Just now there happened something of such unusual importance in the
valley that Mrs. Brennan became excited about it. The assistant teacher
of Tullahanogue Girls' School, Miss Mary Jane O'Donovan, had left, and
a new assistant was coming in her stead. Miss O'Donovan had always
given the making of her things to Mrs. Brennan, so she spoke of her,
now that she was gone, as having been "a _very_ nice girl." Just yet,
of course, she was not in a position to say as much about the girl who
was coming. But the entry of a new person into the life of the valley
was a great event! Such new things could be said!
On Monday morning Mrs. Brennan called her son into the sewing-room to
describe the imminent nature of the event. The sense of depression that
had come upon him during the previous day did not become averted as he
listened.
What an extraordinary mixture this woman who was his mother now
appeared before his eyes! And yet he could not question her in any
action or in any speech; she was his mother, and so everything
that fell from her must be taken in a mood of noble and respectful
acceptance. But she was without charity, and as he saw her in this
guise he was compelled to think of his father and the incident of
yesterday, and he could not help wondering. He suddenly realized that
what was happening presently in this room was happening in every house
down the valley. Even before her coming she was being condemned. It was
beneath the shadow of this already created cloud she would have to live
and move and earn her little living in the schoolhouse of Tullahanogue.
John Brennan began to have some pity for the girl.
Ned Brennan now appeared at the door leading to the kitchen and
beckoned to his wife. She went at his calling, and John noticed that at
her return some part of her had fallen away. His father went from the
house whistling at a pitch that was touched with delight.
"Where is my father bound for?"
"He's gone to Garradrimna, John, to order lead for the roof of the
school. The valley behind the chimney is leaking again and he has to
cobble it. 'Tis the great bother he gets with that roof, whatever sort
it is. Isn't it a wonder now that Father O'Keeffe wouldn't put a new
one on it, and all the money he gets so handy ...?"
"My father seems to be always at that roof. He used to be at it when I
was going to school there."
The words of her son came to Mrs. Brennan's ears with a sound of sad
complaint. It caused her to glimpse momentarily all the villainy of Ned
Brennan towards her through all the years, and of how she had borne
it for the sake of John. And here was John before her now becoming
reverently magnified in that part of her mind which was a melting
tenderness. It was him she must now save from the valley which had
ruined her man. Thus was she fearful again and the heart within her
caused to become troubled and to rush to and fro in her breast like
rushing water. Then, as if her whole will was sped by some fearful
ecstasy, she went on to talk in her accustomed way of every one around
her, including the stranger who had not yet come to the valley.
It was on the evening of this day that Rebecca Kerr, the new assistant
teacher, came through the village of Garradrimna to the valley of
Tullahanogue. Paddy McCann drove McDermott's hackney car down past
the old castle of the De Lacys. It carried her as passenger from
Mullaghowen, with her battered trunk strapped over the well. The group
of spitting idlers crowding around Brannagan's loudly asserted so much
as Paddy McCann and his cargo loomed out of the shadows beneath the
old castle and swung into the amazing realities of the village. It was
just past ten o'clock and the mean place now lay amid the enclosing
twilight. The conjunctive thirsts for drink and gossip which come at
this hour had attacked the ejected topers, and their tongues began to
water about the morsel now placed before them.
A new schoolmistress, well, well! Didn't they change them shocking
often in Tullahanogue? And quare-looking things they were too, every
one of them. And here was another one, not much to look at either. They
said this as she came past. And what was her name? "Kerr is her name!"
said some one who had heard it from the very lips of Father O'Keeffe
himself.
"Rebecca Kerr is her name," affirmed Farrell McGuinness, who had just
left a letter for her at the Presbytery.
"Rebecca what? Kerr--Kerr--Kerr, is it?" sputtered Padna Padna; "what
for wouldn't it be _Carr_ now, just common and simple? But of course
_Kerr_ has a ring of the quality about it. _Kerr_, be God!"
These were the oracles of Garradrimna who were now speaking of her
thus. But she had no thought of them at all as she glanced hurriedly
at the shops and puzzled her brains to guess where the best draper's
shop might be. She had a vague, wondering notion as to where she might
get all those little things so necessary for a girl. She had a fleeting
glimpse of herself standing outside one of those worn counters she was
very certain existed somewhere in the village, talking ever so much
talk with the faded girl who dispensed the vanities of other days, or
else exchanging mild confidences with the vulgar and ample mistress of
the shop, who was sure to be always floating about the place immensely.
Yes, just there was the very shop with its brave selection from the
fashions of yester-year in the fly-blown windows.
And there was the Post Office through which her letters to link her
with the outer world would come and go. She quickly figured the old
bespectacled postmistress, already blinded partially, and bent from
constant, anxious scrutiny, poring exultantly over the first letters
that might be sent to "Miss Rebecca Kerr," and examining the postmark.
Then the quality and gender of the writing, and being finally troubled
exceedingly as to the person it could have come from--sister, mother,
brother, father, friend, or "boy." Even although the tall candles of
Romance had long since guttered and gone out amid the ashes of her
mind the assaulting suspicion that it was from "a boy" would drive
her to turn the letter in her hand and take a look at the flap. Then
the temptation that was a part of her life would prove too strong
for her and a look of longing would come into the dull eyes as she
went hobbling into the kitchen to place it over the boiling kettle and
so embark it upon its steamy voyage to discovery. In a few minutes
she would be reading it, her hands trembling as she chuckled in
her obscene glee at all the noble sentiments it might contain. The
subsequent return of the letter to the envelope after the addition of
some gum from a penny bottle if the old sticking did not suffice. Her
interludiary sigh of satisfaction when she remembered that one could
re-stick so many opened envelopes with a penny bottle of gum by using
it economically. The inevitable result of this examination, a superior
look of wisdom upon the withered face when the new schoolmistress,
Rebecca Kerr, came for the first time into the office to ask for a
letter from her love.... But so far in her life she had formed no deep
attachment.
It was thus and thus that Rebecca Kerr ran through her mind a few
immediate sketchy realizations of this village in Ireland. She had
lived in others, and this one could not be so very different....
There now was the butcher's stall, kept filthily, where she might
buy her bit of beef or mutton occasionally. She caught a glimpse of
the victualler standing with his dirty wife amid the strong-smelling
meat. The name above the door was that of the publichouse immediately
beside it. A little further on, upon the same side, was the newsagent's
and stationer's, where they sold sweets and everything. It was here
she might buy her notepaper to write to her own people in Donegal,
or else to some of her college friends with whom she still kept up
a correspondence. And here also she might treat herself, on rare
occasions, to a box of cheap chocolates, or to some of the injurious,
colored sweets which always gave her the toothache, presenting the most
of them, perhaps, to some child to whom she had taken a fancy.
By little bits like these, which formed a series of flashes, she saw
some aspects of the life she might lead here. Each separate flash left
something of an impression before it went out of her mind.
The jingling car swung on past the various groups upon the street,
each group twisting its head as one man to observe the spectacle of
her passing. "That's the new schoolmistress!" "There she is, begad!"
"I heard Paddy McCann saying she was coming this evening!" She was
now in line with the famous house of Tommy Williams, the gombeen-man.
She knew from the look of it that it was here she must buy her few
groceries, for this was the principal house in Garradrimna and, even so
far as she, the octopus of Gombeenism was sure to extend itself. To be
sure, the gombeen-man would be the father of a family, for it is the
clear duty of such pillars of the community to rear up a long string
of patriots. If those children happened to be of school-going age, it
was certain they would not be sent to even the most convenient school
unless the teachers dealt in the shop. This is how gombeenism is made
to exercise control over National Education. Anyhow Rebecca Kerr was
very certain that she must enter the various-smelling shop to discuss
the children with the gombeen-man's wife.
It was indeed a dreary kind of life that she would be compelled to lead
in this place, and, as she passed the pretty chapel, which seemed to
stand up in the sight of Heaven as excuse for the affront that was
Garradrimna, she had a strange notion how she must go there sometimes
to find respite from the relentless crush of it all. On bitter
evenings, when her mind should ring with the mean tumults of the life
around her, it was there only she might go and, slipping in through the
dim vestibule where there were many mortuary cards to remind her of
all the dead, she would walk quickly to the last pew and, bending her
throbbing head, pour out her soul in prayer with the aid of her little
mother-of-pearl rosary.... They had gone a short distance past the
chapel and along the white road towards the valley.
"This is the place," said Paddy McCann.
She got down from the car wearily, and McCann carried her battered
trunk into the house of Sergeant McGoldrick which had been assigned as
her lodging by Father O'Keeffe. He emerged with a leer of expectation
upon his countenance, and she gave him a shilling from her little
possessions. At the door she was compelled to introduce herself.
"So you are the new teacher. Well, begad! The missus is up in the
village. Come in. Begad!"
He stood there, a big, ungainly man, at his own door as he gave the
invitation, a squalling baby in his arms, and in went Rebecca Kerr,
into the sitting-room where Mrs. McGoldrick made clothes for the
children. The sergeant proceeded to do his best to be entertaining. She
knew the tribe. He remained smoking his great black pipe and punctuated
the squalls of the baby by spitting huge volumes of saliva which hit
the fender with dull thuds.
"It's a grand evening in the country," said Sergeant McGoldrick.
"Yes, a nice evening surely," said Rebecca Kerr.
"Oh, it was a grand, lovely day in the country, the day. I was out in
the country all through the day. I was collecting the census of the
crops, so I was; a difficult and a critical job, I can tell you!"
With an air of pride he took down the books of lists and showed her
the columns of names and particulars.... It was stupidly simple. Yet
here was this hulk of a man expanding his chest because of his childish
achievement. He had even stopped smoking and spitting to give space
to his own amazement, and the baby had ceased mewling to marvel in
infantile wonder at the spacious cleverness of her da.
After nearly half an hour of this performance Mrs. McGoldrick bustled
into the room. She was a coarse-looking woman, whose manner had
evidently been made even more harsh by the severe segregation to
which the wives of policemen are subjected. Her voice was loud and
unmusical, and it appeared to Rebecca from the very first that not even
the appalling cleverness of her husband was a barrier to her strong
government of her own house. The sergeant disappeared immediately,
taking the baby with him, and left the women to their own company. Mrs.
McGoldrick had seen the battered, many-corded trunk in the hall-way,
and she now made a remark which was, perhaps, natural enough for a
woman:
"You haven't much luggage anyway!" was what she said.
"No!" replied Rebecca dully.
Then she allowed her head to droop for what seemed a long while, during
all of which she was acutely conscious that the woman by her side was
staring at her, forming impressions of her, summing her up.
"I don't think you're as tall as Miss O'Donovan was, and you haven't as
nice hair!"
Rebecca made no comment of any kind upon this candor, but now that the
way had been opened Mrs. McGoldrick poured out a flood of information
regarding the late assistant of the valley school. She was reduced to
little pieces and, as it were, cremated in the furnace of this woman's
mind until tiny specks of the ashes of her floated about and danced and
scintillated before the tired eyes of Rebecca Kerr.
As the heavier dusk of the short, warm night began to creep into
the little room her soul sank slowly lower. She was hungry now and
lonely. In the mildest way she distantly suggested a cup of tea, but
Mrs. McGoldrick at once resented this uncalled-for disturbance of her
harangue by bringing out what was probably meant to be taken as the one
admirable point in the other girl's character.
"Miss O'Donovan used always get her own tea."
But the desolating silence of Rebecca at length drove her towards the
kitchen, and she returned, after what seemed an endless period, with
some greasy-looking bread, a cup without a handle, and a teapot from
which the tea dribbled in agony on to the tablecloth through a wound in
its side.
The sickening taste of the stuff that came out of the teapot only added
to Rebecca's sinking feeling. Her thoughts crept ever downward.... At
last there came a blessed desire for sleep-sleep and forgetfulness of
this day and the morrow. Her head was already beginning to spin as she
inquired for her room.
"Your room?" exclaimed Mrs. McGoldrick in harsh surprise. "Why, 'tis
upstairs. There's only two rooms there, myself and the sergeant's and
the lodger's room--that's yours. I hadn't time this week back to make
the bed since Miss O'Donovan left, but of course you'll do that for
yourself. The sergeant is gone up to the barracks, so I'll have to help
you carry up your box, as I suppose you'll be wanting to get out some
of your things."
It was a cruelly hard job getting the trunk up the steep staircase, but
between them they managed it. Rebecca was not disappointed by the bare,
ugly room. Mrs. McGoldrick closed the door behind them and stood in an
attitude of expectation. Even in the present dull state of her mind
Rebecca saw that her landlady was, with tense curiosity, awaiting the
opening of the box which held her poor belongings.... Then something of
the combative, selfish attitude of the woman to her kind stirred within
her, and she bravely resolved to fight, for a short space, this prying
woman who was trying to torment her soul.
She looked at the untidied bed with the well-used sheets.... What
matter? It was only the place whereon the body of another poor tortured
creature like herself had lain. She would bear with this outrage
against her natural delicacy.
In perfect silence she took off her skirt and blouse and corset. She
let fall her long, heavy hair and, before the broken looking-glass,
began to dally wearily with its luxuriance. This hair was very fair
and priceless, and it was hers who had not great possessions. Her
shining neck and blossomy breasts showed as a pattern in ivory against
the background that it made.... Some man, she thought, would like to
see her now and love her maybe. Beyond this vision of herself she could
see the ugly, anxious face of the woman behind her. She could feel
the discord of that woman's thoughts with the wandering strands of
withering hair.
No word had passed between them since they came together into the room,
and Mrs. McGoldrick, retreating from the situation which had been
created, left with abruptness, closing the door loudly behind her.
With as much haste as she could summon, Rebecca took off her shoes and
got her night-gown out of the trunk. Then she threw herself into the
bed. She put out the light and fumbled in her faded vanity bag for her
little mother-of-pearl rosary. There was a strange excitement upon her,
even in the final moments of her escape, and soon a portion of her
pillow was wet with tears. Between loud sobs arose the sound of her
prayers ascending:
"Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou
amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.... Hail,
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou.... Hail,
Mary, full of grace...."