David and Tom were drowned. They were laid with many another drowned
fisherman in the Abbey graveyard. Mary wrote the other brothers
ill-spelt, tear-stained letters, which proved her heart had not grown
cold to them; and the three brothers went on living as the five had
done.
It was a bitter, bitter spring when Mary's letters ceased altogether.
They had had a short letter from her early in January, and then no
word afterwards. February went by gray and with showers of sleet: no
word came. In the first week of March there came a great storm, with
snow pelting on the furious wind. All the fishing boats were drawn
high on the land, and the fishers sat in their cottages benumbed,
despite the fires on the hearth, for the wind roared through doors and
windows and often seemed minded to take up the little houses and smash
them on the rocks as an angry child smashes a flimsy toy. No one went
out of doors, and the Cassidys sat with their feet on the turf embers
and smoked. The sky was lurid green all that March day, and in the
little cottage there was hardly light for the men to see each other's
brooding faces. If they spoke it was only to say, 'God betune us and
all harm!' or, 'God help all poor sowls at say!' when the wind rattled
with increasing fury the stout door and windows.
It was some time in the afternoon that William spoke out of his
meditations. 'Boys,' he said, 'if the ferry goes to-morrow, and
they'll be fain to put out, for there isn't much food on the Island,
I'll start wid her in the name of God, and take the Glasga' boat.
It's on my mind there's something wrong wid our Mary.'
The other two breathed a sigh of relief. 'The same was on my tongue,'
said one and the other, and almost simultaneously both cried, 'Why
should you go? Let me go.'
'Stay where yez are, boys!' said the other authoritatively, 'an' get
what comfort yez can about the house. I'm thinkin' I'll be bringin'
the girsha home.'
He gave no reason for this supposition, and they asked none. That
night the storm subsided, and though the sea was churned white as
wool, and no fishing boats would put out for days to come, the tiny
steam ferry panted its way through the trough of waters to bring
stores from the mainland. Will Cassidy was the only passenger, and he
carried with him small provision for himself, but at the last moment
Patrick had come running after him with a bundle of woollens.
'It'll be fine and cold travelling back,' he panted, 'so I run over to
Clancy's (Clancy's was the village shop) and got a big shawl for her,
an' a small one for the child. The things'll be no worse for your
keeping them warm on the way over.'
But William did not keep them warm in his brother's sense. He hugged
them under his big _cotamor_, and now and again he took them out and
regarded them with interest. Once he said aloud, 'Well, to think of
Patrick havin' the thought, the crathur'; and then put them hurriedly
back because a big wave was just sousing over the deck.
The next evening he was in the streets of the unfriendly Scotch town
that was covered with snow. The green sky of the day of the storm had
fulfilled its prophecy and spilt its burden on the earth. As he passed
on, inquiring his way from one or another, there were few passengers
to enlighten him, and his footsteps fell with a muffled sound on the
causeways. At last he came to where the houses grew thinner, and found
the place he sought, a little cottage not far from the water's edge.
There was a light in the window, but when he had knocked no one came
in answer. He knocked two or three times. Then he lifted the latch
and went in. There was a woman sitting by the fireless grate. Her arms
were round a child on her bosom, and a thin shawl about her shoulders
trailed over the child's face. She did not turn round as he came in,
but he saw it was Mary's figure. He had to speak to her before she
looked up. Then she gave a faint cry and her frozen face relaxed. She
held out the child to him with an imploring gesture: it reminded him
of her running to him with a wound when she had fallen down in her
babyhood. He took the child from her and felt it very heavy. The
mother came to him gently and put her head on his rough coat. 'O
William,' she cried, 'he's dead; my little Willie's dead and cold. It
was at three o'clock the breath went out of him, and no one ever came
since.'
He looked at the child then and saw that he was indeed dead. He put
her back gently in her chair, and laid the child's little body on the
bright patchwork quilt of the bed. He remembered that quilt: it was
part of Mary's bridal gear. Then he came again to the mother and
soothed her, with her bright head against his rough coat.
'Whisht, acushla,' he said, 'sure you're famished. Aisy now, till I
make a bit of fire for you.'
The girl watched him with wide dry eyes of despair. He gathered the
embers on the hearth and set a light to them. He lit a candle and
extinguished the smoking lamp, which had apparently been burning all
day. Then he went here and there gathering the materials for a meal.
The kettle was soon boiling, and he made some tea and forced her to
drink a cup. He was very glad of its warmth himself, for he was weary
with long fasting. Afterwards he sat down beside her and asked for
Jacopo.
'Him,' turning away her head, 'he's wid another woman.' She said no
more, and William asked no more. Instead, he said gently, 'Well,
acushla, you'll be putting together the few things you'll take with
you. There's a cattle boat going at six in the mornin', an' we can get
a passage by that.'
She looked up at him. 'But the child?' she said.
'He'll go wid us,' the man replied. 'He'll sleep sweeter on the Island
than in this sorrowful town.'
'May God reward you, William,' she said. 'You're savin' more than you
know. For if he'd come back I wouldn't answer for it that I wouldn't
have kilt him as he slep'.'
The morning rose green and livid, with a sky full of snow though the
world was covered with it. Now and again the snow drifted in their
faces as they trudged through the streets before daybreak, and it came
dryly pattering when they were out on the waste of green waters
cleaving their way under the melancholy daylight. William had found a
corner for the woman under shelter of the bridge, and there she sat
through the hours with the dead child wrapped in her shawl, and the
cold of it aching at her heart. The snow came on faster, and the deck
passengers huddled in for shelter. 'God save you, honest woman,' said
a ruddy-faced wife to her. 'Give me the child, and move yourself
about a bit. You'll be fair frozen before we're half way across.' Mary
shook her head with a gesture that somehow disarmed the kind woman's
wrath at the rejection of her overtures. 'That crature looks to me,'
she said to her husband, 'fair dazed wid the sorrow. Maybe it's the
husband of her the crature's after buryin'.' There were a great many
curious glances at Mary in her corner, but no one else had the
temerity to offer her help.
William brought her a cup of tea at mid-day, which she drank eagerly,
still holding the child with one arm, but she pushed away the food he
offered with loathing.
In the evening they disembarked, and from a pier swept by the north
wind were huddled into a train, ill lit and cold as the grave. Mary
crouched into a corner with her face bent over the dead child. 'A
quiet sleeper, ma'am,' said a cheerful sea-faring man. Mary looked at
him with lack-lustre eyes and turned away her head.
Presently she began to sing, a quaint old Island lullaby, which rang
weird and melancholy. William looked at her in alarm, but said
nothing, and the other passengers watched her curiously, half in fear.
She lifted her child from her knee to her breast, and held it there
clasped a moment. 'I can't warm him,' she said, looking helplessly at
all the wondering faces. 'The cold's on him and on me, and I doubt
we'll ever be warm again.'
Presently they drew up at a bleak way-side station for the ferry, and
the brother and sister without a word stepped out in the night and the
snow. The man did not offer to carry the child. He knew it was no use.
But he put a strong arm round the woman and her burden, where the snow
was heaviest, and the wind from the sea blew like a hurricane.
They were the only passengers by the ferry, and neither the ferryman
nor his mate knew Mary Cassidy, with the shawl drawn over her eyes.
But as they stepped ashore and touched the familiar rock on which she
and hers for many a forgotten generation had been born and cradled,
the piteous frozen madness melted away from her face. She turned to
her brother--
'Tis the sad home-coming,' she said, 'but I've brought back all I
prized.' She snatched the ring from her finger suddenly and hurled it
out in the tossing waters, on which even in the dark they could see
the foam-crests. 'Now I'm Mary Cassidy again,' she said, 'and the
woman that left you is dead.' She lifted her shawl and kissed the
little dead face under it. 'You've no father, avic,' she said
passionately. 'You're mine, only mine. Never a man has any right in
you at all, but only Mary Cassidy.'
VI
MAURYEEN
Against Con Daly's little girl there was never a word spoken in the
Island. Con had been well liked, God rest his soul!--but the man was
drowned nigh upon twenty years ago. There was some old tragic tale
about it, how he had volunteered to swim with a rope round his waist
to a ship breaking up a few yards from the rocks in a sea that a
gannet could scarcely live upon. He had pushed aside the men who
remonstrated with him, turning on them a face ghastly in the
moonlight. 'Stand aside, men,' he cried, 'and if I fail, see to the
girsha!' He was the strongest man in all the Island, and as much at
home in the water as a porpoise. They saw his sleek head now and again
flung out of the trough of the waves, and his huge shoulders
labouring against the weight of the storm. Then suddenly the rope they
were holding fell slack in their hands,--they said afterwards it had
snapped on a jagged razor of rock,--and the man disappeared. A day or
two later his battered and bruised body was flung up on the bathing
strand, where in summer the city ladies take their dip in the sea. He
was buried with some of the drowned sailors he had tried to rescue,
and an iron cross put at his head by the fishermen. But for a long
time there was a talk that the man had gone to meet his death gladly,
had for some reason or another preferred death to life; but people
were never quite sure if there was anything in it.
The Islanders had looked askance at Ellen Daly, Con's wife, before
that, though to her husband she was the apple of his eye. She had been
a domestic servant on the mainland when Con Daly met and married her,
and she had never seemed to have any friends. She had been handsome in
her day, at least so some people thought, but there were women on the
Island who said they never could abide her, with her pale face and
sneering smile, and her eyes that turned green as a cat's when she was
angry. However, she never tried to ingratiate herself with the women:
if the men admired her it was as much as she asked. When she liked she
could be fascinating enough. She bewitched Mrs. Wilkinson, the
housekeeper at the Hall, into taking her on whenever his Lordship
filled the house with gentlemen and an extra hand was needed. She was
deft and clever, and could be insinuating when it served her purpose.
But the friendship of the Island women she had never desired, and when
her husband was drowned there was not a fisher-wife to go and sit with
her in the desolate house. As the years went by her good looks went
with them. She yellowed, and her malevolent eyes took on red rims
round their greenness; while her dry lips, parted over her snarling
teeth, were more ill than they had been when they were ripe and ruddy.
The neighbours were kind by stealth to Con's girsha. Those were long
days of her childhood when her mother was at work in the Hall, and
the child was locked in the empty cottage; but many was the kind word
through the window, from the women as they passed up and down, and now
and again a hot griddle-cake, or some little dainty of the kind, was
passed through to the child as she sat so dull and lonely on her
little creepy stool.
Poor little Mauryeen! She was a child with social instincts, and
often, often she used to wonder in those lonely hours why she might
not be out with the other children, playing at shop in the crevices of
the rocks, or wading for cockles, or dancing round in a ring to the
sing-song of 'Green Gravel,' or playing at 'High Gates.' Her mother
coldly discouraged any friendship with the children of her foes; and
little Mauryeen grew up a silent child, with something more delicate
and refined about her than the other children,--with somehow the air
of a little lady.
But Mauryeen was not her mother's child to be without a will of her
own. As she grew from childhood to girlhood she began to assert
herself, and though her mother tried hard to break her spirit she did
not succeed. After a time she seemed to realise that here was
something she had not counted upon, and to submit, since she could not
hope to fight it. All the same she hated the girl whom she could not
rule, hated her so furiously that the glitter of her eyes as she
looked at her from the chimney-corner was oftentimes murderous. For,
little by little Mauryeen grew to be friends with all the fishing
village.
Even though she asserted herself the girl did her duty bravely and
humbly. Any mother of them all would have been proud to own Mauryeen.
When her mother had employment at the Hall Mauryeen took care of the
house, and having cleaned and tidied to her heart's content, sat in
the sun at her knitting till Ellen Daly came home to find a
comfortable meal prepared for her. The woman's one good quality was
that she had always been a good housewife, and the girl took after
her. Then when her mother was at home Mauryeen went out sewing to the
houses of the few gentry who lived on the hill; and the house was
well kept and comfortable, though an unnatural hatred sat beside the
hearth.
The neighbours pitied and praised Mauryeen all the more. They used to
wonder how long it would last, the silent feud between mother and
daughter, especially since Mauryeen was so capable and clever that she
might for the asking join even Mrs. Wilkinson's chosen band of
handmaidens.
The girl meanwhile throve as happily as though she lived in the very
sunshine of love rather than in this malignant atmosphere. She saw
little of her mother. The hours when they were under one roof were
few; and across the threshold she found abundant kindness and praise.
Mauryeen was small and graceful, with the olive-tinted fairness which
had been her mother's in her best days. But Mauryeen's blue eyes were
kindly and her lips smiled, and her soft voice was gentle; she had a
pretty way of decking herself which the fisher-girls could never come
by. Mauryeen in a pink cotton frock, with a spray of brown seaweed in
her belt, might have passed for one of the young ladies who visited at
the Hall. If the other girls copied her pretty tricks of decoration
they carried the tame air of the mere copyist. But no one grudged
Mauryeen her charm; she was so kind and gentle, and she had always the
tragedy of that ghastly old mother of hers to stir pity for her. Then
too she always seemed so anxious that the other girls should look
well, and so willing to take trouble to this end, that no one could
envy her her own prettiness.
There came a time when a young man of the Island, Randal Burke by
name, declared to Mauryeen that her voice could coax the birds off the
trees, and that her head when she listened was like the prettiest
bird's head, all covered with golden feathers. She had indeed a very
pretty way of listening, with her head on one side and her eyes bright
and attentive. Mauryeen was used to compliments, and could usually
hold her own in a bit of light love-making; but it was remarkable
that at this speech of Randal Burke's she went pale. She always turned
pale when another girl would have blushed.
Mauryeen's was a sudden and rapid wooing. The young fellow was fairly
independent, possessing as he did a little bit of land with his
cottage, as well as a boat. His mother was one of the most prosperous
women of the Island, and had been in days gone by Ellen Daly's
bitterest enemy. But for all that she welcomed Mauryeen tenderly as a
daughter.
There was a terrible to-do when Mauryeen told her mother of her
intentions. She turned so livid that Mauryeen for all her brave heart
was frightened, and faltered. The old woman choked and gasped with the
whirlwind of passion that possessed her. As soon as she could speak
she hissed out:--
'The day you marry him I curse you, and him, your house, your
marriage, and every child born of you.'
Mauryeen's anger rose and shook her too like a whirlwind, but it drove
out fear.
'And if you do, you wicked woman,' she said, 'it's not me it'll harm.
Do you think God will listen to the like of you or let harm befall me
and mine because of your curse?'
For a day or two after Mauryeen's defiance her mother brooded in
quietness, only now and again turning on her daughter those terrible
green eyes. No word passed between the two, and meanwhile Randal Burke
was hastening the preparations for the marriage by every means in his
power. Father Tiernay had 'called' them at the mass three Sunday
mornings. The priest was greatly pleased with the marriage. Mauryeen
was a pet lamb of his flock, and he deeply disliked and distrusted her
mother.
It was the feast day of the year on the Island, a beautiful bright
sunny June day. On a plateau the men played at the hurley and putting
the stone; and there was a tug of war for married men and single, and
after that for the women, amid much jollity and laughter. Above the
plateau the hill sloped, and that long sunny slope was the place from
which the girls and women looked on at the prowess of their male kind.
That day out of all the year there was a general picnic on the hill,
and meals were eaten and the long day spent out of doors, till the
dews came on the grass.
Now one of the events was a rowing contest, and the course was right
under the hill-slope. Father Tiernay every year gave a money prize for
the winner, and the distinction in itself was ardently coveted. Randal
Burke was rowing against another young fisherman, and it was not easy
to forecast the winner, both men were so strong, so practised, and so
eager in the contest.
The race had begun, and the people on the hillside were standing up in
their excitement watching the boats, which were nearly dead level.
Mauryeen stood by Randal's mother, with one hand thrust childishly
within her arm, and the other shading her eyes from the bright sun.
Suddenly the people were startled by the sound of running feet, and
all looking in one direction they saw Mauryeen's mother coming
without bonnet or cloak, her face working with passion and her hands
clenched. The people fell back before her. She had an evil reputation,
and for a minute or two they thought she had gone mad. Mauryeen, who
did not fall back with the others, found herself standing in the
centre of an empty space, while her mother panted before her,
struggling for words. All the women-folk behind pressed together and
craned over each other's shoulders, half alarmed and half curious.
At last the woman found her breath. She pointed a yellow finger at the
girl, who stood before her with her head proudly lifted, and her eyes
amazed but fearless.
'Look at her,' shrieked the beldame, 'all of you, and you, Kate Burke,
that boasts your family's the oldest on the Island. Look well at her!
Och, the good ould ancient blood! Look at _her_, for her blood's
ancienter still. Do you see anything of Con Daly in her?'
The girl looked round with a forlorn sense of being held up to public
scorn, but the women were huddling together, and the fear kept any
one from coming to stand by her side.
'Look at her,' again shrieked the hoarse voice. 'D'yez know where she
gets her pride and the courage to dare me? She gets it from her
father, th' ould lord. Con Daly had never act nor part in her.'
A scream, the like of which the Island had never heard, broke from
Mauryeen's lips. It was such a cry as if body and soul were tearing
asunder. With that scream she flung her arms above her head. The
little group, closing round her awe-stricken, looked to see her fall
face downward to the ground. But with a wild movement of her arms, as
if she swept the whole world out of her path, she fled down the hill
towards the village. Ellen Daly had vanished. No one had seen her go.
And down in the dancing bay at their feet Randal Burke proudly shot
ahead of his opponent and won the race.
The girl meanwhile had fled on and on, with only the blind instinct to
hide her disgrace. The village was empty of all but the sick and the
bed-ridden. There was not an eye on Mauryeen Daly as she fled by the
open doors. With a mechanical instinct she turned in at the door of
her mother's house. The cool darkness of it after the glare outside
was grateful to her. She closed the door and barred it. Then she
turned into a room off the kitchen, her own little room, where there
was a picture of the Mother of Sorrows with seven swords through her
heart, and dropped on the floor before the picture with an
inarticulate moaning.
She lay there half unconscious, and only feeling her misery dumbly. On
the wall hung her blue cashmere dress, in which she was to have been
married a day or two later. On the chest of drawers was a box
containing the little wreath and veil her mother-in-law had presented
her with. But she saw none of these things, with her mouth and eyes
against the floor.
She came back to life presently, hearing her name called. The voice
had called many times before she heard it. Now it was imperative,
almost sharp in its eagerness. 'Open, acushla, open, or I burst the
door.' It was Randal's voice; and she answered it, advancing a step or
two, groping with outstretched hands, and a wild look of fear in her
dilated eyes. Then she heard the door straining and creaking, and a
man panting, striving outside. In a little while, almost before she
had time to stand clear of it, the door rattled on the floor, and her
lover leapt into the cabin.
She put out her hands to fence him off, swaying blindly towards the
wall. He sprang to her with a murmur of pity, and was just in time to
catch her as her senses left her, and she lay a limp and helpless
thing in his arms.
Father Tiernay was standing at his window gazing over a surpassingly
fair plain of sea, dotted with silver green islands. He was glad the
people had so fine a day for their sports. In the afternoon he would
be with them to distribute the prizes and congratulate the winners,
and to add to the general enjoyment by his presence; but this morning
he was alone, except for his deaf old housekeeper, and Jim the
sacristan, who was too dignified to be out on the Fair Hill with the
others. The priest's look of perplexity deepened as he watched some
one climbing the steep hill to his house. 'It looks like Cody's ghost
carrying his wife's body,' he muttered to himself. The figure or
figures came nearer. At last his Reverence took in what he saw, and
made but one or two steps to the hall door. 'Come in here,' he said,
asking no questions, like a practical man; and indeed for a few
minutes the young fisherman was incapable of answering any. It was not
until the priest had forced some brandy between the girl's lips, when
they had laid her on a sofa, and her breath came fluttering back, that
Father Tiernay drew the lover aside into the window recess and learnt
in a few words what had happened.
'She's so proud, my little girl,' pleaded the lover. 'She won't live
under the shame of it unless your Reverence 'ud help us out of it.
Couldn't your Reverence say the words over us? We've been called three
times, and I've the ring in my pocket. Oh, 'twas well that unnatural
woman calculated her time when our happiness was at the full. Couldn't
your Reverence do it for us?' he said again in a wheedling tone.
His Reverence looked at him thoughtfully. Then he drew out his watch.
'Yes,' he said, 'there's time enough, and I think you're right, my
lad. Just step outside while I speak to her, for I see she's coming
to.'
The young man whispered: 'God bless you, Father! If I waited till
to-morrow I'd never put the ring on her. I know the pride of her.' And
then he went out obediently.