‘Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed that there must also
be evil.’
It is three o’clock as Susan, with Jacky in tow, leaves the Rectory gate
and goes up the village towards the broad road beyond that mounts
steepwards to Crosby Park. Curraghcloyne possesses but one street, and a
very small one, too; but as a set-off to that it teems with interest.
This morning a pig-fair was held in the ‘fair-field,’ a square mass of
beaten earth, anything but ‘fair,’ and as unlike a field as possible;
and now that the ‘payers of the rint’ have been mercifully removed,
bought, or sold, the unsightly patch is covered by young colts, that are
being ridden up and down by their owners, with a view to showing them
off; whilst in the far part of the field, over there, cows, sheep, and
donkeys are changing owners.
Here, in the main street, much lively conversation is going on. On the
right, Salter, the hardware man—a virulent Methodist, who calls himself
a Protestant—is retailing to a hushed and delighted group the very
latest ritualistic news of the curate just lately imported, and who, if
a most estimable man, is undoubtedly abominably ugly. Short and stout
and ill-made, poor Mr. Haldane has not proved a success amongst the
Protestants of the parish. His views are extreme, and so are his looks,
and, as Betty most unkindly put it, he should, on his ordination, have
been at once despatched by the Bishop of the diocese as a missionary to
the Cannibal Islands, with a view to getting rid of him as quickly as
possible. He is a sore trial to Mr. Barry, the Rector of the parish, and
Susan’s father. But he had to replace the last curate in a hurry, that
young man having resigned his charge at a moment’s notice, because the
Rector would not give his sanction to having matins at six a.m., he
said; but in reality because Susan had, the evening before, rejected him
with a haste that deprived him of all hope.
Just now the excitement amongst the groups at Salter’s is growing
intense. The curate had been knocked down. No! But he had fallen—and so
on, and so on. A few shops lower down comes Mr. Murphy, the
undertaker’s. He, too, as indeed do all the shopkeepers in
Curraghcloyne, stands in the front of his shop-door, chatting to all who
come and go. A little, fat, jolly man, rather useless you would think in
a solemn business like his, and yet the best undertaker, for all that,
in the seven parishes round. Perhaps it is well to have a cheerful
person of that sort to dispel the dreadful gloom of death. However it
is, he is a universal favourite, and no wonder, when I tell you he is
the man in all Curraghcloyne who can tell you most about the babies!—the
ones come, the ones to come immediately, and those in the middle
distance! The gayest, happiest little man in the town, with a wife as
rosy as himself, and quite a crowd of embryo little undertakers swarming
round his knees. But these, and many more of the Curraghcloyne
celebrities, sink into insignificance before Ricketty, the proprietor of
the Crosby Arms Hotel. This name is painted on a swinging signboard,
with a huge boar beneath, the crest of the Crosbys from all time.
Ricketty—his name was once Richards, but time and many devoted
friendships has brought it down to Ricketty—is a huge benign Irishman,
with the biggest jaw in Europe and the smallest eyes. To his bones flesh
has grown, until now he might have exhibited himself in the most
fastidious show in New York as the ‘Last of the race of Anak,’ or some
such attractive title.
And as most big men are, so is he—the mildest-mannered man on earth; who
would have run away if he had been asked to scuttle a ship, and who
would have fainted if the idea of cutting the throat even of a mouse had
been suggested to him. One side of his hotel has the usual bar blind up
in it, behind which is a parlour, where on special occasions the
politicians congregate to air their eloquence. The other side is given
up to a fancy shop, kept by his sister, Miss Ricketty.
Miss Ricketty is the wit, and therefore the scourge, of the village
(very little wit suffices for a village such as Curraghcloyne), and
though nearly stone-deaf, knows more of the ‘goings on’ of her
neighbours than anyone else in the small town.
Of course there is a bank and a post-office in Curraghcloyne. And a
town-hall, where the future tenors and sopranos of the world sometimes
‘kindly consent’ to sing to the poor people round them. And there is the
draper’s shop called ‘The Emporium,’ very justly, of course; and there
is a market-place too, where everyone says the beef and mutton are both
bad and dear. But even the interest of all these fails before the
caustic tongue of Miss Ricketty.
Just as Susan reaches the window of the hotel that holds Miss Ricketty’s
show of notepaper, ballads, bull’s-eyes, woollen mufflers, the latest
thing in veils ten years old, and the flotsam and jetsam of various
seasons past, she finds herself face to face with Wyndham.
‘You have come back!’ says she involuntarily. She is glad to see him. He
is—well, scarcely an old friend, because the distances between his
comings and goings to the Cottage make such broad margins on the leaf of
time that he has hardly come into quite close contact with the family at
the Rectory. But they have known him for a long time, and they have
liked him, and there is a good deal of soft, pleasurable welcome in the
glance that Susan gives him. He has been away now, she tells herself,
quite two months.
‘Yes,’ says Wyndham, smiling. His smile is a little preoccupied,
however. ‘And how are you, Jacky? My goodness, how we are grown! You’ll
be as big as Ricketty presently if you don’t put a weight on your head.’
Jacky sniggles, but, like Wyndham’s smile, his sniggles are a little
preoccupied. Having shaken hands with the latter, he retires behind
Susan, and wonders if Wyndham is going up to the Cottage, and if he is,
will the ghost catch him? He rather hopes it. It would leave
him—Jacky—free, any way, and Mr. Wyndham is a big man and would be a
better match for her.
Susan, too, is thinking of the ghost. As Wyndham is facing now, the
Cottage lies before him. Is he going to see the mysterious ‘prisoner’?
Perhaps he is married to her! This seems delightful—like an old romance,
so much nicer than the commonplace marriages of to-day. She scans
Wyndham’s face swiftly with a view to saying something nice and kind to
him, if she sees anything there to help her to believe in this
sentimental marriage. But evidently she sees nothing, because she says
nothing. After all, she tells herself, it is of course a secret.
‘I hope you will come in and see father,’ she says presently, when she
and Wyndham have discussed the town and its inhabitants, and she has
told him all the news. He is in the habit of sleeping at the Cottage
whenever he does come down, and in the habit, too, of spending his
evenings at the Rectory, which is only just over the way from the
Cottage.
‘Not to-night, I’m afraid,’ says Wyndham. ‘I must go back to town by the
evening train.’
A slight frown gathers on his brow, but he dismisses it as he bids her
good-bye.
‘Remember me to him,’ he says quickly, absently. He pinches Jacky’s ear,
and is gone.
Susan, who has been inveigled into a promise concerning bull’s-eyes, is
now led triumphantly into Miss Ricketty’s shop, where that spinster is
discovered in an Old English attitude, her body being screwed out of all
shape in her endeavour to catch sight of someone going down the street.
Her window is quite blocked up by her shoulders, and her deafness
prevents her from knowing of Susan’s coming until Jacky, falling over
her left leg, which is sticking out behind in mid air, brings her back
to the perpendicular and a view of Susan.
She is a small woman, thin to a fault, and shrewd-visaged, with a
quizzical eye and a bonnet. The latter is of the historic coal-scuttle
shape, and must have been a most admirable purchase when
bought—‘warranted to wear,’ in the truest sense of the word, as it has
lasted without a break for at least fifty years. As no one in
Curraghcloyne ever saw her ‘outside of it,’ and as she is popularly
supposed to sleep in it, it may safely be regarded as a sound article;
even her worst enemy had once been heard to say that, ‘no matther how
great an ould fool she was wid her tongue,’ she had made no mistake
about ‘the bonnet.’
‘An’ is that you, Miss Susan, me dear?’ says she, when Jacky has picked
himself up, and she has ceased to rub her ankle. ‘Ye’re as welcome as
the flowers in May, though divil a flower we had this year, wid the rain
an’ all. Ye’re not in a hurry, miss, are ye, now? Ye can spare a minute
to the ould maid? Come in, then.’
She opens the little gate that hinges on to her little counter, and
draws Susan inside, to her ‘parlour,’ as she calls the tiny space
within—a cosy spot in truth, where in the winter a fire burns briskly,
and with a wall lined with bottles that make glad the souls of children.
To Susan Barry the old maid has given all the heart that remains from
her worship of her giant brother. Perhaps it is the almost childish
sweetness of her manner that has won the old maid’s heart, or else the
young unconscious beauty of her—beauty being dear to the Irish heart.
However it is, she has a warm corner in Miss Ricketty’s.
‘An’ how’s your good aunt?’ says the spinster, adjusting the bonnet with
one hand, whilst with the other she pulls out from under the counter a
huge ear-trumpet, half a yard long, and big enough at the speaking end
to engulf Susan’s small and shapely head. ‘She’s been expectin’ that
clutch o’ eggs I promised her, no doubt; but them hens o’ mine might as
well be cocks for all the eggs we get out of them.’
‘Aunt Jemima knows that eggs are scarce now,’ cries Susan, softly, into
the gulf.
‘Scarce! ’Tis nothin’ them ungrateful hens is doin’ for us now, an’ we
who coddled ’em up all the winther. The saints forgive thim! Miss
Susan’—leaning towards the girl, and speaking with the suppressed
emotion of the born gossip—‘was that Misther Wyndham as wint up the
street just now?’
‘Yes,’ says Susan. ‘I was talking to him just before I came in here.’
‘No! Blessed Vargin!’ says Miss Ricketty, recoiling; she had, of course,
been the first to hear of the mysterious stranger at the Cottage, and
had, indeed, told the news to her brother, under promise of secrecy,
that she knew he would not keep. Nor did she want him to keep it. How
can you gossip unless you have someone to gossip with? That is why
people spread scandals.
‘And what was he saying?’ asks she presently, when she has produced a
little box of figs and given them to Jacky, with a view to keeping him
quiet until she has got the last word of news out of Susan.
‘Nothing, I think,’ says Susan, running over mentally her late
conversation with Wyndham. ‘He won’t have time to see father to-night,
because he is going back to town by the evening train.’
‘Is that what he says?’ Miss Ricketty gives her bonnet a push. ‘Faith,
he’s full of smartness. An’ did he tell ye nothin’ at all?’
‘Oh, it was I who told him everything,’ says Susan. ‘He wanted to know
how the new curate was going on, for one thing, and——’
‘If ’twas Misther Haldane he was askin’ afther so kindly, I could a’
tould him somethin’,’ says Miss Ricketty. ‘But never mind him! What else
was Misther Wyndham sayin’?’
‘There was not time to say anything,’ says Susan, laughing. ‘He was in a
hurry, and so was I—at least, Jacky was; he wants you to give him two
pennyworth of bull’s-eyes. Though, really, after those figs——’
‘Miss Susan’—the old maid puts Susan’s last remark aside with an
eloquent gesture—‘have ye heard anything sthrange about the Cottage
lately?’
Susan starts, and Jacky comes to a dead set, the last fig between his
finger and thumb. Jacky must be far gone indeed when, having anything
edible between his fingers, he delays about putting it between his lips.
‘Ye have, I see,’ says Miss Ricketty. ‘I’m tould, me dear,’ looking
behind her, and beside her, and to the door, and now, for even better
security, putting up her opened palm to one side of her mouth, ‘that
there’s a young—a’—she hesitates as if to choose a word, then comes to a
safe conclusion—‘a faymale there,’ she says.
‘There’s a girl there, I think,’ says Susan nervously. ‘At least’—here
Jacky looks at her appealingly, and she changes her sentence—‘someone
says there is. A niece, or a friend of Mrs. Denis’s, I suppose.’
‘Arrah! Suppose!’ says Miss Ricketty with considerable eloquence, but
without committing herself.
‘Well, if not that,’ says Susan, who is full of her late romantic idea
about a secret marriage between the unknown and Wyndham,
‘perhaps—perhaps Mr. Wyndham knows something about her.’
Miss Ricketty turns sharply, and looks at her. But the girl’s lovely,
open, tranquil face betrays nothing but a soft enthusiasm. A sense of
amusement fills Miss Ricketty’s breast.
‘Fegs, I’m thinkin’ ye’re on the right thrack,’ says she evenly.
‘You won’t say it again, Miss Ricketty, will you?’ says Susan; ‘but I
have thought—at least, it has occurred to me—that perhaps she’s Mr.
Wyndham’s wife.’
This is a little too much for Miss Ricketty. She gives way suddenly to a
fit of coughing, and, turning her back to Susan, dives under the
counter, whether to recover from a very proper confusion, or to indulge
in very improper laughter, can now, alas! never be known. When she
emerges, however, her face is a fine crimson.
‘That would be very romantic, wouldn’t it?’ says Susan, looking at her
and speaking softly, yet with a pretty delight. ‘A marriage like that,
with nobody knowing anything except they two, you know; and I feel sure
she is lovely, and Mr. Wyndham is very nice-looking too, and after
awhile perhaps we shall know her. He will introduce us to her, and we
shall be friends, and——’
‘’Tis a beautiful story,’ says Miss Ricketty, breaking in with unction.
‘An’ beautiful stories, we all know, come thrue. I wish ye joy o’ the
bride at the Cottage, Miss Susan; but I wouldn’t be for intherferin’ wid
the young married people too soon if I were you, me dear.’
‘Of course, I shouldn’t do that,’ says Susan hastily, her fair face
growing earnest. ‘But I thought that if——’
‘Well, ye’d betther wait, I think,’ says Miss Ricketty. ‘’Tis bad bein’
in a hurry, as Misther Haldane found out last night.’
‘Mr. Haldane! What has happened to him?’
‘Fegs, miss, it seems that last night, as he was descendin’ the steps
from the vesthry, he thripped, God help us! an’ fell on his ugly mug an’
broke his front teeth.’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ says Susan, real compassion in her tone, though the
new curate is rather farther beyond the range of her sympathy than even
the old. ‘I wonder father hasn’t heard of it.’
‘It seems the poor gintleman is keeping it dark,’ says Miss Ricketty,
‘wid the thought of gettin’ thim put in agin widout anyone knowin’.
But’—wrathfully—‘’twill be no use for him. I see that villain of a
Salter down there’—with a glance out of the window—‘tellin’ every wan of
it. Why, ye must have seen him yerself, miss, as ye come by.’ And
suddenly Susan does remember the crowd round Salter’s shop-door, with
Salter himself in its midst. ‘He’s got hould of it, for sure, and if he
has ’twill be short shrift for Misther Haldane.’
‘But why?’ asks Susan.
‘Why, this, miss! He hates your clergy because he’s not in wid ye, like.
A Methody he is; an’ Mr. Haldane goes agin his grain, wid the candles
an’ the flowers an’ that, an’ he says how that Mr. Haldane had a dhrop
too much last night when he thripped on the vesthry stairs.’
‘What a shame!’ says Susan indignantly. ‘I know for a fact that Mr.
Haldane is——’
‘Yes, of course, miss. But that’s how thim Methodys does. An’ as for
that Salter himself, I don’t believe in him. ’Tis a power o’ whisky he
can get undher his own belt widout bein’ found out, until his timper is
up. I know for a fact that ’twas only a week ago that he bate his poor
wife until she let a screech out of her that would have waked Father
D’Arcy himself, only that the seven sleepers aren’t a patch on him.’
It appears she cannot even spare her parish priest! Susan, who has
risen, and who is now dragging Jacky from under the counter, where he
has been in hot pursuit of a kitten, bids her old friend good-bye for
the present.
‘You’ll tell Miss Barry about the clutch,’ says the spinster; and ‘Yes!’
shouts Susan into the terminus, a little louder than usual, perhaps,
because Miss Ricketty lifts up her hand and shakes it at her
reproachfully.
‘Wan would think I was deaf,’ says she tragically, whereupon both she
and Susan laugh together. The girl’s happy mirth—seen if not
heard—delights the old maid behind the counter.
‘Good-bye, me dear, an’ God bless you!’ says she, and, disdaining to
even see Susan’s pennies, she thrusts a big parcel of sweets into
Jacky’s small hands.
‘Keep a few for Masther Bonnie,’ whispers she, as she kisses him and
sends him after his sister.
At the door, however, Susan turns back, and once more calls down the
trumpet:
‘You will contradict that thing about Mr. Haldane, won’t you?’ says she;
‘surely it is bad enough that he should have lost his front teeth,
without having scandalous stories spread about him. Besides, they will
make father very unhappy.’
‘I’ll look afther him,’ says Miss Ricketty, ‘if only to oblige ye, me
dear; though, I think, I’m not wantin’. Providence seems to have his eye
on that young man.’
‘Oh, poor man! I’m afraid not,’ says Susan; ‘he was ugly enough before,
and now his front teeth are gone!’
‘That’s it,’ says Miss Ricketty; ‘whin next ye look at him, ye’ll see
what a fine openin’ the Lord has made for him.’
The last vision Susan has of Miss Ricketty shows her leaning back in her
chair, with her apron over her bonnet, convulsed with joy at her own
wit.