but she took no notice of them, and began to eat a bunch of
remarkably large and ripe blackberries, evidently the remains of much
similar spoil, for her hands and lips were blue with juice-stains.
When she had finished them all but the last, which was also the
biggest and blackest, she suddenly held it out to Con, saying,
“There’s for you, young feller, and a grand one it is—a dewberry.
Stuff it in your mouth, and no more talk out of you.” She spoke in
a high-pitched gabble, and with a peremptoriness of manner modelled
upon that used by her elders to herself. Con was half-scared, and
Biddy plucked Nannie by the sleeve, whispering dismally, “Let’s go
home, she’s ugly-lookin’.” However, the plump-seeded, glossy berry
proved irresistible, and Con’s hesitation ended in a furtive grab.
Nannie, emboldened by this mark of confidence, came a step nearer to
Judy, and said, peering down the bank wistfully, for her gleanings by
the way had only served to whet her appetite, “There would be a dale
of berries in it over yonder?” Judy craned her neck round the bush,
and looked down the bank too, and then at the three small children,
who stood in a row. “Is it berries you’re after?” she said, “and is
it over there you’d be goin’? Whethen now, if you knew what all was
in it over there, ’tisn’t about berries you’d be talkin. Och no,
murdher alive, not indeed, bedad.”
“Over where is it?” said Nannie, impressed and alarmed by the
redundancy of Judy’s asseverations.
Judy pointed up the boreen, which just there turned sharply, and
under a roof of reddening boughs formed a vista, ended by the dark
mountain-wall. “Och if you was after seein’ the laste taste of a
sight of a one of them”—she said, with appalling vagueness. “Och
mercy on us all and more too, if you on’y was.”
“What sort seein’?” said Nannie, with increasing anxiety. The row
had shortened itself considerably, the children had shrunk so close
together.
“Crathurs,” said Judy. “Och my goodness the crathurs. Tiger-bastes,
and camel-horses, and mambolethses—rael frykful. I cudn’t tell you
the half-quarter of them. But the crathur of all the crathurs is the
big red snake that’s in it. Awful _he_ is. Och the dear help us, I
hope he’ll bide contint where he is, I hope he will. Wirrasthrew, if
he was to get hearin’ any sort of noise that ’ud wake of him out of
his sleep—whoo-oo, that’d be the bad job for us all.”
The children stared at her round-eyed like a bunch of fascinated
little birds.
“Well now, but it’s the terrible big red snake _he_ is,” Judy went on
contemplatively, “and the great hijjis lump of a black head he has
on him; it wouldn’t scarce fit in between them two bushes; and the
long len’th he is, that’d raich aisy to the far end of the boreen—and
he asleep up yonder, ready to wake every instant minute of time that
happens—and bould little children talkin’ of leppin’ down the high
banks after blackberries.”
“We worn’t,” said Biddy, with a howl.
“Where is he asleep at all?” said Nannie in a hoarse whisper.
“Sure, up there in his black hole,” said Judy, pointing through
the trees, “wound himself up he has—round and round and
round-an’-round-an’-round”—she described a rapid eddy in the air with
her forefinger—“wid his big ugly head cocked in the middle, listenin’
till he hears somethin’ to wake him up—and then, good gracious, is
it what’ll he do?” she said, replying to an interrogative gasp from
Nannie, “Murdher alive!” She ducked down until her shock-head nearly
touched the ground, and recoiled immediately to an erect sitting
posture with a jack-in-the-box-like spring. Then she elongated her
neck preternaturally, and twisting it from side to side, glared about
her with a ferocious goggle and grin. “That’s what he’ll do first,”
she said, “to find out what way the noise was comin’ wakenin’ of him.
And after that, he lets a couple of roars out of him, and he begins
to unrowl himself—round and round an’ round-an’-round—the wrong way.
And as soon as he’s stretched his len’th, out he’ll take wid himself
slitherin’ down the hill to us, and through the trees there he’ll
come smashin’ desthruction off of all before him. Ragin’ mad he’ll be
for bein’ woke up. Och the creels of him and the crawls of him,” said
Miss Judy, rocking herself to and fro, so that the withered leaves
on the thorny bush behind her fell over her like a shower of little
golden coins, “och the creels of him and the crawls of him, and the
roars of him and the bawls of him—there was never anything aquil to
it. ’Twould terrify the clouds out of the sky.... And mercy be among
us, what was that at all now? Was it him beginnin’? I dunno but I
heard him over yonder, like as if he was sayin’ _cruel_ to himsel,
‘Whoo-oo-o, let me be comin’ at them.’”
This was too much for the fortitude of Biddy, a small fat child with
no great force of character, and she broke into an uncontrollable
roar, to the wrathful despair of Nannie, who shook her passionately,
saying, “Whisht, whisht, you little madwoman! do you want to have
us all destroyed?” Con, on the other hand, not less dismayed, flew
frantically at Judy with a snatched-up stick, confusing the causer
with the object of his terror. Judy herself rose to her feet, and
resorted to precipitate flight, not by reason of Con’s assault, but
because at this moment a voice called shrilly through the trees, “You
young miscreant there, what at all are you doin’ wid the childer?”
It was old Mrs Moran, who, alarmed by the stillness, had set out
in quest of her grandchildren. Judy, who had no wish to explain
the situation, sought to escape from it by a hasty retreat down
the boreen bank, but her attempt was unlucky. For in her hurried
swinging of herself over the edge, she trusted her weight to a tuft
of ragweed, whose roots ripped faithlessly out of the crumbling soil,
and let her drop amongst a scattering of earth and pebbles into the
middle of the lane, where she lay stunned and incapable for the
present of any further romancing.
It was in this way that Judy Flower became an inmate of the Round
Lodge, being carried up there by Michael Kelly, a turf-cutter, who
appeared opportunely on the scene. He then tramped off several miles
to summon the doctor, observing as he started that there was likely
to be an Inquist to-morrow. But when the doctor came, he pronounced
the case one of merely slight concussion of the brain, and predicted
a rapid recovery, if the child were properly cared for, which Mrs
Moran resolved that she should be. “The crathur might stop where she
was for a few days at any rate, till she came round a bit.”
The Tinkers themselves did not display much concern about the fate
of their youthful comrade. On the evening of the accident, two of
the women came to make inquiries at the Round Lodge, and their
report seemingly satisfied Judy’s family, for next morning the
whole party decamped, moving on in the direction of Castlebawn. But
it had happened that just at this time Judy’s mother was absent,
tramping the country on a professional tour, with a baby and a bunch
of tinware, and so heard nothing of what had befallen her daughter
until she rejoined the caravan at Castlebawn. They picked her up in
a dreary little back lane, where she awaited their coming, seated
on a broken-down mud wall. Her tin cans were nearly all slung about
her still, but she had nothing in her arms, for the baby had died of
bronchitis in the cold weather the week before, little to anybody
else’s regret, perhaps not even its own. But the event had disposed
Mrs Flower to take a tragical view of things, and therefore, when her
family equipage creaked near enough to admit a counting of black
and red heads, which showed that one was missing, she immediately
formed the gloomiest conclusions about the fate of the absentee. Nor
were the explanations she received particularly re-assuring. Little
Jimmy, her eldest boy, reported that Judy had fell off of the top of
somethin’, he didn’t rightly know what, and hadn’t come home since.
And his aunt Mrs Massey’s account of the matter ran: “Och, sure she’s
after givin’ herself a crack on the head, but the ould woman that
picked her up off the road was a dacint body, and she’s took her
in. She might get over it and do right enough yet. Anyway, the best
chance was to lave her where she is. It’s late we are, for the roads
is that heavy they’re nearly pullin’ the hoofs off of the misfort’nit
asses’ ould feet. How did she get the crack? Sure the on’y wonder is
she hasn’t broke her neck a dozen of times wid the way she climbs
over all before her. And so the baby’s died on you? Ah the crathur,
God be good to it! ’Deed now, it would be cruel knocked about in the
perishin’ weather. Belike it’s better off. Did you sell anythin’ at
all? Musha then, woman, you needn’t be frettin’ after Judy, for
she’s apt to play plinty more fool’s thricks yit, if that’s all ails
you.”
Mrs Flower was, however, bent on not only fretting, but going to
see after and if possible repossess herself of Judy. She was ill
and miserable, and had been looking forward to the close of her
weariful, lonesome tramp, and a spell of easier days, jogging along
on wheels among familiar faces. But Judy was the eldest of her
children, and had perhaps never quite lost the glamour of a wonderful
new possession, which her mother could not contemplate in another
person’s keeping without a pang of jealousy. At any rate, she made up
her mind to resume her solitary way, and she kept her resolve despite
the disapproval of her family, of her gaunt-looking husband, who said
she’d a dale better stop wid the childer and him and mind them a bit,
and of the childer themselves, who, feeling mocked and defrauded by a
glimpse of comfort so speedily withdrawn, howled dismally and drummed
protests on the sides of their cart, as they saw the much-desired
wisp of black shawl recede fluttering down the wet street.
Under these discouraging circumstances, aggravated by wild wind and
rain, Mrs Flower started on her doubtful quest. Four days she had to
trudge in solitude, and three nights she had to shelter as best she
could, the best being on two occasions no better than the lee-side
of a dyke and a clump of rustling furze-bushes. Such wide tracts
of bogland intervened between cabins where a night’s lodging may
generally be had for the asking, because the indwellers have little
else to bestow. But she consoled herself with the hope that on the
way back she should have her daughter’s company. She durst not now
face the possibility of “anythin’ havin’ happint Judy,” so that she
would after all return alone. That would have been to look recklessly
down a gulf of despair. So she allowed herself to doubt of nothing
except her chances of reaching her goal before she was perished
outright, or “took rael bad intirely.” When she came to the village
of Kilrath, a wannish gleam of prosperity flickered out on her, for
she succeeded in persuading Mrs Nally, the owner of a stray spare
penny, to buy a tin-mug, which was described as being “that iligant
and polished up, ’twould be a pleasure to drink anythin’ out of it,
if ’twas on’y a sup of ditch-water, and strong? Och goodness preserve
us, ma’am dear, you might take and batter it agin that wall there
the len’th of the day, and sorra a dint there’d be in it when you’d
done.” As she knew that the Round Lodge could not be very far off,
she expended the proceeds of this sale in purchasing a little flour
cake for Judy at the shop. It was richly yellowed with soda, and
showed three currants on its surface, which could not fail to tempt
the most delicate appetite. “And sure the bit of a crathur would be
finely agin now.”
By the time that Mrs Flower came to the Round Lodge, the wintry dusk
had thickened so that the driving sleet-sheets were more felt than
seen. The leafless beech-grove was roaring in the wind with the voice
of a foam-fretted shore, and straining and swaying to the stress of
the blasts until it looked like an anchored cloud. She groped baffled
among the dripping trunks for a long while before she found a clue in
a line of red light to guide her across the dim grass-field, until
she stood under the porch of the Round Lodge. It was the Tinkers’
habit to be stealthy in their movements, and she passed through the
coloured glass door unheard, and down the short passage to where
another door stood rather widely ajar, revealing an interior of
ruddily lit warmth, paradisiacal to anybody peering in very cold and
wet and hungry. Only Mrs Moran and Judy were in the kitchen, which
glowed all round its curved walls so that the room looked like a
cupful of light filched from the ebbing day. Judy, now convalescent,
installed in one of the fine new arm-chairs by the fire, with locks
clipped and combed, and wearing a neat lilac print frock and little
plaid shoulder-shawl, was wonderfully transformed in aspect. She was
eating a broad slice of buttered griddle-cake, and listening to a
long story, which Mrs Moran had drawn from her store of reminiscences
about the Quality she had lived with. While Mrs Flower watched, the
old woman got up and brought the girl something in a large mug. “It’s
a nice sup of buttermilk for you,” she said; “sup it up, honey, along
wid your cake. I declare now, you and I are great company together
intirely.”
“Ay are we,” said Judy complacently; “and if I had me strip of
knittin’, I might be tryin’ did I remember the stitch you was showin’
me. Sure none of them at home could do knittin’ no more than the
crows in the field. And what become of Miss Lily’s grey horse?
They’d be apt to put it out of that, after it doin’ such a thing.”
Judy’s mother never heard the answer to that question, for she was
pre-occupied by a struggle towards a difficult resolve. When it was
formed at last, she turned to slip noiselessly away. “Sure she has
her chance there, me jewel,” she said to herself. “I’ll let her be.”
But she was not destined to depart uninterrupted. As she turned to
go, one of her cans swung, clanking against the door-edge, and Judy
had espied her before she could retreat.
“Why, there’s me mammy!” Judy said. “It’s comin’ she’ll be to take me
home.” Her exclamation began jubilantly but ended in a minor cadence,
for her present quarters were in most ways very much to her mind, and
being still less vigorous than usual, made her feel all the more loth
to resume the rough faring upon which she looked back across this
brief novel experience of cosy chimney-corners and ample meals. It
struck her that her mammy might have arrived more appropriately some
other time; _some_ time, of course, but _other_ certainly; and the
opinion betrayed itself on her countenance.
“Well, and what way are you, Judy?” said Mrs Flower, pausing as she
found herself observed; “grandly you look to be set up in there,
bedad.”
“Oh, she’s doin’ finely?” said Mrs Moran. “You’d better step inside,
ma’am—if you’re Judy’s mother,” she added, though she could not
forbear a mistrustful glance from her visitor’s bedraggled rags
to her own clean boards and good bit of carpet. “It’s wet walkin’
to-night.”
“I dunno but I’d a right to stop where I am,” said Mrs Flower,
standing still. “Drippin’ I am, sure enough; the showers this day’d
drinch a water-eel. I was on’y trampin’ round wid the things; and as
for takin’ you along, Judy, ’deed for the matter of that, sorra the
hurry I’m in at all, unless them that have got you so be.”
“There’s no hurry whatsomever,” said Mrs Moran rather stiffly. “Let
alone that the child’s noways fit to be streelin’ about the counthry.”
“The saints above know I’ve no wish to be saddlin’ meself wid her,”
said Mrs Flower defiantly. “It’s just a livin’ torment she’d be to
me, and divil a hap’orth else.”
“Well, to be sure, one’d ha’ thought you might ha’ found somethin’
more agreeable to say of your own child,” said Mrs Moran, “even
supposin’ it isn’t convenient to have her along wid you these times.”
“Convenient, is it?” said Mrs Flower. “Be jabers, it’s them that has
the rarin’ of the likes of her knows the throuble of it. Troth, you
might be tired bangin’ her about and givin’ her abuse from one day’s
end to the other, and get no good of her at the heel of the hunt.”
“’Deed then, if you can conthrive nothin’ better to do wid her than
that, I’d a dale sooner she sted where she is,” said Mrs Moran, with
increasing sternness, and a change of mind about the propriety of
offering Mrs Flower a cup of tea. “She’s an unnatural crathur,” she
said to herself, “and all she cares for is to be shut of the child.”
“Well, good-bye to you, Judy,” said her mother. “I’ll not come near
you, I’m that muddy and wet.”
“But you’ll be comin’ back some time soon, mammy?” said Judy, who
had hitherto kept silence, somewhat shocked and affronted at her
mother’s disparagement, which was a new experience to her, as at home
Mrs Flower had been always wont to defend Judy’s character and extol
her, without much cause, “for lendin’ a great hand wid the childer,”
and other domestic virtues. Now, however, Judy was stricken with
remorse as she saw the familiar black shawl and weather-worn face
disappearing into a darkness which led towards the dreary noises of
the wild night. She got out of her arm-chair, and despite Mrs Moran’s
remonstrance, ran across the room and down the passage, hobblingly,
because she was still lame from her fall. When she reached the porch,
her mother, though close by, was almost swallowed up in the gloom,
which had superseded the last glimmers of twilight. Only in the
farthest west lingered a dull-red band, hardly more luminous than a
drift of the dead beech-leaves. Judy stood on the steps peering out,
with the hearth-glow behind her. “Stop a minute, mammy,” she called;
“I’m after forgettin’ to bid you good-bye or anythin’. And I’ll ax
herself inside to be wettin’ the tay——”
Mrs Flower looked round, and halted for a moment. Then she shook
her fist menacingly at her daughter. “Be off and run in wid you out
of that, you young divil!” she shouted hoarsely. A gust of wind
intercepted and bore away the words, but her threatening gesture was
plain enough against the fading wraith of the sunset. And it was the
last that Judy ever saw of her unnatural mother.
AN ACCOUNT SETTLED
AN ACCOUNT SETTLED
One wet autumn evening, Mr Natty Grogan was taking stock and making
up his books with the assistance of his family. When thus occupied,
the young Grogans were wont to complain that he would be trotting
after them with dogs’ abuse from Billy to Jock, till you couldn’t
tell where to have him; while he used to declare that the lot of
them all together were more different kinds of fools than you’d find
anywhere else in the breadth of Ireland, and so was their mother
before them. She had died many years since and her husband was
reported to have remarked that the event would save him a couple
of shillings a week, anyway, for milk and chicken-broth. But it is
fair to observe that unfeeling speeches were likely enough to be put
into his mouth on this occasion—such was his character among his
neighbours. They said that his wife had been “a very dacint poor
woman, and a dale too good for any such an ould slieveen, and it was
a pity all the childer, except, maybe, Andy, took after himself.”
For the present, however, popular disapproval of the Grogans was in
abeyance, as almost everybody else had gone to bed and to sleep,
so that Athcrum’s one wide street lay deserted and blank. It was a
very wet evening, and the whitewashed house-fronts had an ample dado
of mud splashes about their doors and lower windows, but they were
all now muffled up in darkness. The Grogans’ late sitting threw no
light on the outer gloom, for the battered shop-shutters were up,
and business proceeded in the little back room, whence old Natty lit
himself every now and then with a sweeling dip, to grope among his
stock-in-trade in the adjoining shop. He accompanied these researches
with dissatisfied grunts, rising occasionally into requests
wrathfully shouted to his family, for an explanation of what he found
or missed. They grimaced at one another, and sometimes whispered
together before they complied with his demands—Nannie and Tom and
Stevie, seated round the table, where the strong lamp-light flared
in their faces. Their father, peering in at them from murky recesses
behind the counter, half saw and half surmised these signals, which
did not soothe his irritation.
“What at all’s gone wid the rest of the ten-pound tin of arrowroot
biscuits?” he called suddenly. “It was better than three parts full
last time I seen it, and, accordin’ to the accounts, there’s no right
to be anythin’ out of it since then, but ne’er an atom have you left
in it, on’y a dust of crumbs.”
“Belike _they_ niver put down the last person had some,” suggested
Tom, disassociating himself from the transaction with prompt presence
of mind.
“And why the mischief didn’t you? Am I keepin’ the pack of yous
foolin’ here to be slingin’ me goods about the parish, and not so
much as take the trouble to scrawm it down? There’s not an infant
child goin’ to school but ’d make a better offer at doin’ business.”
“It’s very apt to ha’ been Mrs Moriarty,” said Nannie, choosing to
ignore this aspect of the matter; “she did be gettin’ them kind of
things the time the childer was sick. We can aisy charge them to her.”
“Mrs Moriarty’s great-grandmother’s cat!” said her father. “You
might as well save yourself the trouble—and there’s none readier—of
chargin’ anythin’ to her these times. The people at the post-office
was tellin’ me this mornin’ that the last American letter come
for her, sorra the money-order was in it at all, except word of
the daughter bein’ in hospital, and the husband out of work. It’s
one while before she’ll be settlin her account. Howsome’er, charge
the biscuits to her, and don’t be makin’ too free wid allowin’ her
anythin’ else on credit. Whose bill’s that you’re makin’ out there,
Stevie?”
“Yourself’s after biddin’ me get Dan Farrell’s,” Stevie replied.
“Ay, did I? It’s the best chance we have to be gettin’ anythin’
out of the man, and he wid his couple of bastes in at Kenmare fair
yisterday. If we don’t look out sharp, his story’ll be that the agent
took the price off him for rint. The divil mend the both of them for
a pair of thievin’ villins! Sure Widdy Rourke below was tellin’ me
she seen Dan diff’rint times comin’ out of Carmody’s as hearty as
anythin’; and when’s he had a glass from us at all? Ah, musha! long
life to him. A great notion he has to be spendin’ his ready money
at Carmody’s, and we to be givin’ him credit for everythin’ else he
happens to fancy. Plase the pigs, I’ll learn him the differ! What’s
the amount he’s owin’? Eighteen shillin’? Then just set him down a
couple of pound of them biscuits, or anythin’—the way there’ll be no
bother wid change comin’ out of his note.”
“Biscuits he didn’t get, I’ll take me living oath,” said Stevie
confidently.
“Keep your oaths till they’re axed for. ’Twas as apt to be biscuits
as anythin’. And I’ll tell you what it is, me young shaver, _you_’ll
step over to Farrell’s to-morra mornin’ and get the bill ped.” Old
Natty gave these commands in a triumphant tone, meaning them to be a
penalty for his son’s contumacious contradiction; and Stevie did say
grumblingly—
“Troth and bedad, it’s nicely bogged a man’ll be thrampin’ them roads
after these polthogues.”
But the young Grogans had a way of posing in aggrieved attitudes from
motives of policy, and the commission was really much to Stevie’s
mind, the office of collector being always in request among them,
because it was endowed with what they called their chances. These
consisted in a private lengthening of the bill by addition of sundry
fictitious items, the price of which the inventor pocketed. Thus, on
the present occasion, before Stevie went to bed he was careful to
supplement Dan Farrell’s account with the following entries, which
were purely efforts of imagination—
_s._ _d._
Extry male 2 3
Shuger 1 0
Other extrys 1 9
Five shillings was an unusually large toll to levy in this way, but
Stevie knew his man, and had little fear of failing to extract it;
easy-going Dan would so certainly be loth to “get argufyin’ and
risin’ ructions.”