
in the town of Mullaghowen, and most of the valley-dwellers had gone
there. The winding, dusty road through Tullahanogue was a long lane of
silence amid the sunlight. It appeared as an avenue to the Palace of
Dreams. So it was not at all strange that Mrs. Brennan was dreaming
forward into the future and filling her mind with fancies of the past.
She was remembering herself as Nan Byrne, the prettiest girl in the
valley. This was no illusion of idle vanity, for was there not an old
daguerreotype in an album on the table behind her at this very moment
to prove that beauty had been hers? And she had been ruined because
of that proud beauty. It was curious to think how her sister and she
had both gone the same way.... The period of a generation had passed
since the calamity had fallen upon them almost simultaneously. It was
the greatest scandal that had ever happened in these parts. The holy
priest, whose bones were now moldering beneath the sanctuary of the
chapel, had said hard words of her. From the altar of God he had spoken
his pity of her father, and said that she was a bad woman.
"May God strengthen him, for this is the bitter burden to bear. Philip
Byrne is a decent man for all his daughter Nan is a woman of shame. I
pray you avoid her every one who has the trace of God's purity in his
heart. Let you go not into that house which she has made an abode of
lust, nor allow the fair name of your own house to be blemished by the
contamination of her presence within its walls."
Yes, it was true that all this had been said of her by the holy father,
and in the very spot beneath which his bones were now at rest. They
were the hard words surely to have issued from the lips of God's
anointed. Even in the fugitive remembrance of them now they seemed to
have left red marks like whip-lash weals across her soul. The burning
hurt of them drove her deeper into remembrance. She had already come to
the full development of her charms when her ambition had also appeared.
It was, in short, to effect the "catch" of one of the strong farmers of
the valley. She entered into conspiracy with her sister and, together,
they laid their plans. Henry Shannon was the one upon whom she had set
her eye and Loughlin Mulvey the one her sister Bridget had begun to
desire. They were both men of family and substance, and hard drinkers
after the fashion of the fields. They often called at the house to
see the sisters. Philip Byrne, whose occupation as head-groom at the
stables of the Moores of Garradrimna often took him away from Ireland,
would always be absent during those visitations. But their mother would
be there, Mrs. Abigail Byrne, ambitious for her daughters, in great
style. It was never known to happen that either of the strong farmers
called to the house without a bottle of whiskey. Mrs. Byrne always
looked favorably upon them for their high decency, and the whiskey was
good whiskey.
Here in this very room where she now sat remembering it all there
had been such scenes! Her hair had been so thick and brown and there
had been a rare bloom upon her skin as she had sat here alone with
Henry Shannon, talking with him of queer things and kissing his dark,
handsome face. And all through those far, bygone times she used to be
thinking of his grand house and of his broad fields and the way she
would one day assert herself in the joy of such possessions over her
less fortunate sisters of the valley. Yet, ever mixed with her bright
pieces of imagination, there had been such torturing doubts.... Her
sister Bridget had always been so certain of her prey.
There had been times when Henry Shannon spent the night in the house.
In those nights had been laid the foundations of her shame.... Very,
very clearly did she remember the sickening, dreadful morning she had
come to her mother with the story that she was going to have a child.
How angry the elder woman had been, so lit within her all the wild
instincts of the female against the betrayer of her sex? Why had she
gone so far? Why had she not played her cards like her sister? There
was no fear of her yet although she had got a proper hold of Loughlin
Mulvey.... What was she to do at all? She who had had great ambitions
was to become lower than the lowest in the valley.
Yet the three of them had conferred together, for all the others were
so angry with her because of her disastrous condition into which she
had allowed herself to slip without having first made certain of Henry
Shannon. The only course left now was to "make a show" of him if he
could not see his way to marry her.
She could now remember every line of the angry, misspelled letter she
had sent to her whilom lover, and how it had brought him to the house
in a mood of drunken repentance. He presented her with material for a
new dress on the very same night, and, as she laughed and cried over
it in turn, she thought how very curious it was that he should wish to
see her figure richly adorned when already it had begun to put on those
signs of disfigurement which announce the coming of a child. But he was
very, very kind, and all suspicion fell away from her. Before he went
he whispered an invitation to spend a few days with him in Dublin....
What did it matter now, and it was so kind of him to ask her? It showed
what was in his mind, and therefore no talk of marriage passed between
them. It did not seem necessary.
Then had followed quickly those lovely days in Dublin, she stopping
with him as "Mrs. Henry Shannon" at a grand hotel. He had given her a
wedding-ring, but while it remained upon her finger it was ever the
little accusing symbol, filling her with an intense conviction of her
sin.
This great adventure had marked the beginning of her acquaintance with
the world beyond the valley, and, even now, through the gloom of her
mood, she could remember it with a certain amount of gladness coming
back to her mind. But it was queer that the brightest moment of her
life should also have been the moment of darkest disaster.... She
re-created the slight incidents of their quarrel. It was so strange
of him after all the grand kindness he had just been showing her....
She had returned to the valley alone and with her disgrace already
beginning to be heavy upon her.... She never saw Henry Shannon or spoke
with him again. When she wrote referring distantly to their approaching
marriage and making mention of the wedding-ring, the reply came back
from Mr. Robinson, the solicitor in Garradrimna, who was his cousin and
sporting companion. She knew how they had already begun to talk of her
in the valley for having gone off to Dublin with Henry Shannon, and
now, when an ugly word to describe her appeared there black and plain
in the solicitor's letter, she felt, in blind shame, that the visit
to Dublin had been planned to ruin her. The air of the valley seemed
full of whispers to tell her that she had done a monstrous thing. Maybe
they could give her jail for having done a thing like that, and she
knew well that Henry Shannon's people would stop at nothing to destroy
her, for they were a dark, spiteful crew. They were rich and powerful,
with lawyers in the family, and what chance would she have in law now
that every one was turned against her. So that night she went out when
it was very dark and threw away the wedding-ring. The small, sad act
appeared as the renunciation of her great ambition.
She remembered with a surpassing clearness the wide desolation of
the time that followed. Loughlin Mulvey had been compelled to marry
her sister Bridget because he had not been clever enough to effect a
loophole of escape like Henry Shannon. Already three months after the
marriage (bit by bit was she now living the past again) the child had
been born to Bridget, and now she herself was waiting for the birth of
her child.... Indeed Bridget need not have been so angry.
She had been delirious and upon the brink of death, and when, at last,
she had recovered sufficiently to realize the sharpness of her mother's
tongue once more the child had disappeared. She had escaped to England
with all that was left of her beauty. There she had met Ned Brennan,
and there had her son John Brennan been born. For a short while she had
known happiness. Ned was rough, but in his very strength there was a
sense of security and protection which made him bearable. And there was
little John. He was not a bit like her short, wild impression of the
other little child. Her disgrace had been the means of bringing Philip
Byrne to his grave; and, after six or seven years, her mother had died,
and she had returned to the valley of Tullahanogue. It was queer that,
with all her early knowledge of the people of the valley, she had never
thought it possible that some of them would one day impart to him the
terrible secret she had concealed so well while acting the ingenuous
maiden before his eyes.
Yet they were not settled a month at the cottage in the valley when Ned
came from Garradrimna one night a changed man. Larry Cully, a loafer
of the village, had attacked him with the whole story.... Was this the
kind of people among whom she had brought him to live, and was this
a fact about her? She confessed her share, but, illtreat her how he
would, she could not tell him what had been done with the child.
Henceforth he was so different, settling gradually into his present
condition. He could not go about making inquiries as to the past of his
wife, and the people of the valley, gloating over his condition, took
no pains to ease his mind. It was more interesting to see him torture
himself with suspicion. They hardly fancied she had told him all. It
was grand to see him drinking in his endeavors to forget the things he
must needs be thinking of.
Thus had Mrs. Brennan lived with her husband for eighteen years, and no
other child had been born to them. His original occupation of plumber's
laborer found no opportunity for its exercise in the valley, but he
sometimes lime-washed stables and mended roofs and gutters. For the
most part, however, she kept him through her labor at the machine.
Her story was not without its turn of pathos, for it was strange to
think of her reading the holy books to him in the long, quiet evenings
all the while he despised her for what she had been with a hatred that
all the magnanimous examples of religion could not remove.
She was thinking over it all now, and so keenly, for he had just
threatened to strike her again. Eighteen years had not removed from
his mind the full and bitter realization of her sin.... They were both
beginning to grow gray, and her living atonement for what she had been,
her son John who was going on for the Church, was in his twentieth
year. Would her husband forgive her when he saw John in the garb of a
priest? She wondered and wondered.
So deep was she in this thought that she did not notice the entrance
of old Marse Prendergast, who lived in a cabin just across the road.
Marse was a superannuated shuiler and a terror in the valley. The tears
had been summoned to her eyes by the still unchanging quality of Ned's
tone. They were at once detected by the old woman.
"Still crying, are ye, Nan Byrne, for Henry Shannon that's dead and
gone?"
This was a sore cut, but it was because of its severity that it had
been given. Marse Prendergast's method was to attack the person from
whom she desired an alms instead of making an approach in fear and
trembling.
"Well, what's the use in regretting now that he didn't marry ye after
all?... Maybe you could give me a bit of Ned's tobacco for me little
pipe, or a few coppers to buy some."
"I will in troth," she said, searching her apron pocket, only to
discover that Ned had taken all her spare coppers. She communicated her
regrets to the old woman, but her words fell upon ears that doubted.
"Ah-ha, the lie is on your lip yet, Nan Byrne, just as it was there
for your poor husband the day he married you, God save us all from
harm--you who were what you were before you went away to England.
And now the cheek you have to go refuse me the few coppers. Ye think
ye're a great one, don't you, with your son at college, and he going
on to be a priest. Well, let me tell you that a priest he'll never be,
your grand son, John. Ye have the quare nerve to imagine it indeed if
you ever think of what happened to your other little son.... Maybe
'tis what ye don't remember that, Nan Bryne.... The poor little thing
screeching in the night-time, and some one carrying a box out into the
garden in the moonlight, and them digging the hole.... Ah, 'tis well I
know all that, Nan Byrne, although you may think yourself very clever
and mysterious. And 'tis maybe I'll see you swing for it yet with
your refusals and the great annoyance you put me to for the means of
a smoke, and I a real ould woman and all. But listen here to me, Nan
Byrne! 'Tis maybe to your grand son, John Brennan, I'll be telling the
whole story some day!"