Dr. Farelly, Medical Officer of Dunailin, volunteered for service with
the R.A.M.C. at the beginning of the war. He had made no particular
boast of patriotism. He did not even profess to be keenly interested
in his profession or anxious for wider experience. He said, telling the
simple truth, that life at Dunailin was unutterably dull, and that he
welcomed war--would have welcomed worse things--for the sake of escaping
a monotony which was becoming intolerable.
The army authorities accepted Dr. Farelly. The local Board of Guardians,
which paid him a salary of £200 a year, agreed to let him go on the
condition that he provided a duly qualified substitute to do his work
while he was away. There a difficulty faced Dr. Farelly. Duly qualified
medical men, willing to take up temporary jobs, are not plentiful in war
time. And the job he had to offer--Dr. Farelly was painfully conscious
of the fact--was not a very attractive one.
Dunailin is a small town in Western Connaught, seven miles from the
nearest railway station. It possesses a single street, straggling and
very dirty, a police barrack, a chapel, which seems disproportionately
large, and seven shops. One of the shops is also the post office.
Another belongs to John Conerney, the butcher. The remaining five are
public houses, doing their chief business in whisky and porter, but
selling, as side lines, farm seeds, spades, rakes, hoes, stockings,
hats, blouses, ribbons, flannelette, men’s suits, tobacco, sugar, tea,
postcards, and sixpenny novels. The chief inhabitants of the town are
the priest, a benevolent but elderly man, who lives in the presbytery
next the large chapel; Sergeant Rahilly, who commands the six members of
the Royal Irish Constabulary and lives in the barrack; and Mr. Timothy
Flanagan, who keeps the largest shop in the town and does a bigger
business than anyone else in porter and whisky.
Dr. Farelly, standing on his doorstep with his pipe in his mouth, looked
up and down the street. He was more than ever convinced that it might
be very difficult to get a doctor to go to Dunailin, and still harder to
get one to stay. The town lay, to all appearance, asleep under the blaze
of the noonday August sun. John Conerney’s greyhounds, five of them,
were stretched in the middle of the street, confident that they would
be undisturbed. Sergeant Rahilly sunned himself on a bench outside the
barrack door, and Mr. Flanagan sat in a room behind his shop nodding
over the ledger in which his customers’ debts were entered. Dr. Farelly
sighed. He had advertised for a doctor to take his place in all the
likeliest papers, and had not been rewarded by a single answer. He was
beginning to think that he must either resign his position at Dunailin
or give up the idea of war service.
At half-past twelve the town stirred in its sleep and partially awoke.
Paddy Doolan, who drove the mail cart, arrived from Derrymore. Dr.
Farelly strolled down to the post office, seeking, but scarcely hoping
for, a letter in reply to his advertisements. He was surprised and very
greatly pleased when the postmistress handed him a large envelope, fat
and bulging, bearing a Manchester postmark. The moment he opened it Dr.
Farelly knew that he had got what he wanted, an application for the
post he had to offer. He took out, one after another, six sheets of
nicely-printed matter. These were testimonials signed by professors,
tutors, surgeons, and doctors, all eloquent about the knowledge, skill,
and personal integrity of one Theophilus Lovaway. Dr. Farelly stuffed
these into his pocket. He had often written testimonials himself--in
Ireland everyone writes them in scores--and he knew precisely what they
were worth. He came at last to a letter, very neatly typewritten. It
began formally:
“Dear Sir--I beg to offer myself as a candidate for the post of medical
officer, temporary, for the town and district of Dunailin, on the terms
of your advertisement in _The British Medical Journal_.”
Dr. Farelly, like the Etruscans in Macaulay’s poem, “could scare forbear
to cheer.” He walked jauntily back to his house, relit his pipe and sat
down to read the rest of the letter.
Theophilus Lovaway was apparently a garrulous person. He had covered
four sheets with close typescript. He began by stating that he was
only just qualified and had never practised anywhere. He hoped that Dr.
Farelly would not consider his want of experience a disqualification.
Dr. Farelly did not care in the least.
If Theophilus Lovaway was legally qualified to write prescriptions,
nothing else mattered. The next three paragraphs of the letter--and they
were all long--described, in detail, the condition of Lovaway’s health.
He suffered, it appeared, from a disordered heart, weak lungs, and
dyspepsia. But for these misfortunes, the letter went on, Theophilus
would have devoted himself to the services of his country in her great
need. Dr. Farelly sniffed. He had a prejudice against people who wrote
or talked in that way. He began to feel less cheerful. Theophilus might
come to Dunailin. It was very doubtful whether he would stay there long,
his lungs, heart, and stomach being what they were.
The last half of the letter was painfully disconcerting. Two whole pages
were devoted to an explanation of the writer’s wish to spend some time
in the west of Ireland. Theophilus Lovaway had managed, in the middle
of his professional reading, to study the literature of the Irish
Renaissance. He had fallen deeply in love with the spirit of the Celtic
peasantry. He described at some length what he thought that spirit
was. “Tuned to the spiritual” was one of the phrases he used.
“Desire-compelling, with the elusiveness of the rainbow’s end,” was
another. Dr. Farelly grew despondent. If Theophilus expected life in
Dunailin to be in the least like one of Mr. Yeats’ plays, he was doomed
to a bitter disappointment and would probably leave the place in three
weeks.
But Dr. Farelly was not going to give up hope without a struggle. He
put the letter in his pocket and walked across the road to Timothy
Flanagan’s shop.
“Flanagan,” he said, “I’ve got a man to take on my job here.”
“I’m glad to hear it, doctor,” said Flanagan. “It would be a pity now
if something was to interfere with you, and you wanting to be off
massacring the Germans. If the half of what’s in the papers is true, its
massacring or worse them fellows want.”
“The trouble is,” said Dr. Farelly, “that the man I’ve got may not
stay.”
“Why wouldn’t he stay? Isn’t Dunailin as good a place to be in as any
other? Any sensible man----”
“That’s just it,” said Dr. Farelly. “I’m not at all sure that this is a
sensible man. Just listen to this.”
He read aloud the greater part of the letter.
“Now what do you think of the man who wrote that?” he asked; “what kind
of fellow would you say he was?”
“I’d say,” said Flanagan, “that he’s a simple, innocent kind of man; but
I wouldn’t say there was any great harm in him.”
“I’m very much afraid,” said Dr. Farelly, “that he’s too simple and
innocent. That’s the first thing I have against him. Look here now,
Flanagan, if you or anyone else starts filling this young fellow up with
whisky--it will be an easy enough thing to do, and I don’t deny that
it’ll be a temptation. But if you do it you’ll have his mother or his
aunt or someone over here to fetch him home again. That’s evidently the
kind of man he is. And if I lose him I’m done, for I’ll never get anyone
else.”
“Make your mind easy about that, doctor. Devil the drop of whisky he’ll
get out of my shop while he’s here, and I’ll take care no other one will
let him have a bottle. If he drinks at all it’ll be the stuff he brings
with him in his own portmanteau.”
“Good,” said Dr. Farelly, “I’ll trust you about that. The next point is
his health. You heard what he said about his heart and his lungs and his
stomach.”
“He might die on us,” said Flanagan, “and that’s a fact.”
“Oh, he’ll not die. That sort of man never does die, not till he’s about
ninety, anyhow. But it won’t do to let him fancy this place doesn’t
agree with him. What you’ve got to do is to see that he gets a proper
supply of good, wholesome food, eggs and milk, and all the rest of it.”
“If there’s an egg in the town he’ll get it,” said Flanagan, “and I’ll
speak to Johnny Conerney about the meat that’s supplied to him. You may
trust me, doctor, if that young fellow dies in Dunailin it’ll not be for
want of food.”
“Thanks,” said Dr. Farelly; “and keep him cheerful, Flanagan, don’t let
him mope. That brings me to the third point. You heard what he wrote
about the Irish Renaissance and the Celtic spirit?”
“I heard it right enough,” said Flanagan, “but I’m not sure do I know
the meaning of it.”
“The meaning of it,” said Dr. Farelly, “is fairies, just plain, ordinary
fairies. That’s what he wants, and I don’t expect he’ll settle down
contentedly unless he finds a few.”
“Sure you know well enough, doctor, that there’s no fairies in these
parts. I don’t say there mightn’t have been some in times past, but any
there was is now gone.”
“I know that,” said Dr. Farelly, “and I’m not asking you to go
beating thorn bushes in the hopes of catching one. But if this fellow,
Theophilus Lovaway--did ever you hear such a name?--if he wants fairies
he must hear about them. You’ll have to get hold of a few people who go
in for that sort of thing. Now what about Patsy Doolan’s mother? She’s
old enough, and she looks like a witch herself.”
“If the like of the talk of Patsy Doolan’s mother would be giving him is
any use I’ll see he’s satisfied. That old woman would talk the hind leg
off a donkey about fairies or anything else if you were to give her
a pint of porter, and I’ll do that. I’ll give it to her regular, so I
will. I’d do more than that for you, doctor, for you’re a man I like,
let alone that you’re going out to foreign parts to put the fear of God
into them Germans, which is no more than they deserve.”
Dr. Farelly felt satisfied that Mr. Flanagan would do his best for
Lovaway. And Mr. Flanagan was an important person. As the principal
publican in the town, the chairman of all the councils, boards, and
leagues there were, he had an enormous amount of influence. But Dr.
Farelly was still a little uneasy. He went over to the police barrack
and explained the situation to Sergeant Rahilly. The sergeant readily
promised to do all he could to make Dunailin pleasant for the new
doctor, and to keep him from getting into mischief or trouble. Only
in the matter of Lovaway’s taste for Irish folk-lore and poetry the
sergeant refused to promise any help. He was quite firm about this.
“It wouldn’t do for the police to be mixed up in that kind of work,” he
said. “Politics are what a sergeant of police is bound to keep out of.”
“But hang it all,” said Dr. Farelly, “fairies aren’t politics.”
“They may or they may not be,” said the sergeant. “But believe me,
doctor, the men that talks about them things, fairies and all that, is
the same men that’s at the bottom of all the leagues in the country, and
it wouldn’t do for me to be countenancing them. But I’ll tell you what
I’ll do for you now, doctor. If I can’t get fairies for him I’ll see
that anything that’s to be had in the district in the way of a fee for a
lunatic or the like goes to the young fellow you’re bringing here. I’ll
do that, and if there’s more I can do you can reckon on me--barring
fairies and politics of all kinds.”
Mr. Flanagan and Sergeant Rahilly were trustworthy men. In a good cause
they were prompt and energetic. Flanagan warned the other publicans in
the town that they must not supply the new doctor with any whisky. He
spoke seriously to John Conerney the butcher.
“Good meat, now, Johnny. The best you have, next to what joints you
might be supplying to the priest or myself. He has a delicate stomach,
the man that’s coming, and a bit of braxy mutton might be the death of
him.”
He spoke to Paddy Doolan and told him that his old mother would be
wanted to attend on the new doctor and must be ready whenever she was
called for.
“Any old ancient story she might know,” he said, “about the rath beyond
on the hill, or the way they shot the bailiff on the bog in the bad
times, or about it’s not being lucky to meet a red-haired woman in the
morning, anything at all that would be suitable she’ll be expected to
tell. And if she does what she’s bid there’ll be a drop of porter for
her in my house whenever she likes to call for it.”
Sergeant Rahilly talked in a serious but vague way to everyone he met
about the importance of treating Dr. Lovaway well, and the trouble which
would follow any attempt to rob or ill-use him.
Before Dr. Lovaway arrived his reputation was established in Dunailin.
It was generally believed that he was a dipsomaniac, sent to the west of
Ireland to be cured. It was said that he was very rich and had already
ordered huge quantities of meat from Johnny Conerney. He was certainly
of unsound mind: Mr. Flanagan’s hints about fairies settled that point.
He was also a man of immense influence in Government circles, perhaps a
near relation of the Lord-Lieutenant: Sergeant Rahilly’s way of
speaking convinced everyone of that. The people were, naturally, greatly
interested in their new doctor, and were prepared to give him a hearty
welcome.
His arrival was a little disappointing. He drove from the station at
Derrymore on Paddy Doolan’s car, and had only a small portmanteau with
him. He was expected to come in a motor of his own with a vanload of
furniture behind him. His appearance was also disappointing. He was a
young man. He looked so very young that a stranger might have guessed
his age at eighteen. He wore large, round spectacles, and had
pink, chubby cheeks. In one respect only did he come up to popular
expectation. He was plainly a young man of feeble intellect, for he
allowed Paddy Doolan to overcharge him in the grossest way.
“Thanks be to God,” said Sergeant Rahilly to Mr. Flanagan, “it’s seldom
anyone’s sick in this place. I wouldn’t like to be trusting the likes of
that young fellow very far. But what odds? We’ve got to do the best we
can for him, and my family’s healthy, anyway.”
Fate has a nasty trick of hitting us just where we feel most secure. The
sergeant himself was a healthy man. His wife did not know what it was
to be ill. Molly, his twelve-year old daughter, was as sturdy a child
as any in the town. But Molly had an active mind and an enterprising
character. On the afternoon of Doctor Lovaway’s arrival, her mother,
father, and most other people being fully occupied, she made her way
round the back of the village, climbed the wall of the doctor’s garden
and established herself in an apple tree. She took six other children
with her. There was an abundant crop of apples, but they were not nearly
ripe. Molly ate until she could eat no more. The other children, all of
them younger than Molly, stuffed themselves joyfully with the hard green
fruit.
At eight o’clock that evening Molly complained of pains. Her mother put
her to bed. At half-past eight Molly’s pains were considerably worse and
she began to shriek. Mrs. Rahilly, a good deal agitated by the violence
of the child’s yells, told the sergeant to go for the doctor. Sergeant
Rahilly laid down his newspaper and his pipe. He went slowly down the
street towards the doctor’s house. He was surprised to hear shrieks,
not unlike Molly’s, in various houses as he passed. Mrs. Conerney, the
butcher’s wife, rushed out of her door and told the sergeant that her
little boy, a child of nine, was dying in frightful agony.
Mr. Flanagan was standing at the door of his shop. He beckoned to the
sergeant.
“It’s lucky,” he said, “things happening the way they have on the very
first night of the new doctor being here.”
“I don’t know so much about luck,” said Sergeant Rahilly. “What luck?”
“The half of the children in the town is took with it,” said Flanagan.
“You may call that luck if it pleases you,” said the sergeant. “But it’s
not my notion of luck. My own Molly’s bellowing like a young heifer, and
Mrs. Conerney’s boy is dying, so she tells me. If that’s luck I’d rather
you had it than me.”
“I’m sorry for the childer,” said Flanagan; “but Mrs. Doolan, who’s
in the shop this minute drinking porter, says it’ll do them no harm if
they’re given a sup of water to drink out of the Holy Well beyond Tubber
Neeve, and a handful of rowan berries laid on the stomach or where-ever
else the pain might be.”
“Rowan berries be damned,” said the sergeant. “I’m off for the doctor;
not that I’m expecting much from him. A young fellow with a face like
that! I wish to God Dr. Farelly was back with us.”
“Doctors is no use,” said Flanagan, “neither one nor another, if it’s
true what Mrs. Doolan says.”
“And what does Mrs. Doolan say?” asked the sergeant.
“I’m not saying I believe her,” said Flanagan, “and I’m not asking you
to believe her, but what she says is----”
He whispered in the sergeant’s ear. The sergeant looked at him
bewildered.
“Them ones?” he said, “Them ones? Now what might you and Mrs. Doolan be
meaning by that, Timothy Flanagan?”
“Just fairies,” said Flanagan. “Mind you, I’m not saying I believe it.”
“Fairies be damned,” said the sergeant.
“They may be,” said Flanagan. “I’m not much of a one for fairies myself;
but you’ll not deny, sergeant that it looks queer, all the children
being took the same way at the same time. Anyhow, whether you believe
what Mrs. Doolan says or not----”
“I do not believe it,” said the sergeant. “Not a word of it.”
“You needn’t,” said Flanagan, “I don’t myself. All I say is that it’s
lucky a thing of the sort happening the very first evening the new
doctor’s in the place. It’s fairies he’s after, remember that. It’s
looking for fairies that brought him here. Didn’t Dr. Farelly tell me
so himself and tell you? Wasn’t Dr. Farelly afraid he wouldn’t stay on
account of fairies being scarce about these parts this long time? And
now the place is full of them--according to what Mrs. Doolan says.”
Sergeant Rahilly heard, or fancied he heard, a particularly loud shriek
from Molly. He certainly heard the wailing of Mrs. Conerney and the
agitated cries of several other women. He turned from Flanagan without
speaking another word and walked straight to the doctor’s house.
Five minutes later Dr. Lovaway, hatless and wearing a pair of slippers
on his feet, was running up the street towards the barrack. His first
case, a serious one, calling for instant attention, had come to him
unexpectedly. Opposite Flanagan’s shop he was stopped by Mrs. Doolan.
She laid a skinny, wrinkled, and very dirty hand on his arm. Her shawl
fell back from her head, showing a few thin wisps of grey hair. Her eyes
were bleary and red-rimmed, her breath reeked of porter.
“Arrah, doctor dear,” she said, “I’m glad to see you, so I am. Isn’t it
a grand thing now that a fine young man like you would be wanting to
sit down and be talking to an old woman like myself, that might be your
mother--no, but your grandmother?”
Dr. Lovaway, desperately anxious to reach the sergeant’s suffering
child, tried to shake off the old woman. He suspected that she was
drunk. He was certain that she was extremely unpleasant. The suggestion
that she might be his mother filled him with loathing. It was not any
pleasanter to think of her as a grandmother.
Mrs. Doolan clung tightly to his arm with both her skinny hands.
Mr. Flanagan approached them from behind; leaning across Lovaway’s
shoulders, he whispered in his ear:
“There’s not about the place--there’s not within the four seas of
Ireland, one that has as much knowledge of fairies and all belonging to
them as that old woman.”
“Fairies!” said Lovaway. “Did you say---- Surely you didn’t say fairies?”
“I just thought you’d be pleased,” said Flanagan, “and it’s lucky, so
it is, that Mrs. Doolan should happen to be in the town to-night of all
nights, just when them ones--the fairies, you know, doctor--has half the
children in the town took with pains in their stomachs.”
Dr. Lovaway looked round him wildly. He supposed that Flanagan must be
mad. He had no doubt that the old woman was drunk.
“I’ve seen the like before,” she said, leering up into Lovaway’s face.
“I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen a strong man tying himself into knots with
the way they had him held, and there’s no cure for it only----”
Lovaway caught sight of Sergeant Rahilly. In his first rush to reach the
stricken child he had left the sergeant behind. The sergeant was a heavy
man who moved with dignity.
“Take this woman away,” said Lovaway. “Don’t let her hold me.”
“Doctor, darling,” whined Mrs. Doolan, “don’t be saying the like of
that.”
“Biddy Doolan,” said the sergeant, sternly, “will you let go of the
doctor? I’d be sorry to arrest you, so I would, but arrested you’ll be
if you don’t get along home out of that and keep quiet.”
Mrs. Doolan loosed her hold on the doctor’s arm, but she did not go
home. She followed Lovaway up the street, moving, for so old a woman, at
a surprising pace.
“Doctor, dear,” she said, “don’t be giving medicine to them childer.
Don’t do it now. You’ll only anger them that’s done it, and it’s a
terrible thing when them ones is angry.”
“Get away home out of that, Biddy Doolan,” said the sergeant.
“Don’t be hard on an old woman, now, sergeant,” said Mrs. Doolan. “It’s
for your own good and the good of your child I’m speaking. Doctor, dear,
there’s no cure but the one. A cup of water from the well of Tubber
Neeve, the same to be drawn up in a new tin can that never was used. Let
the child or the man, or it might be the cow, or whatever it is, let it
drink that, a cup at a time, and let you----”
Lovaway followed by the sergeant, entered the barrack. He needed no
guiding to the room in which Molly lay. Her shrieks would have led a
blind man to her bedside.
Mrs. Doolan was stopped at the door by a burly constable. She shouted
her last advice to the doctor as he climbed the stairs.
“Let you take a handful of rowan berries and lay them on the stomach or
wherever the pain might be, and if you wrap them in a yellow cloth it
will be better; but they’ll work well enough without that, only not so
quick.”
Driven off by the constable Mrs. Doolan went back to Flanagan’s shop.
She was quite calm and did not any longer appear to be the worse for the
porter she had drunk.
“You’ll give me another sup, now, Mr. Flanagan,” she said. “It’s well
I deserve it. It’s terrible dry work talking to a man like that one who
won’t listen to a word you’re saying.”
Flanagan filled a large tumbler with porter and handed it to her.
“Tell me this now, Mrs. Doolan,” he said.
“What’s the matter with Molly Rahilly and the rest of them?”
“It’s green apples,” said Mrs. Doolan, “green apples that they ate in
the doctor’s garden. Didn’t I see the little lady sitting in the tree
and the rest of the childer with her?”
Dr. Lovaway made a somewhat similar diagnosis. He spent several busy
hours going in and out of the houses where the sufferers lay. It was
not till a quarter past eleven that he returned to his home and the town
settled down for the night. At half-past eleven--long after the legal
closing hour--Sergeant Rahilly was sitting with Mr. Flanagan in the room
behind the shop. A bottle of whisky and a jug of water were on the table
in front of them.
“It’s a queer thing now about that doctor,” said Flanagan. “After what
Dr. Farelly said to me I made dead sure he’d be pleased to find fairies
about the place. But he was not. When I told him it was fairies he
looked like a man that wanted to curse and didn’t rightly know how. But
sure the English is all queer, and the time you’d think you have them
pleased is the very time they’d be most vexed with you.”