In rural Ireland the "bona-fide," or rather _mala-fide_, traveler
constitutes a certain blasphemous aspect in the celebration of
the Sabbath. There are different types of "bona-fide," whose
characteristics may be said to vary in direct proportion to their love
and enthusiasm for porter. The worship of porter, when it has attained
the proportions of a perfect passion, is best described as "the pursuit
of porter in a can." It is the cause of many drunken skirmishes with
the law, and it is interesting to observe such mistaken heroes in the
execution of their plans.
At a given signal a sudden descent is made upon a pub. A series of
whistles from sentries in various parts of the village has announced
the arrival of the propitious moment. A big tin'can is the only visible
evidence of their dark intention. One almost forgets its betraying
presence in the whirling moment of the brave deed. Then the deed is
done. By some extraordinary process the can that was empty is found to
be filled. It is the miracle of the porter.... When the sergeant and
his colleagues come on the scene some hours later, an empty can with
slight traces of froth upon the sides, "like beaded bubbles winking at
the brim," constitutes the remaining flimsy evidence of the great thing
that has happened.
The mind of John Brennan was more or less foreign to this aspect of
life amongst the fields. He would be the very last to realize that
such were essential happenings in the life of his native village of
Garradrimna. On his first Sunday at home he went walking, after second
Mass, through the green woods which were the western boundary of the
village. His thoughts were dwelling upon Father O'Keeffe's material
interpretation of the Gospel story. At last they eddied into rest as he
moved there along the bright path between the tall trees, so quiet as
with adoration.
When he came by that portion of the demesne wall, which lay at the back
of Brannagan's public-house, he heard a scurrying of rabbits among the
undergrowth. In the sudden hush which followed he heard a familiar
voice raised in a tense whisper.
"Hurry, quick! quick! There's some one in black coming up the path. It
must be Sergeant McGoldrick. The can! the can!"
His cheeks were suddenly flushed by a feeling of shame, for it was
his father who had spoken. He stood behind a wide beech tree in mere
confusion and not that he desired to see what was going forward.
His father, Ned Brennan, bent down like an acrobat across the demesne
wall and took the can from some one beneath. Then he ran down through
the undergrowth, the brown froth of the porter dashing out upon his
trousers, his quick eyes darting hither and thither like those of a
frightened animal. But he did not catch sight of John, who saw him
raise the can to his lips.
It was a new experience for John Brennan to see his father thus
spending the Sabbath in this dark place in the woods, while out in the
young summer day spilled and surged all the wonder of the world.... A
sort of pity claimed possession of him as he took a different way among
the cathedral trees.... His father was the queer man, queer surely,
and moving lonely in his life. He was not the intimate of his son nor
of the woman who was his son's mother. He had never seemed greatly
concerned to do things towards the respect and honor of that woman. And
yet John Brennan could not forget that he was his father.
Just now another incident came to divert his mood. He encountered an
ancient dryad flitting through the woods. This was Padna Padna, a
famous character in Garradrimna. For all his name was that of the great
apostle of his country, his affinities were pagan. Although he was
eighty, he got drunk every day and never went to Mass. In his early
days he had been the proprietor of a little place and the owner of a
hackney car. When the posting business fell into decline, he had had
to sell the little place and the horse and car, and the purchase money
had been left for his support with a distant relative in the village.
He was a striking figure as he moved abroad in the disguise of a cleric
not altogether devoted to the service of God. He always dressed in
solemn black, and his coat was longer than that of a civilian. His
great hat gave him a downcast look, as of one who has peered into the
Mysteries. His face was wasted and small, and this, with his partially
blinded eyes behind the sixpenny spectacles, gave him a certain
asceticism of look. Yet it was the way he carried himself rather than
his general aspect which created this impression of him. He was very
small, and shrinking daily. His eyes were always dwelling upon his
little boots in meditation. Were you unaware of his real, character,
you might foolishly imagine that he was thinking of high, immortal
things, but he was in reality thinking of drink.
This was his daily program. He got up early and, on most mornings,
crossed the street to Bartle Donohoe, the village barber, for a shave.
Bartle would be waiting for him, his dark eye hanging critically as
he tested the razor edge against the skin of his thumb. The little
blade would be glinting in the sunlight.... Sometimes Bartle would
become possessed of the thought that the morning might come when,
after an unusually hard carouse on the previous night, he would not be
responsible for all his razor might do, that it might suddenly leap out
of his shivering hand and make a shocking end of Padna Padna and all
his tyranny.... But his reputation as the drunkard with the steadiest
hand in Garradrimna had to be maintained. If he did not shave Padna
Padna the fact would be published in every house.
"Bartle Donohoe was too shaky to shave me this morning; too shaky, I
say. Ah, he's going wrong, going wrong! And will ye tell me this now?
How is it that if ye buy a clock, a little ordinary clock for a couple
of shillings, and give it an odd wind, it'll go right; but a man, a
great, clever man'll go wrong no matter what way ye strive for to
manage him?"
If Bartle shaved him, Padna Padna would take his barber over to Tommy
Williams's to give him a drink, which was the only payment he ever
expected. After this, his first one, Padna Padna would say, "Not
going to drink any more to-day," to which Bartle Donohoe would reply
sententiously: "D'ye tell me so? Well, well! Is that a fact?"
Then, directly, he would proceed to take a little walk before his
breakfast, calling at every house of entertainment and referring
distantly to the fact that Bartle Donohoe had a shake in his hand this
morning. "A shame for him, and he an only son and all!"
And thus did he spend the days of his latter end, pacing the sidewalks
of Garradrimna, entering blindly into pubs and discussing the habits of
every one save himself.
He was great in the field of reminiscence.
"Be the Holy Farmer!" he would say, "but there's no drinking nowadays
tost what used to be longo. There's no decent fellows, and that's a
fact. Ah, they were the decent fellows longo. You couldn't go driving
them a place but they'd all come home mad. And sure I often didn't
know where I'd be driving them, I'd be that bloody drunk. Aye, decent
fellows! Sure they're all dead now through the power and the passion of
drink."
So this was the one whom John Brennan now encountered amid the green
beauty of the woodland places. To him Padna Padna was one of the
immortals. Succeeding holiday after succeeding holiday had he met the
ancient man, fading surely but never wholly declining or disappearing.
The impulse which had prompted him to speak to Marse Prendergast a few
days previously now made him say: "How are you, old man?" to Padna
Padna.
The venerable drunkard, by way of immediate reply, tapped upon his
lips with his fingers and then blew upon his fingers and whistled
in cogitation. It was with his ears that he saw, and he possessed an
amazing faculty for distinguishing between the different voices of
different people.
"John Brennan!" he at length exclaimed, in his high, thin voice. "Is
that John Brennan?"
"It is, the very one."
"And how are ye, John?"
"Very well, indeed, Padna. How are you?"
"Poorly only. Ah, John, this is the hard day on me always, the Sunday.
I declare to me God I detest Sunday. Here am I marching through the
woods since seven and I having no drink whatever. That cursed Sergeant
McGoldrick! May he have a tongue upon him some day the color of an ould
brick and he in the seventh cavern of Hell! Did ye see Ned?"
The sudden and tense question was not immediately intelligible to John
Brennan. There were so many of the name about Garradrimna. Padna Padna
pranced impatiently as he waited for an answer.
"Ah, is it letting on you are that you don't know who I mean, and you
with your grand ecclesiastical learning and all to that. 'Tis your own
father, Ned Brennan, that I mean. I was in a 'join' with him to get a
can out of Brannigan's. Mebbe you didn't see him anywhere down through
the wood, for I have an idea that he's going to swindle me. Did ye see
him, I'm asking you?"
Even still John did not reply, for something seemed to have caught him
by the throat and was robbing him of the power of speech. The valley,
with its vast malevolence of which his mother had so recently warned
him, was now driving him to say something which was not true.
"No, Padna, I did not see him!" he at last managed to jerk out.
"Mebbe he didn't manage to get me drink for me yet, and mebbe he did
get it and is after drinking it somewhere in the shadows of the trees
where he couldn't be seen. But what am I saying at all? Sure if he was
drinking it there before me, where you're standing, I couldn't see him,
me eyes is that bad. Isn't it the poor and the hard case to be blinded
to such an extent?"
John Brennan felt no pity, so horrible was the expression that now
struggled into those dimming eyes. He thought of a puzzling fact of his
parentage. Why was it that his mother had never been able to save his
father from the ways of degradation into which he had fallen, the low
companions, the destruction of the valley; from all of which to even
the smallest extent she was now so anxious to save her son?
Padna Padna was still blowing upon his fingers and regretting:
"Now isn't it the poor and the hard case that there's no decent fellows
left in the world at all. To think that I can meet never a one now, me
that spent so much of me life driving decent fellows, driving, driving.
John, do ye know what it is now? You're after putting me in mind of
Henry Shannon. He was the decentest fellow! Many's the time I drove him
down to your grandmother's place when he wouldn't have a foot under him
to leave Garradrimna. That was when your mother was a young girl, John.
Hee, hee, hee!"
John could not divine the reasons for the old man's glee, nor did he
perceive that the mind of Padna Padna, even in the darkening stages of
its end, was being lit by a horrible sneer at him and the very fact of
his existence. Instead he grew to feel rather a stir of compassion for
this old man, with his shattered conception of happiness such as it
was, burning his mind with memories while he rode down so queerly to
the grave.
As he moved away through the long, peaceful aisles of the trees, his
soul was filled with gray questioning because of what he had just seen
of his father and because of the distant connection of his mother with
the incident. Why was it at all that his mother had never been able to
save his father?
As he emerged from the last circle of the woods there seemed to be a
shadow falling low over the fields. He went with no eagerness towards
the house of his mother. This was Sunday, and it was her custom to
spend a large portion of the Sabbath in speaking of her neighbors. But
she would never say anything about his father, even though Ned Brennan
would not be in the house.