ROSY AT FURRY FARM
Kitty Grennan was just after starting the children off for school, of a
dark, rainy morning, coming up to the Christmas. She was readying-over
the house, stooping to make down a fire for the pig’s pot, when she
heard a quick, heavy step outside, and in comes Dan, very hurried.
“Musha then, Dan,” said Kitty, a bit short, “what brings you back here
so soon?”
She was feeling that she had a lot to get through, and that she could
do it better if there was no one in the place only herself.
“Sure, I thought,” she went on, “that if I seen you here by
dinner-time, it would be the soonest I need expect, after all you told
me last night had to be done, below there at that gap, to keep the
cattle from breaking out of their own fields.... But Dan, agra! is
there anything the matter with ye? You look pale-looking, someways ...
as if you were after seeing something not right ... a ghost or....
Gashly white you are indeed, God help ye!”
“The sorra ha’porth is wrong with me!” said Dan, “but as for what I
seen...! troth, it may be a ghost, or it may not! But the appearance
there was upon it was of little Rosy Rafferty, that marrit Art
Heffernan ... and we heard last week was after burying him, God rest
his sowl! supposing it’s true that he’s gone....”
“And is it true?”
“Och, so she says, and that poor Art was only lying a short time,
though out of his health for long enough ... but I must be off now....”
“Stop a minute, Dan! What brings her here now?”
“Wirra, if I know! going back home to the poor old mother, she says.
And now, will ye lave the way, and let me out on the door?”
Kitty was standing between him and it.
“To the mother! And is it that Rosy doesn’t know?”
“The sorra word she knows!”
“And you didn’t let on to her about it?”
“No! nor wouldn’t, for a pound-note. Let me get out of this place,
woman dear, I tell ye. She’ll be here in no time, and I’ll not stop to
be seeing her....”
“Ora, Dan, acushla, won’t you wait even till I’ll make her sensible of
what’s after happening...?”
“I’ll not! Where’s the use? It’s woman’s work, so it is! Let me go!
Sure, haven’t I to be off about me business!”
And with that, Dan made a bolt through the door, and was out of sight,
before you could look about you.
“What will I do at all at all?” said Kitty to herself, trembling and
watching the door.
She hadn’t long to wait, fortunately, for that would only have made her
more cowardly ... when up comes Rosy, and she with a young child in her
arms. As thin as a rake, Rosy was, and her face as white as the snow.
“Och, Rosy, and is it yourself that’s in it!” said Kitty, speaking very
fast; “come in here, _ahagur_, and sit down by the fire! Here, let me
take the child from you; you must be tired! Sure, they say a hen is
heavy if you carry it far enough, let alone a babby the size of this of
yours, the Lord love her, I pray!”
Kitty talked like that, because she was so upset and confused. The
baby was no size, scarcely. But it’s never too easy to know what to say
to them that are in trouble. So it was the last word she wanted that
Kitty could lay her tongue to then.
Rosy just sat down, and let Kitty take the child from her. And her two
hands dropped into her lap, and she sat there, with the big, hollow
eyes of her looking, looking all around, as if she was expecting to
find there something she had lost; and every minute giving a bit of a
cough, very low down and weak-sounding, as if that was all she was able
to do. Her hands were burning hot, but she shivered now and then, and
the wet from her clothes began rising in steam, with the heat of the
fire, for Kitty had her by the hearth.
“Well, and how are ye yourself?” Kitty went on, “and this little one
is cold, the cratyureen! I must get her a sup of warm milk. She’s
about the one size with our own babby here, that’s asleep above in the
room....”
“Ay, poor little Bride, that is,” said Rosy; “she’s all I have now,
since I lost poor Art....”
“We heard about that, but only a bare sketch of it, and couldn’t
rightly believe it,” said Kitty; “God help us all! the fine boy that he
was! And was he long sick, the poor fellah?”
“Ay! long enough for he to be tired of his bed, and of seeing me put
about for the want of his wages. That was what had him worse! It was a
chill he took, from a wetting he got, one night that one of the other
van-drivers was too drunk to look after his own horse, when they got
back to the stables. So Art did this man’s work, when he had his own
done, the way he wouldn’t maybe lose his job, let alone the poor horse,
that couldn’t be left without his feed and rub-down. That left Art very
late getting home. And you couldn’t warm him. Pains in the bones he
took. There was nothing I heard of but I tried with him. But all was of
no avail!”
“Glory be to God! to think he took his death so simple!”
“Ay and suffered terrible,” said Rosy, still looking all round the
kitchen, and talking quite hard and unconcerned you’d think; “and until
then, we had great comfort! He was earning fine pay at that job. But
it’s not long the purse will last, when there’s nothing coming in, and
a great deal going out, for medicine and doctors and nourishment....
But what I thought terrible bad of, was not being able to get down
here to see me poor mother! not for a long time. I managed to send
her a few little things, to put her over the Hollintide; but sure well
I know, she’d have given all the tea and sugar that ever came out of
Dublin, for the one sight of me!”
“Ay, so she would!” said Kitty; “but she wasn’t too badly off for
company then ... we went over to see her....”
“Well, and how did she appear then?”
“The best!” said Kitty; “Dark Moll was stopping with her at that time,
in the nights, anyway. And your mother was looking very comfortable and
all done out very nice; and the house the same.”
Kitty saw no occasion for telling Rosy that it was in bed the Widdah
Rafferty was that day, and scarcely able to turn herself round; and her
poor eyes strained crooked in her head, watching the door, for Rosy and
Art, that she was expecting down from town. And it was Kitty herself
that had swept over the place, and had settled up the old woman with a
white handkerchief about her neck, and a clean cap from under the bed,
where she was saving it up for Rosy to see on her, the way she would be
someway decent-looking then.
“I’m glad to get that account of her,” said Rosy; “many’s the time me
and Art spoke over her, and how we could not prevail with her to come
to us. We had her once, but she couldn’t content herself in Dublin.
Cart-ropes wouldn’t hold her; only grousing to get back to her own
little house; lonesome, she said, she felt, for the dresser with the
bits of chaneys of cups and jugs that she was looking at all her life;
and sure, the weight of them were no good! only cracked so that they
wouldn’t hold anything!”
“Sure it’s just whatever a body is used to!” said Kitty; “I chanced to
be going past her house, the day she got back to it. You’d wonder, to
see how proud she was, when she picked the key of the door out from
under the furze-bush, where she had hid it, when she went away....”
“Just two months was all she stopped with us,” said Rosy.
“A bit puzzled she was, at first, to open the door,” said Kitty,
“because the grass and weeds had all grown up round about the
furze-bush, and it was a good while before we could get the key. But
it was there, just as she had left it, for Heffernan never went next
nor near the place although it is on his land. But it appeared as if he
knew nothing about her going, or coming back either.
“So we opened the door that was stiff, and the key rusty and had to
be humoured. And there, when we got in, everything was just as she had
left it, even to a few sods of turf piled against the wall. And in that
way, we had no delay in lighting a bit of fire. I stopped awhile with
her, and got her in a sup of spring water. And she had plenty of little
vittles, that she said you had sent with her....”
“Ay, ’twas little she’d take from me ... and never could get to know
why she wouldn’t stop altogether!” said Rosy again, very pitiful, as if
she couldn’t but keep thinking of that.
“I never could find out rightly, what fault she had to being in
Dublin,” said Kitty; “but for one thing, says she to me, ‘It’s a
fright, so it is, the way they do be going along with the funerals in
Dublin! the horses trotting their living best, as if it was a hurry
the people were in, to get shut of whoever was dead, and have them out
of their sight, once the breath of life leaves the body! They appear
to have no nature in them at all, there beyant in the Big Smoke,’ she
says, ‘so much so that I’d far liefer to be at home in me own little
place here,’ she says, ‘with the little things and the ways that I was
always used to,’ she says.”
“Whethen now, she needn’t have minded that!” said Rosy; “we could have
brought up any of her own little _curey-careys_ that she had any wish
for ... and as for funerals! the Lord knows how she got such a notion
as that! Sure wouldn’t we have brought her back to Ardenoo, and buried
her in the old graveyard of Clough-na-Rinka, where all the family does
be buried? Poor Art! his people all belong to Dublin and it was with
them I laid him. But we’d have brought her back here, and laid her
alongside me poor father. She that was particular about his funeral!
She made him be carried the longest way round, and she went to the
greatest trouble ever you knew, for fear they’d be opening the grave
for him of a Tuesday.”
“I often heard that it was no right thing to do,” said Kitty. Neither
it is.
“He was worthy of it all, whatever!” said Rosy, letting herself go
back on the old days when she had both father and mother with her;
“dear! the kind father he was to me! ‘Look at your long _scursheen_
of a daughter!’ me mother would cry to him betimes, ‘off there she
is, idling and playing football with the boys! she has a right to be
checked!’ and all the answer me father would make was, ‘Let her alone!
the world will well larn her! she’ll have her own share of trouble,
time enough!’ And sure, so I had!” said Rosy, and with that word, she
began to cry.
“Ora, God comfort ye!” said Kitty, crying herself then. And she laid
the child down out of her arms, and went to compassionate Rosy.
But Rosy stood up, and flung away from her, and then threw herself down
upon the settle, and “Let me alone!” she said, “until I cry me fill!”
“Do that, God help ye!” said Kitty; “sure it will only ease your heart;
only not to be fretting too much....”
“And why wouldn’t I fret for Art, and cry him too, and he the best man
to me that ever stood in shoes! No matter what notion I took, even the
time I got the feathery hat with his week’s wages, he never as much as
said to me, ‘Ill you done it, Rosy!’”
And Kitty thought to let her have her cry out, and that she would say
nothing more to stop her. But Rosy lifted herself up again at that word
about Art, and said she, “What at all am I doing spending me time here,
instead of going off home at once? Sure won’t me mother be as bad as
meself, very nigh-hand, about Art, that she often said was the same as
a son to her?”
And she was making for the door, when Kitty said, “Rosy, acushla,
won’t you stop a bit longer, till the weight of the rain is over? And
I’m just about hanging down the kettle, to wet a cup of tea. It will
put some heart into ye. Sure it will only have your mother worse, if
you were to go in and you so poor-looking in the face. Fretting she’ll
be, then; and you with a cold upon you!”
Rosy was after giving a few little coughs out of her again.
“I’ll wait for no tea here!” said Rosy; “can’t I get all I want, at
home with her?”
“Don’t be asking to go there, Rosy!” said Kitty. And there she stopped;
and of all the white, frightened faces that ever was seen, Rosy’s was
the worst.
“Why? is _she_ dead too?” says she, as calm and quiet as if she was
just asking, “Is she gone to the chapel?”
“Och no! not at all! Dead? Why, what put that foolishness into your
head? But ... well, you see, she wasn’t to say too well at all this
length of time....”
“Sure that’s no news!” said Rosy; “out of her health she has been for
long enough. And isn’t that all the more reason for I to be with her,
that knows all her little ways...?”
“Very weakly entirely in herself she was, latterly,” said Kitty, “and I
could see no improvements in her, and ... and had no great comfort....”
“I used to be dreaming a power about her!” said Rosy.
“And it’s a long step, up that boreen, where your little place is, and
I wasn’t so well able to go look after your mother,” said Kitty, “when
this last baby came; a real little _shaan_ she is, very little and
donny in herself, and very contrary and cross, would do nothing only
bawl at first, so that I mightn’t lay her out of me arms, day or night
... and....”
Kitty stopped a minute, not knowing what she ought to say next.
“Well?” says Rosy, with the two burning eyes of her fastened on Kitty’s
face.
“Well, sure, Dan used to give her a look-in, as often as he could. And
he brought me word how that Mrs. Rafferty said she wasn’t too lonesome
at all. And that Moll Reilly was the best of company to her, bringing
her all the news of the whole country; and real useful and handy, in
spite of her having no use of her eyes; would get a few sprigs for the
fire or a sup of water from the well, as handy as any one else ...
and....”
Kitty stopped again here. It was much like a baulking horse being
brought up to a jump and slipping off to one side or the other, every
time you get close to it.
“She’ll not want Moll any more now!” said Rosy.
“No, indeed she’ll not!” said Kitty.
Of course, what she was thinking was, that where Mrs. Rafferty was at
that present, she’d have no need of thinking about the fire or water
either, only wait and take what she’d get, one of a crowd of other old
women.... “And so, as I was saying, I went up to the boreen to see your
mother, as soon as ever I could get to put the baby down and leave her
... and do you know, Rosy, it was the poor way I found your mother in!”
Kitty was beginning to think that it might be as good for her to say
something like that, so that Rosy might be got to understand how things
were, and that her mother was better away from the old home.
“Lying in the bed she was,” said Kitty, “and not able to sit up or move
herself; and the fire gone black out ... and no little refreshment
within her reach, only a bucket of cold water, that she could be
taking little sups out of, till Moll would be back at dark. But still,
she was contented enough, and said it was what Moll was real good
to her; and would share with her whatever little things she’d have
gathered up through the neighbours on her rounds; a grain of tea or a
bit of butter or maybe a cut of bacon; whatever it might be she’d....”
“She’ll not need to be depending out of Moll and her old _pucks_ of
bags any longer!” said Rosy, a bit proud in herself.
The Raffertys were a most respectable family always. Poor they might
be, and were, too; but they never said anything about that, or would
make a poor mouth, only strive to put the best foot foremost among the
neighbours. “And I’ll not forget it,” Rosy went on, “to poor Moll,
nor let her be the worse of any little attention or kindness that she
showed to me mother, all this time!”
God help her! and only He knew what poor Rosy had in her mind then, or
what way she thought she would have of rewarding Moll! But Rosy never
thought much. If she did, it wouldn’t have been the big surprise to her
that it was, to hear all Kitty had to tell her, in the end, about the
poor old mother.
Rosy stood up, and was making to go out, when Kitty said, “Arrah, won’t
you wait awhile with me?”
“It’s too long I’ve been already, delaying!”
“But sure, listen...!” and then Kitty stopped.
“Well?” said Rosy, half impatient.
“She’s ... she’s not there...!”
“What’s that you’re after saying to me? that me mother’s not in it?”
“Ora, Rosy _alanna_, don’t take it too hard! but you see, it was only
worse she was getting, and a week ago we sent for the doctor. And he
said it was no way for she to be left there with no one all day, only
herself; that it was the best of care she needed ... and she with no
use of herself, nor couldn’t even turn in the bed. And who was there,
to mind her? I could only go an odd time ... and so ... and so ... they
sent the sick-car and she was took off to the Union ... and....”
Kitty had to stop at that, for she and Dan had gone to help to lift
the poor weakly old woman from her bed into the sick-car, and she
remembered the white face of her, and the way she was shaken and
rattled from side to side, as they drove off with her, and Dan locked
the door, after they quenching the bit of fire upon the hearth....
“To the Union! Och, Mother! the Workhouse...!”
There’s all that Rosy said.
“She’ll be well minded there, Rosy ... by what they say!” said Kitty,
crying down big tears.
But Rosy appeared to hear nothing, only that one word, “The Union!” and
she jumped up, and off with her out of the door, and down the boreen,
flying through the pours of rain.
“The Lord help us now!” said Kitty; “what at all will I do? And the
child wakening up to cry!”
She ran to the cradle, and whipped up the poor little strange baby to
comfort it; and then back with her to the door. Dan was just slingeing
into sight, from the back of the turf-clamp.
“What came over you to stay away like that?” said Kitty to him; “and
there she’s gone racing off, once she heard about the mother being took
off ... and it raining buckets down out of the skies upon her ... and
she wid a cough....”
“Why did you let her go?”
“If you had stopped in, as I asked you, you’d know why!” said Kitty;
“but it’s to the Union she’s making now.... What ails you, to be
standing there talking, instead of going after her?”
“And what will I do, when I do catch her?” said Dan, very meek and
humble.
“What is there to do, only go with her? Isn’t the little ass yoked
there, that you had out with fodder to the bullocks this morning?
God be with the day the same ass fell lame, and had to be kept at
Heffernan’s.... Marg that was coming back from the fair with her....
But do you be off now ... here, take the ould umbrell’ with you, and
... and see here! the quilt from the bed will help to keep some of the
wet off her ... and let you throw a sack about your own shoulders....”
Dan did all that, and started the old donkey off as well as he could.
Short and sweet like an ass’s gallop, as the saying is, and she soon
failed at it, but he was able to overtake Rosy. And as soon as Kitty,
that was watching from the door, saw that he had got her settled into
the cart, she went back to Rosy’s baby, and began to cry.
“And the others all gone from her! Dublin must be a hard place to rear
a child. To think this is the only one she has left, God comfort her!”
But it wasn’t long Kitty could spend lamenting like that. She had too
much to do, what with minding the two babies, and warming and feeding
the other children, coming in wet and perished from school. So she
didn’t feel till it was dark night down upon her. And then she began
to think there must be something wrong, Dan was so long about getting
back. And she felt uneasy, the night was so hard. It seemed as if the
rain was never to stop.
Once she had the children all in bed and asleep, there wasn’t a sound
to be heard, only the dreep, dreep of the wet from the thatch, and
the crying of the wind in the chimney. She was sitting by the hearth,
rocking the cradle. Every minute was like an hour. Kitty would look up
at the old clock, and think something must have stopped it, the hands
were moving round so slowly.
Suddenly, at long last, the door opened, and in staggered Dan. Kitty
jumped up with her heart in her mouth; she was so spent with the long
loneliness and the watching, that even to see him, though she had been
expecting no one else, gave her a great start.
“Musha, Dan, what’s ‘on’ ye at all?” she said, taking him by the hand;
for he was so unsteady on his legs that she began to think he had drink
taken, though it was seldom Dan took a sup at all.
He never made her an answer, only let her put him sitting in front of
the fire, and there he remained and not a word out of his head; and the
wet steaming out of his clothes and he white with cold and pure misery.
Kitty was frightened when she got a good look at him. But she said
nothing, only gave him some hot tea, and when he had that taken, and
his wet brogues were pulled off, “Thank God!” he said, “that I’m safe
back again!”
“Ay, agra,” said Kitty; “but where did you leave poor Rosy? I never
thought she’d stop away from the child, above all....”
“Stop away? ay, and that’s what she’s apt to do!”
“Ora, Dan, what’s this you’re saying?”
And Kitty began to cry again.
The life was coming back to Dan and the colour to his face, and said
he, “I’ll tell ye now! no, poor Rosy you’ll never see again.... She’ll
scarce pass the night, the Lord have mercy on her soul!”
“Oh, Dan! is it the truth you’re telling me?”
“It is, it is, God’s truth! You spoke of me looking as if I was after
seeing a ghost, when I came in here this morning, to warn you that she
was coming. Well, when I was going along with her in the cart to the
Union, the heart would die in me betimes, the way she’d be going on....”
“What way?”
“Och, laughing mostly, and talking to herself. ‘Poor Art!’ she’d cry;
‘the day he near cut the thumb off himself, instead of one of the seed
potatoes!’ and then about some pickther they got from Tommy the Crab
... and something about Wild Geese ... romancing she must have been. I
could not know the half of what she was saying.
“Well, when we got to the Union, we were both as wet as if we were
after being ducked in the sea. I lifted Rosy down out of the cart, and
by good luck we were just in time to get in. They were about shutting
the gates.
“But in any case, they would have been hard-set to keep Rosy out! She
just ran straight on, and not a word out of her! I managed to get a
hold of her arm, and kept her in a bit, till I knew what way we ought
to go through that big awful place. I asked here and I asked there, and
at last we were put in charge of a young slip of a ... ward-maid, they
called her. And she got orders to bring us to a certain ward, and we’d
find Mrs. Rafferty there.
“Of all the cold, bare places ... the long passages and the white
walls and stone floors ... it would give you the shivers, only to look
about you there!
“At last we got to the ward, and you’d wonder where all the old women
came from, to fill it! It was as big as the chapel beyant ... but as
large as it was, it was small enough for all it had to hold. You could
scarcely drop a pin between the beds. And some of the women were asleep
and a few lay there middling quiet. But the weight of them were sitting
up, talking and laughing, or fighting with one another; and a few were
crying to themselves. And most of them had little weeny tin boxes in
their hands that they held out, begging you for a pinch of snuff. You’d
have to pity them, they were so anxious for it!
“We were brought to a bed at the far end of the room.
“‘There’s Mrs. Rafferty!’ said the ward-maid.
“Rosy stooped down.
“‘Mother!’ says she; and then she gave a start.
“‘That’s not her at all!’ said Rosy.
“‘Are ye sure? Look again!’ said the ward-maid, quite unconcerned.
“Rosy put her hand on my arm; it was like a live coal.
“‘Take me away!’ says she.
“We went through three rooms more, like that. Raffertys seemed as thick
as blackberries there. At every step, Rosy’s hand got heavier and her
face wilder.
“‘There’s only the one more,’ says the girl, ‘in that bed ...’ and she
pointed to a corner where there was a screen up; ‘troth, I believe yous
are late! Ay, the bed’s empty; she must have died since I was round
this morning ... sure I could have told yous....’
“‘I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying!’ says Rosy; and her
face was like scarlet now.
“‘Plaze yourselves!’ says the girl very impudent and hardened.
“But on the minute, up came a nun; she looked very nice and kind. But
what could she do! only bring us to make sure, where the dead does be
put ... and I won’t spake of that! But Rosy just saw that it was her
very mother that was lying there ... no more respect for her than if it
was a dumb brute mother-naked ... and so Rosy gave one little sigh out
of her, and sank away down from me, on to the cold, hard floor....
“In a dead faint she was. They got the doctor, to see if he could bring
her to.
“‘Sir,’ says I, ‘is there much a trouble to her?’
“‘There is, indeed,’ he says, ‘but there won’t be long!’ and then he
said something about her lungs having been in a bad way for some time
past; and now getting this chill, and the shock and all. There was
little could be done for Rosy; all the doctors in Dublin wouldn’t save
her.
“‘She’ll scarce pass the night,’ he said; and went off, for he appeared
to be very busy, and tired-looking he was, too. The nun and a couple
more carried off poor Rosy, and I waited about, thinking to get to see
the nun again. And so I did, after a long time. And she said I might go
home, for I could do no more there.
“‘You can’t see the poor young woman again,’ says she; ‘but it makes no
differ, for she knows no one; and I’ll see she gets proper care.’
“‘Oh sure I know that, mam,’ says I; ‘but if only she could have seen
the poor mother, just the once...!’
“So she questioned me a bit, up and down; and I related the whole
thing to her, and said, I thought very bad of leaving Rosy that was a
neighbour and so well acquainted with us both, there by herself, if
death was coming upon her; and says the nun, ‘I give you my word again,
she wouldn’t know you; she’s not aware of anything now, she’s so far
through! But I’ll promise you that I’ll look after her, so long as the
breath is in her, and I’ll see that everything possible is done for
her; and let you get off back home ... you’re wet and tired....’
“So she moved off, and I got the little ass ... she was no good to go
at all, by reason of the rain, that had her powerless ... but she’s
like all asses in that! But that’s what has me so late. And now we’ll
go to bed; I’ll have to be up at cockcrow in the morning....”
“For what?” says Kitty, “and you so tired!”
“That’s what I am, too; as betten as the road. But I must give word at
Heffernan’s of what’s after taking place!”
“Them two babbies is sleeping very peaceable,” says Kitty, taking a
last look at her own and Rosy’s, that she had put lying beside one
another, snuggled up like a pair of kittens on a shakedown in the
corner; “’twas God that done it, that poor Rosy left that child of hers
here with me, and she making off through the rain this morning....”
“Troth, I dunno!” says Dan; “I’m thinking we had enough of our own
here, without that little girleen of Art Heffernan’s as well!”
“Won’t we have plenty for all, with a blessing?” said Kitty; “and the
way they do be knocked about in the Union! I couldn’t bear the thoughts
of it!”
Dan said no more then. He went off, as soon as he could, the next
morning. And Kitty was to spend another lonely day, for he never came
back till it was night.
“Well?” said Kitty, running out to the door to meet him.
“Well, I went up,” said Dan, sitting down upon the settle, and
beginning to tell the whole story, “and they both were there,
listening, and never said a word, till I happened to mention the old
name; something I said about Rosy and Art _Heffernan_ do ye mind? And
the name had no sooner crossed me lips when ‘Yoke up!’ says Mickey;
‘and let you come along with me, Dan!’”
“‘For what?’ says Marg.
“What answer he made her, or if he made any at all, I can’t tell you,
but away we drove, Mickey and meself. And when we got to the Union,
there! wasn’t poor little Rosy in the dead-house too, alongside the
mother; the two of them lying there together....”
“The Lord receive them and mark them to grace, I pray!” said Kitty,
and she crossed herself.
“Heffernan went straight off,” said Dan; “and he never cried crack,
till he had all arranged to have them took to the Furry Farm, back to
his own place. And, moreover, has a funeral and wake ordered, in the
greatest of style!”
“The Lord reward him, whatever!” said Kitty; “... and the child...?
what did they say about her?”
“Whethen now, I dunno,” said Dan, looking a bit ashamed.
“I’ll go bail, you never as much as spoke of her!” said Kitty, quite
jealous about Rosy’s baby; “men does be very queer betimes. But you had
your share to be talking over!”
“Ay, we had so,” said Dan; “and along with all, Marg never gave me the
opportunity; very strange and silent in herself she was, all through.”
“Do you tell me that!” said Kitty.
“I was thinking in me own mind,” said Dan, “could she have any thought
of all the times ould Heffernan used to be going to Rafferty’s, and the
talk there was about he going to marry Rosy!”
“Ay, indeed!” said Kitty, “and the Widdah, the innocent poor woman that
she was! saying all she’d do, when she and Rosy would be settled in at
the Furry Farm!”
“Little she thought, those days, that it would be feet foremost the two
of them would be, going there!” said Dan.
Kitty thought a minute and then said she, “And as for whatever courting
old Mickey had with Rosy, sure Marg mightn’t mind that. ’Twas a thing
of nothing! Look at the len’th of time Heffernan was looking out, till
he got Marg to take him! He was always to be made a hare of, the same
Mickey, till now that he has her to look to and make him respected....
And neither might Marg care for the laugh that went round ... sure,
poor Art and Rosy weren’t half as bad as we ourselves....”
Fretted and all as she was, Kitty couldn’t but smile at the thought of
the trick she and Dan played on Heffernan.
“Marg will see that no one makes a fool of Mickey now, at any rate!”
said Dan; “but to give every one their merit, she’s as anxious as he is
now, to pay every respect to them that are gone.”
Kitty began to cry again at that.
“God’s good, that brought mother and child together in the latter end!”
said she; “and sure, they were just made upon one another, Rosy and
the Widdah Rafferty....”
The funeral took place, and a most pitiful sight it was, to see the two
coffins going off together, past the end of the little boreen where the
Raffertys used to live, and on to the graveyard of Clough-na-Rinka.
There was a fine wake before that; full and plenty of everything, so
that even Dark Moll hadn’t a word to say, only compliments.
“But what else could a body expect?” says she to Marg, “your mother’s
child couldn’t but do the thing decent, when you’d go about it! and the
same at the Furry Farm itself. A good dependence Mr. Heffernan is for
all that are living under him, and of course that’s what Kitty and Dan
Grennan are looking to, when they were so ready to agree to keep the
babby; and it a Heffernan, too!”
Marg made no answer to Moll about this. It’s a thing often to be
remarked, how that a man and his wife will grow to be like one another.
Marg Molally had never been much of a talker; and now that she was Marg
Heffernan, she wasn’t getting much practice at chin-wagging, and had
grown nearly as silent as Mickey himself.
She said nothing, but what Moll had remarked made her think. It’s a
little puff that will make a blazing fire. Moll had put into words what
had been floating through her own mind.
The little baby at Grennan’s! and it a Heffernan! Well Marg was aware,
though Mickey had never said so, that he’d wish to have one of the old
name to come after him. And she shared that feeling, in a way. She was
beginning to feel a pride in the Furry Farm and everything about the
place that was her home now. Why wouldn’t Art’s child have some rights
there? The people used to be saying, before Art had gone off with Rosy,
that he stood a good chance for coming in for whatever Mickey had to
leave. Then why not this baby?
But what would Heffernan himself say to this? He mightn’t care for it
at all. There would be the expense.... Marg had always been a careful
girl, but she was more so than ever now. She couldn’t be near and
narrow, like Mickey himself; it wasn’t in her. But she knew he’d like
to see her saving. So she got the fashion of it, to humour the old man
that was so good to her in his own way.... And how would he like to see
money being spent on Art’s child?
And a child that wasn’t her own! how would that be? Marg Heffernan was
really puzzled about it. She couldn’t let the thoughts of the little
child out of her mind; it kept coming between her and her work in
the daytime and her rest at night. And it was all the harder on her,
because she kept it all to herself. Speak of it to Mickey? She couldn’t
do that. If he’d say “no!” away would go the dreams.... For she never
went against her husband in anything. But if only....
There’s how she was considering the thing, over and over, up and down
and every way, one evening that she was crossing the fields to Kitty
Grennan’s. The fuss of the wake and funeral was over by then, and the
Furry Farm was more like itself again.
Before she reached the house at all, she could hear the singing and
laughing and noise going on inside, the same as ever, only more so.
And when she got there, and was leaning in over the half-door, there,
hadn’t Kitty the big washing-tub over by the fire, on the floor, and
she kneeling beside it, talking and chirping away, that it would do you
good to be listening to her.
“God bless your work!” said Marg.
“... And you, too!” says Kitty, just barely looking up at her, she was
so busy.
“What’s this at all you’re at, woman dear?”
“What indeed, only bathing me two little babbies I am!” said Kitty,
laughing through the steam.
Marg stood a minute, and then she said, “Is it that yous have that
child here yet?”
“Where else?” said Kitty.
“Well, I dunno,” said Marg; “I suppose every one knows their own
business best ...” and whatever came over her, to make her say that,
she didn’t know; as if she was faulting the Grennans.
But it made no odds what she said. Kitty gave her no answer. Maybe she
didn’t hear what Marg was after saying. She just burst out laughing.
“Ora, Marg, will you look-at-here!” she said; “you’d think little Miss
Heffernan, as I do call poor Rosy’s baby, was striving to r’ise herself
up out of the tub of water, the way she could get a look at you! She’s
the cunningest little crature...!”
Marg went in at that, and over beside the tub.
“Take care! take care, Kitty!” she said; “maybe you’d let one of them
slip ... and wouldn’t they be very easy drownded, and they so small!”
“Och, the sorra fear!” said Kitty; “I could be handling a half-score of
them, and be making me soul, at the same time!”
Of course, she was a practised hand by then.
“Let me! ah! let me be at them, too!” said Marg; and down with her on
her two knees, and began at the baby that was nearest to her in the
tub. And when she felt the soft little body in her hands, and the warm,
pleasant water with the soap-bubbles floating and winking upon it, her
own eyes began to shine, and her cheeks grew like roses. Ten years
younger she appeared to Kitty to become, that minute; and a shy, happy
smile on her mouth, like a girl again.
“There now,” said Kitty, lifting the other baby out upon her lap; “we
have one a-piece! But how did you know so well to take the right child?”
It was only by chance it happened. But Marg was holding the Heffernan
baby in her arms. And Kitty saw now that the tears were running down
poor Marg’s face. So she pretended not to see that, and began sharing
out the baby-clothes into two heaps, and instructing Marg, that had
never done the like before, how to dress the baby. And then she got its
food ready, and gave the cup into Marg’s hand.
And Marg did all, just as Kitty directed her, as mild as if she was an
infant child herself. Her eyes kept bright with tears, but they stopped
falling, and there remained the same soft smile upon her lips.
She never so much as lifted a look from the baby, till she had done
feeding her, and had her rocked to sleep upon her knee, Kitty sitting
opposite her and doing the same; and neither of the women speaking,
till the babies were sound asleep.
Then Marg stood up, with Rosy’s child in her arms, and she said, “Now
we must be off with ourselves; let you be putting the cloak about me!
there it is, upon the floor, where I let it down off me, before I began
at the child.... Mind now, take care what you’re doing! You might
smother the baby, easy. And now let me be shortening the way home. It
wouldn’t answer to be keeping this little _laneen_ out too late....”
“Is it taking her away with you, you are!” said Kitty, very astonished
at the thoughts of Marg walking off like that with the poor little
stray child in her arms.
“What else, what else? I can’t leave her after me! I’ll not go without
her! Och, Kitty, haven’t you the full up of the house of your own; and
why wouldn’t I have this one little child?”
“Why not, indeed?” said Kitty.
But it was to herself she said it. Marg never waited for any
answer, only walked off with the child. She never as much as said,
“Good-evening!” or turned her head to look at Kitty, and she standing
at the door with her own child hugged up to her.
“God help her, I think it’s what poor Marg must be bewitched, to go
do such a thing as that! And what will old Mickey say?” thinks Kitty,
turning back into the house, to lay her own baby into the cradle, and
feeling lonesome that the other one was gone. Kitty was foolish that
way.
And as Marg was moving home, she kept saying to herself, “What will
Mickey say? But I don’t care! I’ll not give you back, even to Kitty!
No! and sooner than the Union, I’ll walk the roads with you, _asthore_,
if there should be any objections made to you being at the Furry Farm!”
And every now and then, she’d kiss it and snug it up close to her very
heart. Then the baby would give a little whimper, and go off to sleep
again. She never really wakened at all, indeed; only lay so still, that
Marg stopped more than once, frightened, thinking it was what she had
the baby smothered.
But she needn’t have been uneasy about that! And as for Heffernan....
When Marg got home, she walked straight in to where Mickey was sitting
in the kitchen by the fireside. And she opened back her cloak; and the
child began to stretch herself in the heat, and to laugh and crow.
Mickey that was surprised! and no wonder. He nearly jumped off his
stool at the sight of the baby. And Marg was too excited and breathless
at first to explain the thing. He had time to take the pipe from his
mouth, and to knock the ashes out of it against the toe of his brogue,
before she got to say, and she catching her breath every minute with a
kind of a sob, “I’ve brought that child of Art’s here, out of Grennan’s
... and not to see her being sent to the Union beyant to be reared ...
and it would be a disgrace to the name of Heffernan ... and if there’s
a word of objections to be made to her, let it be said now! I can go
off somewhere else.... Not a fear of me, but I’ll be well able to earn
what will do the both of us ... well able I am ...” and she rocking
the baby in her arms, and keeping a tight hold upon it, as if she was
in dread of poor Mickey taking it from her.
Heffernan said nothing for a minute; always tedious he was; and says
Marg, beginning again, “I’ve brought the child here....”
“Ora, what else, woman dear?” said Mickey.