Misther O'Brien; but it isn't my fault. I wanted tu go a while ago, an'
your wife wouldn't let me."
"An' very right she was; you're not fit for it. Sure, don't be talkin'
ov goin' till ye're better, ma'am," said Jim, awkwardly. "Y're heartily
welcome for me. I come up to say--to say, I hope y'll be in no hurry to
move."
"Yu're very good, but it's not to be expected I'd find myself easy under
this roof, where, I can assure yu, I'd never have come of my own free
will; an' I apologise to yu, Misther O'Brien, for givin' so much
trouble--not that I could help myself."
"Sure, 'tis I that should apologise," blurted out Jim; "an' rale sorry I
am--though, maybe, ye won't b'lieve me--that I ever dhruv the customers
out."
For a long time Mrs. Macfarlane did not speak.
"I could forgive that easier than your rootin' up my lilies," she said,
in a strained voice.
"But that I never did. God knows an' sees me this night, an' He knows
that I never laid a finger on thim. I kem out, an' foun' the dog there
scrattin' at thim, an' if this was me last dyin' worrd, 'tis thrue."
"An' 'twas really the wee dog?"
"It was, though I done wrong in laughin' at him, an' cheerin' him on;
but, sure, ye wouldn't mind me whin I told ye he was at me roses, an' I
thought it sarved ye right, an' that ye called him 'King William' to
spite me."
"So I did," said Mrs. Macfarlane, and, she added, more gently, "I'm
sorry now."
"Are ye so?" said Jim, brightening. "Faith, I'm glad to hear ye say it.
We was both in the wrong, ye see, an' if you bear no malice, I don't."
"Yu have been very good to me, seein' how I misjudged you," said Mrs.
Macfarlane.
"Not a bit ov it; an' 'twas the wife anyhow, for, begorra, I was
hardened against ye, so I was."
"An' yu've spent yer money on me, an' I----"
"Sure, don't say a worrd about id. I owed it to you, so I did, but,
begorra, ye won't have to complain ov wantin' custom wanst yer well."
Mrs. Macfarlane smiled wanly.
"No chance o' that, I'm afraid. What with my illness an' all that went
before it, business is gone. Look at the place shut up this three weeks
an' more."
"Not it," said Jim. "Sure, sence y've been sick I put our little Kitty,
the shlip, in charge of the place, an' she's made a power o' money for
ye, an' she on'y risin' sixteen, an' havin' to help her mother an' all.
She's a clever girl, so she is, though I sez it, an' she ruz the prices
all round. She couldn't manage with the cakes, not knowin' how to bake
thim like yerself; but sure I bought her plenty ov biscuits at
Connolly's; and her mother cut her sandwidges, an' made tay, an' the
dhrinks was all there as you left them, an' Kitty kep' count ov all she
sould."
Mrs. Macfarlane looked at him for a moment queerly then she drew the
sheet over her face, and began to sob.
Jim, feeling wretchedly uncomfortable, crept downstairs.
"Go to the craythure, Mary," he said. "Sure, she's cryin'. We've made it
up--an' see here, let her want for nothin'."
Mary ran upstairs, took grim Mrs. Macfarlane in her arms, and actually
kissed her; and Mrs. Macfarlane's grimness melted away, and the two
women cried together for sympathy.
* * * * *
Now, as the trains come into Toomevara station, Jim goes from carriage
to carriage making himself a perfect nuisance to passengers with
well-filled luncheon baskets. "Won't ye have a cup o' tay, me lady?
There's plinty ov time, an' sure, we've the finest tay here that you'll
get on the line. There's nothin' like it this side o' Dublin; A glass o'
whiskey, sir? 'Tis on'y the best John Jameson that's kep', or sherry
wine? Ye won't be shtoppin' agin annywheres that you'll like it as well.
Sure, if ye don't want to get out--though there's plinty o' time--I'll
give the ordher an' have it sent over to yez. Cakes, ma'am, for the
little ladies? 'Tis a long journey, an' maybe they'll be hungry--an
apples? Apples is mighty good for childher. She keeps fine apples if ye
like thim."
Mrs. Macfarlane has grown quite fat, is at peace with all mankind, takes
the deepest interest in the O'Brien family, and calls her dog "Billy."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A blade of grass.
[2] Hag
Quin's Rick.
_From "Doings and Dealings."_
BY JANE BARLOW.
Clear skies and gentle breezes had so favoured Hugh Lennon's harvesting
that his threshing was all safely done by the first week in October, and
as the fine weather still continued, he took his wife, according to
promise, for a ten days' stay at the seaside. Mrs. Hugh was rather young
and rather pretty, and much more than rather short-tempered. The
neighbours often remarked that they would not be in Hugh Lennon's coat
for a great deal--at times specifying very considerable sums.
From her visit to Warrenpoint, however, she returned home in high good
humour, and ran gaily upstairs to remove her flowery hat, announcing
that she would do some fried eggs, Hugh's favourite dish, for their tea.
Hence, he was all the more disconcerted when, as he followed her along
the little passage, she suddenly wheeled round upon him, and confronted
him with a countenance full of wrath. She had merely been looking for a
moment out of the small end window, and why, in the name of fortune,
marvelled Hugh, should that have put her in one of her tantrums? But it
evidently had done so. "Saw you ever the like of that?" she demanded
furiously, pointing through the window.
"The like of what at all?" said Hugh.
"Look at it," said Mrs. Hugh, and drummed with the point of her umbrella
on a pane.
Hugh looked, and saw, conspicuous at a short distance beyond their
backyard, a portly rick of straw, which their neighbour, Peter Quin, had
nearly finished building. A youth was tumbling himself about on top of
it with much agility, and shouting "Pull!" at each floundering fall.
"Sure," said Hugh, "it's nothing, only young Jim Quin leppin' their
rick."
"I wisht he'd break every bone in his ugly body, then, while he's at
it," declared Mrs. Hugh.
"It's a quare wish to be wishin' agin the poor, decent lad," said her
husband, "and he lepping plenty of ricks for ourselves before now."
"And what call have they to be cocking up e'er a one there," said Mrs.
Hugh, "where there was never such a thing seen till this day?"
"Why wouldn't they?" said Hugh. "It's a handy place enough for a one, I
should say, there on the bit of a headland."
"How handy it is!" said his wife, "and it shutting out the gap in the
fence on me that was the only glimpse I had into our lane."
"Well, supposing it does, where's the odds?" said Hugh. "There's ne'er a
much in the lane for anybody to be glimpsing at."
"The greatest convenience in the world it was," declared Mrs. Hugh, "to
be able to see you crossing it of a morning, and you coming in from the
lower field, the way I could put the bit of bacon down ready for the
breakfast."
"Musha, good gracious, woman alive, if that's all's ailing you, where's
the need to be so exact?" said Hugh.
"Exact, is it?" said Mrs. Hugh. "Maybe you'd like to have the whole of
it melted away into grease with being set on the fire half an hour too
soon. Or else you to be standing about open-mouthed under me feet, like
a starving terrier, waiting till it's fit to eat. That's how it'll be,
anyway, like it or lump it. And I used to be watching for old Matty
Flanaghan going by with the post-bag, and the Keoghs coming back from
early Mass--'twas as good as an extra clock for telling the time. But
now, with that big lump of a thing stuck there, I might as well be shut
up inside of any old prison. Them Quins done it a-purpose to annoy me,
so they did. Sorra another raison had they, for what else 'ud make them
take and build it behind our backs? But put up with it is what I won't
do. Stepping over to them I'll be this night, and letting them know how
little I think of themselves and their mean tricks. And if I see old
Peter, I'll tell him you'll have the law of him unless he gets it
cleared away out of that to-morrow. Bedad will I; and yourself 'ud say
the same, if you had as much spirit in you as a moulting chicken."
"Have sense, Julia," Hugh remonstrated, wedging in a protest with
difficulty. "Stop where you are, now, quiet and peaceable. It's only
making a show of yourself you'd be, running out that way raging about
nothing What foolish talk have you about the man moving his rick, that
he's just after building? You might as well be bidding him move
Knockrinkin over yonder; and he more betoken with his haggart bursting
full this minyit. What annoyance is there in the matter, Julia woman?
Sure in any case it won't be any great while standing there, you may
depend, and they bedding cattle with it, let alone very belike sending
in cartloads of it every week to the market. Just content yourself and
be aisy."
But, as he had more than half expected, Hugh spoke to no purpose. His
wife would not be said by him, and his expostulations, in fact, merely
hastened her impetuous departure on her visit to the Quins. She returned
even more exasperated than she had set out, and from her report of the
interview Hugh gathered that she had stormed with much violence, giving
everybody "the height of abuse." He was fain to console himself with the
rather mortifying reflection that "the Quins knew well enough she did be
apt to take up with quare nonsensical fantigues, that nobody minded."
A hope that the morrow might find her more reasonable proved entirely
vain, as many additional grievances, resented with increasing
bitterness, had been evolved during the night. When Hugh went out to his
work, he left her asserting, and believing, that the noise of the wind
whistling round the rick hadn't let her get a wink of sleep, and when he
came in again he found her on the point of setting off to the police
barracks that she might charge the Quins with having "littered her yard
all over with wisps of straw blown off their hijjis old rick, till the
unfortunate hens couldn't see the ground under their feet." This
outrage, it appeared, had been aggravated by Micky Quinn, who remarked
tauntingly, that "she had a right to feel herself obligated to them for
doing her a fine piece of thatching"; and an interchange of similar
rejoinders had taken place. On the present occasion Hugh was indeed able
forcibly to stop her wild expedition by locking both the house doors.
But as he knew that these strong measures could not be more than a
temporary expedient, and as arguments were very bootless, he was at a
loss to determine what he should do next. She had begun to drop such
menacing hints about lighted matches and rags soaked in paraffin, that
he felt loth to leave her at large within reach of those dangerous
materials. Already it had come to his knowledge that rumours were afloat
in the village about how Mrs. Lennon was threatening to burn down the
Quin's rick. The truth was that she had said as much to several calling
neighbours in the course of that day.
Hugh's perplexity was therefore not a little relieved when, early on the
following morning, his wife's eldest married sister, Mrs. Mackay, from
beyond Kilcraig, looked in on her way to market. Mrs. Mackay, an
energetic person with a strong will regulated by abundant common sense,
was one among the few people of whom her flighty sister Julia stood in
awe. In this emergency her own observations, together with her
brother-in-law's statements, soon showed her how matters stood, and she
promptly decided what steps to take. "Our best plan," she said to Hugh
apart, "is for Julia to come along home with me. She'll be out of the
way there of aught to stir up her mind, and she can stop till she gets
pacified again. 'Twill be no great while before she's glad enough to
come back here, rick or no rick, you may depend; for we're all
through-other up at our place the now, with one of the childer sick, and
ne'er a girl kept. I'll give her plenty to do helping me, and it's much
if she won't be very soon wishing she was at home in her own comfortable
house. She doesn't know when she's well off, bedad," Mrs. Mackay added,
glancing half enviously round the tidy little kitchen.
Hugh fell in with her views at once. The Mackays lived a couple of miles
at the other side of Kilcraig, so that Julia would be safely out of
harm's way, and he could trust her sister to keep her from doing
anything disastrously foolish. So he cheerfully saw his wife depart, and
though her last words were a vehement asseveration that she would
"never set foot next or nigh the place again, as long as there did be
two straws slanting together in Quin's dirty old rick," he confidently
expected to see her there once more without much delay.
Up at the Mackay's struggling farmstead on the side of Knockrinkin, Mrs.
Hugh found things dull enough. Internally the house was incommodious and
crowded to uncomfortable excess, and its surroundings externally were
desolate and lonesome. Mrs. Hugh remarked discontentedly that if the
inside and outside of it were mixed together, they'd be better off,
anyway, for room to turn round in, and quiet to hear themselves speak;
but the operation appeared impracticable. Nor were the domestic tasks
with which Mrs. Mackay provided her by any means to her taste, and her
discontent continued. One evening, shortly after her arrival, she grew
so tired of hearing the children squabble and squawl, that as soon as
supper was over she slipped out at the back door into the soft-aired
twilight. She proposed to wile away some time by searching the furzy,
many-bouldered field for mushrooms and blackberries, but neither could
she find, and in her quest she wandered a long way down the swarded
slope, until she came to a low boundary wall. There she stopped, and
stood looking across the valley towards a wooden patch beyond the
village, which contained her own dwelling, as well as that of the
hateful Quins. Her wrath against them burned more fiercely than ever at
the reflection that they were clearly to blame for her present tedious
exile. The thought of going home, she said to herself, she couldn't
abide, by reason of their old rick.
Through the dusk, the darker mass of those trees loomed indistinctly
like a stain on the dimness, and Mrs. Hugh fancied that she could make
out just the site of the Quin's rick--the best of bad luck to it. Why
didn't some decent tramp take and sling a spark of a lighted match into
it, and he passing by with his pipe? As she strained her eyes towards
it, she suddenly saw on the very spot the glimmer of a golden-red light,
glancing out among the shadowy trees. For a moment she was startled and
half scared, but then she remembered that it would be nothing more than
the harvest moon rising up big through the mist. Hadn't she seen it the
night before looking the size of ten? This explanation, at least, half
disappointed her, and she said to herself with dissatisfaction, watching
the gleam waver and brighten, that it looked as red as fire, and she
wished to goodness it was the same as it looked. "There'd be nothing
aisier than setting the whole concern in a blaze standing so convanient
to the road," she thought, while she gazed and gazed with tantalised
vindictiveness over the low, tumble-down wall.
* * * * *
More than two hours later Mrs. Hugh Lennon came hurrying in at the
Mackay's back-door. By this time it was dark night outside, and she
found only Mrs. Mackay in the kitchen, for himself and the children had
gone to bed.
"Where in the world have you been all the evening?" Mrs. Mackay
inquired, with some indignation. "Leaving me with nobody to give me a
hand with the childer or anything, and keeping me now waiting up till
every hour of the night."
"Quin's rick's burnt down," burst out Mrs. Hugh, who evidently had not
heard a word of her sister's remonstrance. She looked excited and
exultant; her hair was roughened by the wind, and her skirts were
bedraggled with a heavy dew brushed off tussocks and furze bushes. Mrs.
Mackay eyed her with a start of vague suspicion.
"And who did you get that news from," she said, "supposing it's true?"
"Amn't I after seeing it with me own eyes?" triumphed Mrs. Hugh.
"Watching it blazing this long while down below there by Connolly's
fence. First of all I thought it was only the old moon rising, that
would do us no good; but sure not at all, glory be! Burnt down to the
ground it is, every grain of it; and serve them very right."
"What took you trapesing off down there, might I ask?" inquired Mrs.
Mackay, her scrutiny of her sister growing more mistrustful.
"Is it what took me?" said Mrs. Hugh. "I dunno rightly. Och, let me see;
about getting some mushrooms I was, I believe, and blackberries."
"A likely time of night it was to be looking for such things," said Mrs.
Mackay, "and a dale of them you got."
"There isn't a one in it; all of them's as red as coals of fire yet, or
else as green as grass--sure, what matter?" said Mrs. Hugh. "Anyway, I
was took up with watching the baste of an old rick flaring itself into
flitters; and a rale good job."
"A job it is that you're very apt to have raison to repent of," Mrs.
Mackay said severely, "if so be you had act or part in it."
"Is it me?" Mrs. Hugh said, and laughed derisively. "Raving you are, if
that's your notion. A great chance I'd have to be meddling or making
with it, and I stuck up here out of reach of everything. I only wisht
I'd been at our own place to get a better sight."
"How can I tell what chances you have or haven't, and you after running
wild through the country for better than a couple of hours?" Mrs. Mackay
said. "Plenty of time had you for the matter, to be skyting there and
back twice over, if you was up to any sort of mischief; let alone going
about talking and threatening, and carrying on, till everybody in the
parish is safe to be of the opinion yourself was contriving it with
whoever done it, supposing you didn't do it all out. And it's the quare
trouble you might very aisy get yourself into for that same, let me tell
you. There was a man at Joe's place that got three years for being
concerned in setting a light to a bit of an old shed, no size to speak
of; so, if the next thing we see of you is walking off between a pair of
police constables, yourself you'll have to thank for it. I only hope
poor Hugh won't be blaming me for letting you out of me sight this
evening."
"Och, good luck to yourself and your polis!" Mrs. Hugh said, defiantly.
"It's little I care who lit the old rick, and its little I care what any
people's troubling theirselves to think about it. I'd liefer be after
doing it than not--so there's for you. But what I won't do is stop here
listening to your fool's romancing. So good-night to you kindly."
With that Mrs. Hugh flounced clattering up the little steep stairs, and
hurled herself like a compressed earthquake-wave into her bedroom. Mrs.
Mackay, following her, stumped along more slowly. "Goodness forgive me
for saying so," she reflected, "but Julia's a terrific woman to have any
doings or dealings with. She's not to hold or bind when she takes the
notion, and the dear knows what she's been up to now; something
outrageous most likely. The Lord Chief Justice himself couldn't control
her. Beyond me she is entirely."
Nevertheless, her warnings were not without effect, and at their next
interview, she found her sister in a meeker mood.
It was when Mrs. Mackay was in the cowhouse milking, before breakfast,
that Julia appeared to her, hurrying in with a demeanour full of dismay.
"Och, Bridgie, what will I do?" she said.
"What's happint you now?" Bridgie replied, with a studied want of
sympathy.
"I'm just after looking out of me window," Julia said, "and there's two
of the polis out of the barracks below standing at the roadgate, having
great discoursing with Dan Molloy, and about coming into this place they
are. Ne'er a bit of me knows what's bringing them so outlandish early;
but I'll take me oath, Bridgie darlint, I'd nought to do, good or bad,
with burning the rick. It might ha' went on fire of itself. Hand nor
part I hadn't in it. So you might be telling them that to your certain
knowledge I was up here the whole time, and sending them about their
business--there's a good woman."
On further reflection Mrs. Mackay had already concluded that Julia
probably was not guilty of incendiarism; still, she considered her
sister's alarmed state a favourable opportunity for a lesson on the
expediency of behaving herself. Therefore she was careful to give no
reassuring response.
"'Deed, now, I dunno what to say to it all," she declared, "and I
couldn't take it on me conscience to go swear in a court of justice
that I knew where you might be yesterday late. More betoken there was
the bad talk you had out of you about the Quins before you come here,
that they'll be bringing up agin you now, you may depend. An ugly
appearance it has, sure enough, the two of them coming over at this
hour. As headstrong you are as a cross-tempered jennet; but if you'll
take my advice you'll keep yourself out of their sight the best way you
can, till I see what they want with you, and then if it's a warrant
they've got, I might try persuade them to go look for you somewheres
else. That's the best I can do, and, of course, I can't say whether they
will or no, but maybe--"
For a wonder Mrs. Hugh did take this advice, and most promptly, rushing
with a suppressed wail out of the cowhouse and into a shed close by,
where she crouched behind a heap of hay, the first hiding-place that
presented itself to her in her panic. She had spent a great part of the
past night in meditation on her sister's alarming statements; and now
the ominous arrival of the police put a finishing touch to her fright.
How was she to escape from them, or to exculpate herself? Bridgie
evidently either could or would do little or nothing. At this dreadful
crisis in her affairs her thoughts turned longingly towards her own
house down below, where there was Hugh, poor man, who would certainly
have, somehow, prevented her from being dragged off to Athmoran gaol,
even if he did believe her to have burnt the rick. Through the dusty
shed window she saw two dark, flat-capped, short-caped figures
sauntering up to the front door, whereupon with a sudden desperate
impulse, she stole out, and fled down the cart-track along which they
had just come. Getting a good start of them, she said to herself, she
might be at home again with Hugh before they could overtake her--and one
of them, she added, as fat as a prize pig.
As Mrs. Hugh ran most of the road's two long miles, she was considerably
out of breath when she came round a turn which brought into view an
expected and an unexpected object. The one was Hugh walking out of his
own gate, the other Quin's rick, still rearing its glistening yellow
ridge into the sunshine.
"Well, now, Julia woman, and is it yourself?" Hugh said, as she darted
across the road to him. "What's took you to be tearing along at that
rate, and without so much as a shawl over your head?"
"Thinking I was to meet you before this--kilt I am, running all the
way," she said, panting. "And I do declare there's the big rick in it
yet."
Hugh's face fell. "Whethen now, if it's with the same old blathers
you're come back," he said, in a disgusted tone, "there was no need for
you to be in any such great hurry."
"Ne'er a word was I going to say agin it at all," said his wife, "and I
making sure the constables would be after me every minyit for burning it
down."
"What the mischief put that notion in your head?" said Hugh.
"I seen the blaze of a great fire down here last night," she said, "and
I thought it would be Quin's rick, and they knowing I had some talk
about it."
"Sure 'twas just the big heap of dead branches and old trunks," said
Hugh, "that's lying at the end of the cow-lane ever since the big wind.
It took and went on fire yesterday evening; raison good, there was a
cartful of Wexford tinkers went by in the afternoon, and stopped to
boil their kettle close under it. A fine flare-up it made, and it as dry
as tinder; but I'd scarce ha' thought you'd see it that far. Lucky it is
the old sticks was fit for nothing much, unless some poor bodies may be
at a loss for firewood this next winter. Come along in, Julia, and wet
yourself a cup of tay. You'd a right to be tired trotting about that
way. And as for the polis, bedad, they'd have their own work cut out for
them, if they was to be taking up everybody they heard talking foolish."
Not long after Mrs. Hugh had finished her cup, Mrs. Mackay arrived,
alighting flurriedly from a borrowed seat on a neighbour's car.