A MAN CHILD IS BORN
Three years passed and Thorkell's fortunes grew apace. He toiled early
and late. Time had no odd days or holiday in his calendar. Every day was
working day except Sunday, and then Thorkell, like a devout Christian,
went to church. Thorkell believed that he was a devoutly religious man,
but rumor whispered that he was better able to make his words fly up
than to prevent his thoughts from remaining below.
His wife did not seem to be a happy woman. During the three years of her
married life she had not borne her husband children. It began to dawn
upon her that Thorkell's sole desire in marriage had been a child, a
son, to whom he could leave what no man can carry away.
One Sunday morning, as Thorkell and his wife were on their way to
church, a young woman of about twenty passed them, and as she went by
she curtsied low to the lady. The girl had a comely, nut-brown face,
with dark wavy clusters of hair tumbling over her forehead from beneath
a white sun-bonnet, of which the poke had been dexterously rolled back.
It was summer, and her light blue bodice was open and showed a white
under-bodice and a full neck. Her sleeves were rolled up over the
elbows, and her dimpled arms were bare and brown. There was a look of
coquetry in her hazel eyes as they shot up their dark lustre under her
long lashes, and then dropped as quickly to her feet. She wore buckle
shoes with the open clock tops.
Thorkell's quick eyes glanced over her, and when the girl curtsied to
his wife he fell back the few paces that he was in front of her.
"Who is she?" he asked.
Thorkell's wife replied that the girl was a net-maker from near
Peeltown.
"What's her name?"
Thorkell's wife answered that the girl's name was Mally Kerruish.
"Who are her people? Has she any?"
Thorkell's wife explained that the girl had a mother only, who was poor
and worked in the fields, and had come to Ballamona for help during the
last hard winter.
"Humph! Doesn't look as if the daughter wanted for much. How does the
girl come by her fine feathers if her mother lives on charity?"
Thorkell's wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines. His wife's
face saddened, and her voice dropped as she hinted in faltering accents
that "scandal did say--say--"
"Well, woman, what does scandal say?" asked Thorkell; and his voice had
a curious lilt, and his mouth wore a strange smile.
"It says--I'm afraid, Thorkell, the poor girl is no better than she
ought to be."
Thorkell snorted, and then laughed in his throat like a frisky gelding.
"I thought she looked like a lively young puffin," he said, and then
trotted on in front, his head rolling between his shoulders, and his
eyes down. After going a few yards further he slackened speed again.
"Lives near Peeltown, you say--a net-maker--Mally--is it Mally
Kerruish?"
Thorkell's wife answered with a nod of the head, and then her husband
faced about, and troubled her with no further conversation until he drew
up at the church door, and said, "Quick, woman, quick, and mind you shut
the pew door after you."
But "God remembered Rachel and hearkened to her," and then, for the
first time, the wife of Thorkell Mylrea began to show a cheerful
countenance. Thorkell's own elevation of spirits was yet more
noticeable. He had heretofore showed no discontent with the old
homestead that had housed his people for six generations, but he now
began to build another and much larger house on the rising ground at the
foot of Slieu Dhoo. His habits underwent some swift and various changes.
He gave away no gray blankets that winter, the itinerant poor who were
"on the houses" often went empty from his door, and--most appalling
change of all--he promptly stopped his tithe. When the parson's cart
drove up to Ballamona, Thorkell turned the horse's head, and gave the
flank a sharp cut with his whip. The parson came in white with wrath.
"Let every pig dig for herself," said Thorkell. "I'll daub grease on the
rump of your fat pig no more."
Thorkell's new homestead rose rapidly, and when the walls were ready for
the roof the masons and carpenters went up to Ballamona for the
customary feast of cowree and jough and binjean.
"What! Is it true, then, as the saying is," Thorkell exclaimed at the
sight of them, "that when the sport is the merriest it is time to give
up?"
They ate no cowree at Ballamona that night and they drank no jough.
"We've been going to the goat's house for wool," grunted one of them as
they trudged home.
"Aw, well, man, and what can you get of the cat but his skin?" growled
another.
Next day they put on the first timbers of the roof, and the following
night a great storm swept over the island, and the roof-timbers were
torn away, not a spar or purlin being left in its place. Thorkell fumed
at the storm and swore at the men, and when the wind subsided he had the
work done afresh. The old homestead of Ballamona was thatched, but the
new one must be slated, and slates were quarried at and carted to Slieu
Dhoo, and run on to the new roof. A dead calm had prevailed during these
operations, but it was the calm that lies in the heart of the storm, and
the night after they were completed the other edge of the cyclone passed
over the island, tearing up the trees by their roots, and shaking the
old Ballamona to its foundations. Thorkell Mylrea slept not a wink, but
tramped up and down his bedroom the long night through; and next
morning, at daybreak, he drew the blind of his window, and peered
through the haze of the dawn to where his new house stood on the breast
of Slieu Dhoo. He could just descry its blue walls--it was roofless.
The people began to mutter beneath their breath.
"Aw, man, it's a judgment," said one.
"He has been middlin' hard on the widda and fatherless, and it's like
enough that there's Them aloft as knows it."
"What's that they're saying?" said one old crone, "what comes with the
wind goes with the water."
"Och, I knew his father--him and me were same as brothers--and a good
ould man for all."
"Well, and many a good cow has a bad calf," said the old woman.
Thorkell went about like a cloud of thunder, and when he heard that the
accidents to his new homestead were ascribed to supernatural agencies he
flashed like forked lightning.
"Where there are geese there's dirt," he said, "and where there are
women there's talking. Am I to be frightened if an old woman sneezes?"
But before Thorkell set to work again he paid his tithe. He paid it with
a rick of discolored oats that had been cut in the wet and threshed
before it was dry. Thorkell had often wondered whether his cows would
eat it. The next Sunday morning the parson paused before his sermon to
complain that certain of his parishioners, whom he would not name at
present, appeared to think that what was too bad for the pigs was good
enough for the priests. Let the Church of God have no more of their
pig-swill. Thorkell in his pew chuckled audibly, and muttered something
about paying for a dead horse.
It was spring when the second roof was blown down, and the new house
stood roofless until early summer. Then Thorkell sent four lean pigs
across to the Rectory, and got his carpenters together and set them to
work. The roofing proceeded without interruption.
The primrose was not yet gone, the swallow had not yet come, and the
young grass under the feet of the oxen was still small and sweet, when
Thorkell's wife took to her bed. Then all Ballamona was astir.
Hommy-beg, the deaf gardener of Ballamona, was sent in the hot haste of
his best two miles an hour to the village, commonly known as the Street,
to summon the midwife. This good woman was called Kerry Quayle; she was
a spinster of forty, and she was all but blind.
"I'm thinking the woman-body is after going on the straw," said
Hommy-beg, when he reached the Street, and this was the sum of the
message that he delivered.
"Then we'd better be off, as the saying is," remarked Kerry, who never
accepted responsibility for any syllable she ever uttered.
When they got to Ballamona, Thorkell Mylrea bustled Hommy-beg into the
square springless car, and told him to drive to Andreas, and fetch the
Archdeacon without an hour's delay. Hommy-beg set off at fine paces that
carried him to the Archdeaconry a matter of four miles an hour.
Thorkell followed Kerry Quayle to the room above. When they stepped into
the bedroom Thorkell drew the midwife aside to a table on which a large
candle stood in a tall brass candlestick, with gruesome gargoyles carved
on the base and upper flange. From this table he picked up a small
Testament bound in shiny leather, with silver clasps.
"I'm as great a man as any in the island," said Thorkell, in his shrill
whisper, "for laughing at the simpletons that talk about witches and
boaganes and the like of that."
"So you are, as the saying is," said Kerry.
"I'd have the law on the lot of them, if I had my way," said Thorkell,
still holding the book.
"Aw, and shockin' powerful luck it would be, as the old body said, if
all the witches and boaganes in the island could be run into the sea,"
said Kerry.
"Pshaw! I'm talking of the simpletons that believe in them," said
Thorkell, snappishly. "I'd clap them all in Castle Rushen."
"Aw, yes, and clean law and clean justice, too, as the Irishman said."
"So don't think I want the midwife to take her oath in my house," said
Thorkell.
"Och, no, of course not. You wouldn't bemean yourself, as they say."
"But, then, you know what the saying is, Kerry. 'Custom must be indulged
with custom, or custom will weep;'" and, saying this, Thorkell's voice
took a most insinuating tone.
"Aw, now, and I'm as good as here and there one at standing up for
custom, as the saying is," said the midwife.
The end of it all was that Kerry Quayle took there and then a solemn
oath not to use sorcery or incantation of any kind in the time of
travail, not to change the infant at the hour of its birth, not to leave
it in the room for a week afterward without spreading the tongs over its
crib, and much else of the like solemn purport.
The dusk deepened, and the Archdeacon had not yet arrived. Night came on
and the room was dark, but Thorkell would not allow a lamp to be brought
in, or a fire to be lighted. Some time later, say six hours after
Hommy-beg had set out on his six-mile journey, a lumbrous, jolting sound
of heavy wheels came from the road below the Curragh, and soon afterward
the Archdeacon entered the room.
"So dark," he said, on stumbling across the threshold.
"Ah, Archdeacon," said Thorkell, with the unaccustomed greeting of an
outstretched hand, "the Church shall bring light to the chamber here,"
and Thorkell handed the tinder-box to the Archdeacon and led him to the
side of the table on which the candle stood.
In an instant the Archdeacon, laughing a little, or protesting meekly
against his clerical honors, was striking the flint, when Thorkell laid
a hand on his arm.
"Wait one moment; of course you know how I despise superstition?"
"Ah! of course, of course," said the Archdeacon.
"But, then, you know the old saying, Archdeacon, 'Custom must be
indulged with custom,' you know it?" And Thorkell's face shut up like a
nut-cracker.
"So I must bless the candle. Eh, is that it?" said the Archdeacon,
with a low gurgle; and the next moment he was gabbling in a quick
undertone through certain words that seemed to be all one word:
"OLord-Jesus-Christ-bless-Thou-this-creature-of-a-waxen-taper-that-on-
what-place-soever-it-be-lighted-or-set-the-devil-may-flee-from-that-
habitation-and-no-more-disquiet-them-that-serve--Thee!"
After the penultimate word there was a short pause, and at the last word
there was the sharp crack of the flint, and in an instant the candle was
lighted.
Then the Archdeacon turned toward the bed and exchanged some words with
his daughter. The bed was a mahogany four-post one, with legs like
rocks, a hood like a pulpit sounding-board, and tapestry curtains like a
muddy avalanche. The Archdeacon--he was a small man, with a face like a
russet apple--leaned against one of the bed-posts, and said, in a tone
of banter:
"Why, Thorkell, and if you're for indulging custom, how comes it that
you have not hung up your hat?"
"My hat--my hat!" said Thorkell, in perplexity.
"Aw, now," said the midwife, "the master's as great a man as any in the
island at laughing at the men craythurs that hang up their hats over the
straw to fright the boaganes, as the old woman said."
Thorkell's laughter instantly burst forth to justify the midwife's
statement.
"Ha, ha! Hang up my hat! Well now, well now! Drives away the black
spirits from the birth-bed--isn't that what the dunces say? It's twenty
years since I saw the like of it done, and I'd forgotten the old custom.
Must look funny, very, the good man's hat perched up on the bed-post?
What d'ye say, Archdeacon, shall we have it up? Just for the laugh, you
know, ha, ha!"
In another moment Thorkell was gone from the room, and his titter could
be heard from the stairs; it ebbed away and presently flowed back again,
and Thorkell was once more by the bedside, laughing immoderately, and
perching his angular soft hat on the topmost knob of one of the posts at
the foot of the bed.
Then Thorkell and the Archdeacon went down to the little room that had
once been Gilcrist's room, looking over the Curragh to the sea.
Before daybreak next morning a man child was born to Thorkell Mylrea,
and an heir to the five hundred acres of Ballamona.