Bella Sweeny and Terry Gallagher had a holiday, and were spending it
upon the rocks at Kilcross. He was a groom and she was a maid at
'the big house,' some miles inland, and this was her first visit to
the place. He had been there several times before, and was doing the
honors of the scenery. They had been 'coortin'' for some time, and
he sat with his arm round her waist, in silence for the most part,
punctuated by occasional references to the local names for heads of
the landscape: he kept severely to facts, with the practical mind of
the peasant class from which he sprang.
The point at which they found themselves was the innermost end of the
long line of black-faced cliffs, where the rocky strata suddenly
ceased and gave way to the sandy lowlands. The rock upon which they
were seated was a single flat slab, which extended a hundred yards
into the sea, forming a natural breakwater for the little cove behind
them. To their right there stretched inland a couple of miles of
yellow glistening strand, which merged gradually in the tufted
bent-grass and rounded hillocks of the dunes which sloped to meet it
at high-water mark. At the furthest point of sight in this direction
the rocky strata cropped up again in the shape of an immense reef
which stretched out half a mile into the sea, and now at low tide lay
like a gigantic alligator on the surface of the water. When the tide
was full its jagged points were completely covered, and only a thread
of surf was left to warn the fisherman of its hidden dangers.
'This rock that we're a-settin' on,' said Terry, 'is called the
Yeough Flag, from the fishes they catch off ov it: an' yon big wan
out there is Carrick Fad: an' that wan is the Connaughtman's Rock,
where a boat's load from Connaught was wrecked wan winter's night an'
all han's lost.' He pointed as he spoke to a spot in the sea beside
them, where a mat of long golden brown wrack floated flush with the
surface, and the swell broke gently with a soft gurgle and a few
air-bubbles.
Behind them and to their left the cliffs rose two hundred feet in the
air as they soared seaward. The first fifty feet were formed of
crumbling slate, above that came a layer of gravelly soil which was
scooped out in regular scollops by land slips and seamed and scarred
by winter torrents. At the extreme point of the bay the rock was
hollowed out beneath by the constant dash of the surf, and the bank
sloping more gently overhead was clothed with the long rank grass
which has never known a scythe, coarse like the hairs of a horse's
tail. The diamond-shaped point where the two met cut sharply into
the sky-line. Beyond that point the cliffs became one solid wall of
beetling rock.
The space between the base of the cliffs and the edge of the water in
the cove was covered with boulders piled pell-mell on top of each
other: they were of every size, from a trunk to a small house, and of
every shape: here a square-shaped block lay like a stranded whale and
there a thin slab was tilted edgeways towards the sky. The _débris_
of the Atlantic flung by winter storms here upon its outermost verge,
looking like the deposit of some huge primeval glacier.
'Yon's the Cormorants' Rock,' interjected Terry, alluding to the
pointed headland, 'an' there's a cormorant,' as he pointed to a black
speck winging its way with steady flight low down across the water.
Then he continued with a sudden change of subject, blurting out the
words as though they blistered his tongue, 'Bella, darlin', don't you
think we've waited long enough? I've got enough to marry on now.
When shall we be called?' He had been nerving himself for this
effort all the morning, and gave a great sigh of relief now that it
was over.
The girl sat silent for a minute, considering the question
thoughtfully, and then replied quite calmly, 'Av ye're of the wan
min' this day six months, come an' tell me, an' I'll let you give
notice to the praste,' and she lifted her mouth for the official
stamp to the agreement.
For some time after that they sat in awkward silence. Both of them
tried to think of a remark, but neither could find one. The growing
uneasiness of an anti-climax rose between them. His arm relaxed
round her waist, he shuffled his feet restlessly, and at last jumping
up, exclaimed:
'Let's go an' catch some s'rimps.'
'What's that?' asked Bella.
'Little wee fishes that sweem about in the pools over there.'
'D'ye think ye can catch them?' she inquired doubtfully, but she rose
and accompanied him to the rock-strewn side of the cove opposite,
which proved on closer view to be dotted with small pools left by the
retreating tide. In these a small variety of prawns disported
themselves, and were dislodged from behind stones and underneath
pieces of seaweed by Terry's intrusive ash-plant. He knelt down and
tried to catch some of them in his hands, but they retreated warily
in front of him with outstretched feelers, and when apparently
enclosed upon all sides, darted with a sudden spring out of reach,
and retired backwards under the impenetrable fastness of an
overhanging rock.
'These yellah wans is rock s'rimps,' he explained, 'sand s'rimps is
gray.'
Bella was greatly delighted with the queer aspect of the creatures,
their translucent bodies, the large heads with their serrated horn
and protruding eyes, and the long flexible 'whiskers,' and begged her
lover to catch one for her to see closer.
Presently they came to a large pool above the reach of any but the
highest tides. The water here softened by the rain was only
brackish: the stones were clothed with long green seaweed, and those
underneath the stagnant surface were coated with a brownish slime.
The shrimps imprisoned by a chance migration in this uncongenial spot
were more sluggish than their tidal neighbors, and one allowed
himself to be caught, and in a moment lay kicking on Bella's
outstretched palm.
When she had looked her fill of admiration Terry put it for greater
safekeeping in his mouth: at this indignity the shrimp mustered all
its activity for a final effort and jumped, tail first, down the
young man's throat. Terry commenced to cough and splutter and went
purple in the face, and Bella in alarm hit him a violent slap between
the shoulders.
Her action had the desired effect, for it dislodged the shrimp from
its dangerous resting-place, but a blow from her vigorous young arm
was no light matter, and Terry lurched forward onto a tuft of the
green seaweed which slid away beneath his feet: to recover his
balance he stepped hastily onto a brown stone in the centre of the
pool, but it proved yet more treacherous than the green: his heels
flew from beneath him, leaving long nail marks on the greasy surface
of the stone, and he fell flat on his back in the shallow water.
He lay still for a moment, stunned by the surprise, then rose to his
feet, his clothes dripping streams of water and his hair matted with
the long green seaweed, and found Bella shaking with a great spasm of
laughter. Her large serious gray eyes were completely closed, and
her pretty face contorted with the vulgarity of excessive merriment.
He grinned sheepishly and said,--
'Them stones is powerful slippy.'
But she only laughed the more, till she became so weak that she
collapsed onto the nearest rock, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
At the sight a vague resentment gradually crept over Terry's docile
Irish nature: he felt dimly that no woman would laugh like that at a
man whom she really loved, and the change worked in the appearance of
her features annoyed him. He exclaimed sharply,--
'Ah, quit now. Much you care av I'd been choked.'
Bella looked up, surprised at the unusual tone, but stopped laughing
at once and replied meekly:
'Niver heed me, Terry, dear, I didn't offer to vex yous.'
Peace was at once restored, and they began to scramble together hand
in hand over the uneven rocks towards the sea. All that was now left
of it in the bay was a single streak of silver, which lay pent and
sleeping in its narrow channel, that had been worn deep in the solid
rock by the current of ages. Its bottom was piled with serpentine
coils of wrack, sea-ferns in all their varied beauty of form and
color, and 'slock-morrows' with their thick hairy stems and long
slimy leaves: some of them still gripped with their roots the stones
which they had torn with them beneath the stress of storm from their
ocean bed. Beneath the misty film of the breeze upon the surface the
whole mass writhed with each recurring pulse of the unresting sea
like a living welter of sea-snakes.
'That's the wrack-hole,' announced Terry the well informed.
'Let me see,' said Bella, clinging timidly to his arm as she crept
nearer and peered into its depths, with a shrinking awe as though at
some half-human monster that battened upon mankind. For its name was
known through the countryside as the bane of widows and childless
mothers: at half-tide the waves poured over the surrounding rocks and
swept seaward through this passage in a race that the strongest
swimmer could not stem, and which had hurried many a venturesome
beginner to his doom.
But many a time in the after days Terry looked back upon that moment,
when the girl beside him clung to his hand and confided in his
protection, as the happiest in his life. Such trifles serve to
uplift or cast down a lover.
Bella shuddered and drew back, and they passed onwards towards the
Cormorants' Rock. The boulders ceased and they came out upon the
flat bed-rock. Women were there gathering sloak and dillusk, the
spinach and edible moss of the sea: the constant passage of
generations of naked feet had worn a track smooth and free from
barnacles over the flaky slate: a row of footholds carved by the same
agency led round the projecting corner, which was whitened down to
high-water mark by the droppings of the cormorants from their nightly
roosting-places above. As they looked, a couple of the women
attempted the passage. The day was calm, but the Atlantic is never
still, and rising out of nothing 'the shining sensitive silver of the
sea' broke with a dull murmur upon this outpost of the cliff. The
women waited until a wave larger than usual had passed, and began
their journey, but the treacherous sea regathered itself and was upon
them in the midst, dashing up beneath their petticoats. They
flattened their bodies desperately against the rock, and twined their
fingers in the short button-wrack that grew at high-water mark: their
skirts floated wide upon the surface of the swell, but its force did
not avail to pluck them from their hold. It retreated baffled, and
the two bedraggled figures scrambled round the corner and were lost
to view.
'Holy Mother, but it's a mercy they weren't lost,' cried Bella.
'Ay,' replied Terry, 'the tide must have turned. It's top spring the
day, so it must be afther twelve. Troth, it's near hand wan,' he
continued, cocking his eye at the sun. It wasn't often that he had
the opportunity to unload such a store of information, and he made
the best of the occasion.
Bella regarded him with wide eyes as he displayed this unsuspected
hoard of marine lore, and treated him with unwonted respect for the
remainder of the day.
'It's time we was goin' home, or I'll be late for the milkin',' she
said, and they began to retrace their steps.
When they got off the boulders once more onto the sandy floor of the
little bay, the tide was coming in with long pauses and feigned
retreats followed by sudden rushes. In the midst of its path stood
an isolated altar of four large stones just islanded by a tongue of
bubbling wavelets.
'I mind when I was a wee fellah,' said Terry, 'we used to see which
of us could stay on them foor stones longest without gettin' wet.'
'Let's try,' cried Bella, gleefully.
They jumped onto the stones and off again in eager rivalry for
several minutes. Often there would be a wide gulf between them and
the shore, and then the sea would retreat and leave it bare again.
But at last they stopped too long: the tide flowed in with a sudden
rush and never came back again near their island.
'What will we do?' cried Bella in dismay, when she realized they were
altogether surrounded.
'Niver fear,' replied Terry, 'I can carry yous,' and he took off his
shoes and stockings well pleased at the success of his stratagem.
He took her up carefully in his arms, like a baby, and carried her
ashore: she lay quite still, without a blush or tremor, as he
strained her to his breast, and when he kissed her before setting her
upon her feet her lips met his frankly but did not return their
pressure. Terry knew little of the ways of women, but his instinct
told him that either more or less warmth would have been a better
augury. He felt 'a bit dashed,' as he himself would say, at her
tolerant attitude.
Then he went and put the horse into the cart, which he had borrowed
for the day from a neighbor. Bella sat in the bottom upon a lining
of hay, and her teeth rattled in her head at every jolt of the
springless vehicle behind the rough-trotting plough-horse. Terry sat
on the shaft in front, swinging his legs, and got a crick in his neck
turning his head to admire her dishevelled hair and the brown shadows
beneath her Irish eyes, 'rubbed in with a dirty finger,' as the
saying goes.
For the next six months Terry lived upon the memory of that day. It
formed the high-water mark of his influence with the girl whom he
grew to love the more she disregarded him: for a man's love feeds
upon starvation. Upon that day the unfamiliarity of her surroundings
had allowed him to appear to an advantage he had never enjoyed before
or since. Up to that point in their intercourse she had always been
the stronger, and now a new element appeared to have entered her life
and ousted him from it. Nothing that he could say or do could touch
her interest any longer: he had an impalpable feeling that every day
he was more outside of her, more in the cold. When they met about
their daily work upon the farm, she merely tolerated his presence as
she would tolerate a necessary article of furniture.
Terry racked his brains vainly to guess what cause of offence he had
given her, or to imagine a reason for this change in her attitude:
but he could find none. It was true that of late 'the misthress' had
taken Bella to wait upon herself exclusively with the exception of
her work in the dairy: and some of the other maids threw out hints
about 'them as is took notice of soon becomes overly cocked up:' but
Terry knew her too well to suspect her of such littleness: he rather
put down her evident weariness of him to some failure in himself, he
was not good enough for her.
One day in especial this came home to him. She had driven into the
neighboring town of Lisnamore with her mistress, Mrs. Fenwick, to
accompany that lady upon a shopping excursion. He was passing down
the opposite side of the street, and saw her sitting upon the side of
the car talking with a heightened color to 'the young Masther,' Mrs.
Fenwick's eldest son, who was home from Trinity for the vacation, and
who was standing with one hand resting carelessly upon the cushion
beside her. She did not even notice Terry, and he passed on with a
desolate feeling at his heart, nearer to tears than he had been since
his babyhood.
On the afternoon that the six months expired he went to find her in
the byre at milking time. He had questioned himself long and
anxiously if it was worth while going at all, but came to the
conclusion 'best give her her chanst.' So though he had already seen
her several times that day, he went to his room over the coach-house
and put on his Sunday clothes, the clothes he had worn that day upon
the rocks at Kilcross, and a flaming scarlet tie that he had bought
for this occasion a week afterwards. And in this gala dress with his
heart in his boots he went to meet his fate.
He stood with a straw in his mouth leaning against the doorpost of
the byre, and never said a word from the moment when the first thin
thread of milk spirted into the empty tin porringer with a tinkling
sound till the last porringer was emptied into the foaming pails. He
walked beside her in solemn silence while she carried the pails to
the dairy: but though his heart yearned over her he did not offer to
help her: the men of the country do not relieve the women of their
burdens. And still in silence he watched her pour the fresh milk
through the strainer into the large earthenware crocks to 'set' for
cream.
At last Bella herself broke the silence. 'Well, Terry, are ye ov the
wan min' yet?' she asked abruptly in a mocking voice.
'I am,' replied Terry heavily, 'av ye'll take me.'
Bella flushed and looked down, then she continued suddenly in a hard,
even tone:
'I'll not marry yous here. But av ye like to come wid me to
Enniskilling, I'll marry yous to-morrow.'
At this unlooked for speech the blood surged over Terry's face and
neck in a deep red flood. 'Ov coorse I'll come and welcome,' he
answered hastily: the opportunity was too good to miss, there would
be time to think later on.
But the moment that she had obtained her terms thus easily a swift
remorse seized upon the girl, and she cried:
'No, no, I won't go. It's not fair on yous. I don't luv yous
enough.'
But the young man replied firmly with a deep note of exaltation in
his voice:
'I have yer promus, and I won't give it yous back. I know that I
haven't yer luv yet, but I'm not afeard but I can win it, av ye give
me the chanst. I'd come av I had to wade through a fiel' ov fire.'
Suddenly the girl burst into a flood of tears, and bowing her head,
seized his hand and kissed it, murmuring through her sobs, 'You are
too good for me, Terry, too good for me.'
'Too good,' he repeated wonderingly, resting his hand uncouthly upon
her bright brown hair. 'Is it me? Why, I'm not fit for yous to wipe
yer little feet upon.'
The next evening at the twilight hour there was a small gathering at
the forge, which was perched upon the side of a hill upon the main
road near the centre of the parish: it stood a little back in a
square open space with its staring whitewashed walls, thatched roofs,
and large unglazed window-openings. It was the district club, the
meeting-place for the scattered cottagers of the countryside, the
centre whence gossip radiated. The blacksmith was just finishing the
last of a set of horseshoes, and the roar of the bellows formed a
monotonous undertone to the fitful conversation. Patsey Brannigan,
the patriarch of the place, was sitting on his usual creel, with his
short clay pipe between his teeth, watching the sparks fly from the
glowing metal with unblinking eyes. A group of half a dozen young
men lounged about the doorway, propping the doorposts upon either
side. Mac Ilrea dropped the completed shoe into the trough of water
with a spluttering hiss, and said in a tone of relief, 'There, that's
done, glory be.'
At that moment Hannah Sweeny, Bella's cousin, came up, carrying a
couple of pails of water from the well, and put them down in front of
the doorway as she asked the company at large:
'Have ye heard tell what our Bella's afther doin'?'
'De'il a hate', said Owen Gallagher, 'shpake away.'
'She's aff to Enniskilling with Terry Gallagher:' she was a
red-headed girl with bare feet, and she stood with her hands on her
hips as she watched the effect of her announcement.
'What, that gomeral,' exclaimed Owen in disgust. He was a connection
of Terry's in a place where there are whole groups of families of the
same name, and the blood is inextricably mingled; but the
relationship was only close enough to throw into relief the uneasy
rivalry with which he regarded his cousin.
'Yis, they wint be the mornin' thrain. An' what's more,' she
continued, doling out her news with the deliberation that comes of a
momentary importance, 'they do be sayin' that oul' Peggy's gone
afther them be the evenin' thrain.'
'That's as it shud be,' said Mrs. Mac, coming forward from the inner
room, 'her mother has a right to see they're married proper.'
'What she cud see in yon suckin' calf, bets ahl,' continued Owen,
harping upon his one note.
'Troth thin it's him that might do betther than thrapesin' about the
counthry afther yon flibbertigibbet,' said Hannah with heat.
'Ay,' replied her antagonist with a leer, 'yous had ahlways a saft
spot for him yersilf, I doubt,' and the girl retired defeated from
the contest.
'What bets me,' said Mac slowly, 'is what ud ail them not to be
married quiet at home. Who's hinderin' them?'
A sigh passed through the group as they settled themselves down to
consider this new aspect of the case.
Suddenly old Patsey took the pipe out of his mouth and spat upon the
ground, then he leant forward deliberately while every one waited,
took a red-hot turf coal from the fire with his naked fingers and
sucked at it with his dhudeen, gradually cramming it down into the
bowl until it had all crumbled away, then he said:
'Andy Sweeny's dahter cudn't do other.'
'Ah,' said one of the younger men interrogatively.
'He was a wild shpark, he was,' continued Patsey, meditatively, 'I
doubt it's the father's blood she has in her. He was terrible fond
of the gurls, so he was,' and the old man shook his head over a
failing that had never appealed to him, and did not belong to his
race.
'What call had oul' Peggy to take the likes ov yon?' asked Mac.
'Ahl ov us is young wanst in our lives,' replied Patsey
sententiously, 'and he was a terrible han'some man. He was not from
these parts, a packman from down Longford way: an' Masther Johnnie,
what's home from school--'
'College,' corrected Hannah, but nobody paid any heed to her.
'--he has a power ov book-larnin', and he did be sayin' to me the
other day that Sweeny come ov Spanish blood that they have in them
down yonder from the times the Armady was wrecked on the shores of
Longford--'
'Sorra but Longford isn't near the say,' interrupted Hannah, 'troth I
larnt that meself in the National School--'
'Ah, will ye hould yer whisht, Hannah Gallagher, ye long-tongued
divil ye,' cried Mrs. Mac. 'Ye're too cliver be half wid yer
jography, so yous are.'
Hannah subsided, and Patsey continued, serenely impervious to
criticism.
'Anyways she married him, and she only regretted it wanst, and that
was ivery day ov her life afther. He was killed in a fight at a fair
over a gurl, and that was the ind ov him, pace to his ashes.'
'Ye wudn't think oul' Peggy was that soort now,' persisted Mac; 'she
lukes as could as yon hearthstone,' pointing as he spoke to the heap
of gray ashes that had lately been a fire.
But one of the young men leant upon the handle of the bellows, and in
a moment they leapt into a fierce white flame.
'Ay,' said Patsey, pointing the stem of his clay at the
quickly-blackening cinders, 'yon's a betther answer nor any I cud
give in a month ov Sundays.'
The following morning the rumor ran through the whole townland like
fire through flax that Bella had returned with her mother
unaccompanied by Terry, and unmarried.
Many were the conjectures that evening at the forge as to the meaning
of this new move. Terry had been sounded on the subject, and told
all he knew. He went with Bella to Enniskillen, and gave notice to
the priest. Then they were overtaken by old Peggy, who spoke to her
daughter privately for a few minutes. Bella came out from the
conversation and said she had changed her mind and would not marry
him after all. He raved and stormed, but all to no purpose: Bella
was indifferent and her mother sphinx-like, he could get nothing
further out of either, and he could not marry the girl in spite of
herself. She went away and slept with her mother that night, and
returned home by the first train in the morning. He could no nothing
but follow her by the second.--Those were the facts, but as to the
explanation of them he was entirely at a loss.
While they were still discussing this strange story, Terry himself
passed the forge, switching moodily with his ash-plant at the
'boughaleen bwees,' the yellow rag-weed, that fringed the roadside.
When he came opposite the group at the doorway his cousin Owen called
out to him jeeringly, 'Well, Terry, so yous are home again wid wan
han' as long as the other. Didn't oul' Peggy think yous good enough
for her dahter?'
Terry halted and looked up at them with a mild, wistful expression in
his oxlike eyes, the look of a wounded animal, and said simply,
'Shure I'm not good enough for her.'
Somehow the laugh that had begun died away immediately, and Owen
withdrew behind his companions, and began to light his pipe in a dark
corner of the forge. His pipe was already alight. But Terry went
upon his way pondering these, the first rough words of outside
criticism that had fallen upon his ears. His mind was slow to move,
and needed a jog from another hand to start it: but once stirred it
moved deeply, and entertaining few ideas it was all the more
tenacious of those which did manage to effect an entrance. His fancy
for Bella, at first a young man's liking for a maid, had been fanned
by opposition till now it had become a slow fire consuming his
marrow. He thought of her all day, and in the night he lay awake
biting his pillows, to prevent himself crying aloud for very
loneliness of spirit. Bella remained at home with her mother, and he
never saw her now, but her picture was too indelibly printed on his
imagination for propinquity to add to her charms: absence but
idealized them. He went about his work brooding eternally over his
loss, and for the first time no one ventured to intrude upon his
solitude. They laughed at him behind his back for a soft who had
been jilted at the altar: but he had acquired a fresh dignity, which
saved him from open ridicule or unsolicited advances. In those days
when his trouble lay heavy upon him he shunned human creatures and
found companionship only in the society of his horses. Their large
calm soothed his fevered nerves. They grew to know his step, and
whinnied when they heard him coming: and they would caress him with
their tender muzzles as he rubbed them down with the soft hissing
noise that they loved. For in sorrow animals are our most comforting
companions: they are so silent and placid and self-contained, 'not
one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.'
But at the end of six months a fresh shock convulsed the
neighborhood. As on the first occasion it was Hannah that brought
the news to the forge, but this time it was the morning, and there
was nobody there but the blacksmith and his wife.
'Have ye heerd tell what's come to oul' Peggy's Bella,' she asked,
standing breathlessly in the doorway, and added without waiting for a
reply, 'she had a child last night.'
'You don't tell me,' cried Mrs. Mac in amazement.
'They had the oul' wumman from the Poorhouse there ahl night, an' I
just seen the dishpensary docther lave the dure this minute wid me
own two eyes.'
'An' her such a soft-spoken crathur,' continued Mrs. Mac; 'ye'd think
that butther wudn't melt in her mouth, but it's ahlways them soort
that goes wrong.'
Swiftly the news spread, and by half-past twelve at dinnertime all
the workers in the fields about had left their haymaking, for it was
harvest-time once more, to gather at this central spot and discuss
the situation.
At first everybody was incredulous: such an event was almost unheard
of in a community where chastity was a tradition, and insufficient
nutriment kept the blood thin and the passions cold. But soon the
testimony of a neighbor who had been called in put the question of
fact beyond doubt.
'What did I tell ye about Andy Sweeny's dahter?' said old Patsey,
taking credit for his hall-prophecy in the fuller light of after
events.
'Ay, ay, deed so,' murmured the group in chorus.
Then curiosity centred itself on the point of who was the father of
the child.
'It cudn't be Terry Gallagher, now,' said Mrs. Mac judicially, 'troth
I'll be boun' he knew nahthin' about it, the crathur.'
'Ah, him is it?' said Owen contemptuously, 'he's too great a fule.'
'He's had a lucky escape anyways,' continued Mrs. Mac meditatively,
'I wunner now why she didn't marry him when she had the chanst, an'
no wan wud ha' been a hate the wiser. Oul' Peggy'll be quare an' mad
that she stopped the weddin'.'
'I cud make a boul' guess then,' broke in Hannah, who had been
waiting for an opening. 'I'll houl' ye I know who owns it, an' more
shame for her to lave her own wans for them as doesn't want her now
that she's in trouble. I'm thinkin' it's some of the quality has a
finger in it.'
'Betther kape a still tongue in yer head about the quality,'
interrupted the blacksmith hastily, 'laste said's soonest mended.'
'Here's himself,' interjected one of the group by the door warningly,
as Terry came into sight, climbing the hill towards them. As he drew
near it could be seen that his steps were hurried and uneven, and his
face as white as chalk.
He came straight up to them, and asked in a tense whisper, 'Is it
thrue?' looking from one to the other.
They all avoided his eye and looked uneasily away, except Owen, in
whose breast the memory of his self-humiliation of six months ago
still rankled. He stepped a pace forward, and answered,--
'Aye, it sames you was good enough for her afther ahl.'
His cousin looked at him with a lack-lustre eye, as though he did not
take in the meaning of the words, and, encouraged by his quiescence,
Owen continued in a more pronounced tone,--
'More like it was her that wasn't good enough for yous.'
For a moment Terry stood rooted to the spot, while the blood surged
upwards and veiled his eyesight with a mist, then he crouched and
sprang headlong at his adversary's throat with an inarticulate snarl
like a wild beast.
Owen was borne backwards by the impetus of his weight, and fell
striking his head against the spike of the anvil: and Terry was torn
from him by two of the men, his eyes staring and his limbs trembling
with rage. When they released their hold of him, his sinews, all
unstrung by the violence of his passion, gave way beneath him and he
collapsed in a heap upon the floor. For a moment he sat there: then
he rose to his knees, and thence to his feet, and staggered out of
the door and down the road, reeling to and fro in the sunlight like a
drunken man.
'Who'd ha' thought it?' said Patsey, looking after him: 'It's
wunnerful what stuff a taste of the gurls does be makin' into a man.
Yon wan was a suckin' calf a while ago, and now he's a young bull.'
'May the divil roast him,' exclaimed Owen, scrambling to his feet,
and looking regretfully at the pool of his own blood upon the floor.
'He has me disthroyed, but I'll be even wid him yit.'
When his momentary rage had died down a great tumult was left in
Terry's mind. The scene which he had just passed through had brought
sharply home to him the attitude that the neighbors would take
towards Bella's transgression. He pictured her to himself
defenceless before her persecutors, and longed to give her the
shelter of his arm and of his name. But could he offer to marry her
still, and consent to be pointed at for the remainder of his life as
the husband of a wanton? for scandal dies hard in the country. On
the one side was ranged the whole force of a public opinion which it
had never entered into his head to question until now, and of his own
inherited racial instincts, and on the other his great love for this
girl. He could not put it into words, but he felt dimly within him
that it was she herself that he loved, and that her outward actions
did not affect her inward essence, that he knew her better than any
neighbor, and was a better judge of her than blind convention. He
was not strong enough yet to be himself in the face of his world, but
the balance wavered ever more deeply on the side of this new self
that he was discovering. That he should have an opinion of his own
at all was a great advance upon anything that he could have felt a
year ago. But there is no forcing-house for the growth of character
like disappointed love.
At the end of a fortnight he was still wavering in mind, but he could
no longer rest without seeing Bella. So he put on his holiday suit,
and went down the road towards her mother's cottage; but this time he
did not wear the scarlet tie. As he approached the house he realized
that it had a forlorn and neglected air, as though it shared the
fallen estimation of its occupants; the grass grew thickly in the
front yard and upon the thatched roof, and the geraniums upon the
window-sill were withered and unwatered.
He pushed open the half-door and entered unasked, as was his wont.
Bella was seated in the window, working at her sprigging and rocking
a small wooden cradle with her foot; at the sound of his footstep she
looked up with a strained hungry light in her eye, but at the sight
of him a shade of disappointment flitted across her face and she
continued to look past him over his shoulder as though expecting some
one else. The old woman was seated on a three-legged stool crouched
over the hearth while she stirred an iron pot of stirabout with a
wooden pot-stick; she did not even turn her head when he entered.
'God save all here,' said Terry, awkwardly standing in the middle of
the floor. His head nearly touched the blackened beam which ran
across the middle of the room and supported a half-floor, whence the
mingled smell of apples and dried onions came distinctly to his
nostrils. He coughed and sat down upon the edge of the nearest
chair, tucking his feet well under the rail and crunching his soft
felt hat nervously in his hands. The swish of the thread being drawn
through the embroidery was the only sound that broke the stillness,
as he watched the regular sweep of Bella's arm against the
window-pane.
'What's yer wull, Terry Gallagher?' snapped old Peggy abruptly, after
a time.
Terry turned his hat over several times, examined the lining very
carefully, and finally replied to her question with another:
'Why didn't ye let on to me yon time, mother, and let me marry her
while there was time?'
At this heathenish question old Peggy rose to her full height and
pointed the pot-stick accusingly at her daughter, as she said in a
tone of concentrated bitterness:
'I wudn't let a wumman like yon soil an honest man's hearth.'
Bella sat unmoved, without taking the slightest notice of the words.
Her mother and Terry belonged to a world outside of her which no
longer affected her by their phantom movements.
But at this embodiment of the ghostly voices which he had been
fighting against so long Terry sprang to his feet. In the face of
concrete opposition a blind antagonism seized him which swallowed up
all hesitation, and he dared to be individual. He took a stride
forward, and, throwing out one arm towards the girl, said in a loud
voice as though to penetrate her understanding:
'Bella, darlin', I'll marry ye now, av ye'll have me.'
Bella looked up with a faint smile of surprise, and opened her lips
to answer. At that moment a thin cry came from the cradle at her
feet; at the sound, while she still looked at him, a light crept over
her face which transfigured it.
Then Terry knew that he had seen for the first time the love-look on
a woman's face, and it was not for him. And, boor as he was, the
knowledge came home to him at that instant, that for any one to marry
her save the man who had the power to raise that look upon her face
would be a sacrilege.
He turned with drooped head, and stumbled out of the cabin without a
word.