through much the same experience as old Mrs O’Farrell; but so it
was. For a week or two later came a letter from Molly stating that
she was “just after gettin’ married.” Her husband, who she said
was earning grand wages, bore the obnoxious name of O’Farrell, but
there was nothing strange in the coincidence, as the district about
Meenaclure abounds in Farrells and Neills, with and without prefixes
of O and Mac; and it seemed only natural to suppose a similar state
of things in New York. Nobody could deny that there were plenty of
O’Farrells very dacint people. So Molly’s mother mourned in private
over an event which seemed to set a seal upon the separation between
her daughter and herself; and in public was well pleased and very
proud, laying great stress upon the fact that Molly had sent the
money-order just as usual,—“Sorra a fear of little Molly forgettin’
the ould people at all,”—and serenely scorning Mesdames O’Farrell’s
opinion that “when a girl had to thravel off that far after a
husband, it was the quare crooked stick of a one she’d be apt to pick
up.”
After this Meenaclure received no very thrilling foreign news for
about a twelve-month. Then one fine Sunday, the Widdy O’Farrell was
to be seen sailing along Masswards, with her head held extremely
high in its stiff-frilled cap and dark blue hood, and with a swinging
sweep of her black homespun skirt, which betrayed an exultant stride.
All her family, indeed, wore a somewhat elated and consequential
air, which most of her neighbours allowed to be justifiable when she
explained that she had become the happy grandmother of her Pat’s fine
young son: the letter with the announcement had come last night. This
was indeed promotion, for her son Tim’s children were all girls. With
the congratulations upon so auspicious an event even old Mrs M‘Neill
could mingle only subdued murmurs about brats taking after their
fathers that weren’t good for much, the dear knows. However, she had
not long to wait for as good or better a right to strut chin in air,
since it was with a great-grandmother’s dignity that a few days later
she could inform everybody of the arrival of Molly’s boy. She would,
I believe, have found it very hard to forgive Molly if the child had
been merely a daughter.
This rivalry, as it were, between the estranged families in the
matter of news from their non-resident members recurred with the
same equipoised result on more than one similar occasion, and was
extended even to less happy events. For instance, one time when Pat
wrote in great distraction, and a wilder scrawl than usual, that the
“three childer was dreadful bad wid the mumps, he doubted would they
get over it,” the next mail brought just such a report from Molly;
which was rather awkward for her mother and grandmother, who had been
going about passing the remark that “when childer got proper mindin’
they never took anythin’ of the sort.”
At length, however, when perhaps half-a-dozen years had gone by, the
balance of good fortune dipped decidedly towards the O’Farrells.
One autumn morning a letter came from Pat to say that he and his
family were coming home. He had saved up a tidy little bit of money,
and meant to try could he settle himself on a dacint little bit of
land; at any rate he would get a sight of the ould place and the
ould people. Great was the rejoicing of the O’Farrells. Whereas for
the M‘Neills at this time the meagre mail-bags contained no foreign
letter, no letter at all, bad or good, let alone one fraught with
such grand news. Molly’s mother, it is true, dreamt two nights
running that Molly had come home; but dreams are a sorry substitute
for a letter, especially when everybody knows, and some people
remind you, that they always go by contraries. So Mrs Neil fretted
and foreboded, and had not the heart to be sarcastic, no matter how
arrogantly the O’Farrells might comport themselves.
Then the autumn days shrivelled and shrank, and one morning in late
November the word went round Meenaclure that the _Kaley_ that evening
would be up at Fergus the weaver’s. This meeting-place was always
popular, Fergus being a well-liked man, with a wide space round his
hearth. And this night’s conversazione promised to be particularly
enjoyable, as it had leaked out that Dan Farrell and Mrs Keogh and
Dinny O’Neill were concerned in what is at Meenaclure technically
termed “a join,” for the purpose of treating the kaleying company to
cups of tea. In fact, the materials for that refreshment, done up in
familiar purple paper parcels, lying on the window-seat, were obvious
to everybody who came into the room, though to have seemed aware of
them would have been a grave breach of manners. When all the company
were mustered, and the fire was burning its brightest, Fergus might
well look round his house with satisfaction, for so large an assembly
seldom came together, and universal harmony seemed to prevail. This
was not disturbed by the fact that several both of the Timothy
O’Farrells and Neil M‘Neills were present, as by this time everybody
thoroughly understood the situation, and the neighbours arranged
themselves as a matter of course in ways which precluded any awkward
juxtapositions of persons “who weren’t spakin’.”
It was a showery evening, with a wafting to and fro of wide gusts,
which made the Widdy O’Farrell wonder more than once as she sat on
the form by the hearth, with the Widdy Byrne interposed buffer-wise
between her and old Joe M‘Neill. What she wondered was, whether
her poor Pat might be apt to be crossin’ over the say on such an
ugly wild night. Just as Mrs Keogh, with an eye on the lid-bobbing
kettle, was about to ask Fergus if he might happen to have e’er a
drop of hot water he could spare her—that being the orthodox preface
to tea-making on the occasion of a join—the house-door rattled
violently, and opened with a fling. As nobody appeared at it, this
was supposed to be simply the wind’s freak, and Fergus said to Mick
M‘Murdo, who sat next to it, “Musha, lad, be givin’ it a clap to
wid your fut.” But at that instant a voice was heard close outside,
calling as if to another person a little farther off, “Molly, Molly,
come along wid you; they’re all here right enough, and I wouldn’t be
keepin’ the door open on them.” Whereupon there was a quick patter
of approaching feet, followed by the entrance of two bundle-bearing
figures. As they advanced into the flickering light, it showed that
the figures were a man and a woman, and the bundles children; and in
another moment there rose up recognising shrieks and shouts of “Pat”
and “Molly,” and then everybody rushed together tumultuously across a
chasm of half-a-dozen years.
“They tould us below at Widdy Byrne’s that we’d find yous all up
here,” said Pat O’Farrell, “so we left the baby there, and stepped
along. Och, mother, it’s younger you’re grown instead of oulder, and
that’s a fac.’”
“And where’s the wife, Paudyeen agra?” said Pat’s mother; “or maybe
she sted below wid the child?”
“And where’s himself, Molly jewel?” said Molly’s mother. “Sure you
didn’t come your lone?”
“Why, here he is,” said Molly. “Pat, man, wasn’t you spakin’ to me
mother?”
“Och, whethen now, and is it Pat O’Farrell?” his mother-in-law said
with a half-strangled gasp.
“And who else would it be at all at all, only Pat?” said Molly, as if
propounding an unanswerable argument.
“Mercy be among us all—and you niver let on—och, you rogue of the
world—you niver let on, Patsy avic, it was little Molly M‘Neill you’d
took up wid all the while,” said his mother.
“Sure I was writin’ to you all about her times and agin,” Pat averred
stoutly.
Perhaps things might have turned out differently if people had not
been delighted and taken by surprise. But as it was, how could a feud
be conducted with any propriety when Mrs Neil had unprotestingly been
hugged by Pat O’Farrell, and when old Joe M‘Neill and his wife and
daughter were already worshipping a very fat small two-year-old girl,
who unmistakably featured all the O’Farrells that ever walked? The
thing was impossible.
For one moment, indeed, an unhappy resurrection seemed to be
threatened. It was when everybody had got into a circle round the
hearth, in expectation of the cups of tea, which were beginning to
clatter in the background, and when Pat O’Farrell, who was talking
over old times with Neil M‘Neill, suddenly gave his father-in-law
a great thump on the back, exclaiming with a chuckle, “Och, man,
and do you remimber your ould sheep that we got in the oats, and
gave a coloured wash to? Faix, but she was the comical objec’—‘the
tiger-sheep,’ the childer used to call her.” Whereupon all the rest
looked at one another with dismayed countenances, as if they had
caught sight of something uncanny. But their alarm was needless.
For Neil returned Pat’s thump promptly with interest, and replied,
“Haw, haw, haw! Bedad, and I do remimber her right well. Och now,
man alive, I’ll bet you me best brogues that wid all you’ve been
behouldin’ out there in the States you niver set eyes on e’er a
baste’d aquil her for quareness—haw, haw, haw!” And the whole company
took up the chorus, as if minded to make up on the spot all arrears
of laughter owing on that long unappreciated joke. Amid the sound of
which I have reason to believe that there fled away from Meenaclure
for ever the last haunting phantasm of the unchancy tiger-sheep.
THE SNAKES AND NORAH
THE SNAKES AND NORAH
The Kennys’ little farmstead was a somewhat amphibious one, occupying
the southern end of the isthmus which keeps the Atlantic foam from
riding into Lough Fintragh, a small, dark-watered nook niched in the
shadow of steep mountain slopes. Another murkier shadow brooded over
it in the opinion of the Kennys, who, like most of their neighbours,
at least half-believed that its recesses harboured a monstrous
in-dweller. Their thin white house stood fronting the seashore, with
a narrow grazing strip behind, while their yard and sheds lay along
the dwindling isthmus, which becomes a mere reef-like bar of boulders
and shingle before it again touches the mainland. In calm weather
Joe Kenny might see his unimposing ricks reflected from ridge to
butt, with gleams of ochre and amber and gold in both salt and fresh
water; but in stormy times, which came oftener, it might befall him
to witness a less pleasing spectacle of hay-wisps and straw-stooks
strewn bodily, floating and soaking on the wasteful waves. So he
was not surprised to find that this had happened when he walked out
one December morning after a wild night whose blustering had mingled
menace with his dreams. Despite its close-meshed roping and thick
fringe of dangling stone weights, the more exposed haystack had been
seriously wrecked and pillaged. “Och, bad cess to the ould win’ and
its whillaballoos!” said Joe, as he surveyed the distorted outlines,
and made a rueful estimate of the damage. “If I got the chance to
slit its bastely bellows for it, ’twould be apt to keep its huffin’
and puffin’ quiet for one while—it would so.” This was not, however,
the limit of his losses. Presently he stood looking vexedly over the
door of a half-roofed shed, which contained a good deal of sea-water
and weed; also a very small red calf, and a large jelly-fish. The
calf was drowned dead, but the jelly-fish seemingly lived as much
as usual. “Eyah, get out wid you, you unnathural-lookin’ blob of a
baste!” said Joe, giving this unprofitable addition to his stock a
contumelious flick with his blackthorn. “There’s another good fifteen
shillin’s gone on me. I’d never ha’ thought ’twould ha’ tuk and
slopped over the wall that way. Sorra the bit of a Christmas box I’ll
be able to conthrive her this year, and that’s a fac’; and to-morra
fair day and all—weary on it!”
“Her” was Rose O’Meara, Joe’s sweetheart; and since he had long
looked forward to the opportunity of the Christmas gift as likely
to bring about a favourable crisis in his courtship, the falling
through of his plan made him feel dejectedly out of humour, in which
unenjoyable mood he strolled on towards the pigstye. Traces of the
spent storm lay all around him. The tide had receded some way, but
the waves were fast by, still hissing and seething, and flinging
themselves down with hollow booms and thuds. They had evidently been
beating high against the yard-wall, for all along it they had left
great masses of brown sea-wrack tossed in bales and clumps, as if
loaded out of a cart; and these were connected by trails of green
and black weed, skeleton branches, shells, clotted froth, driftwood,
and other debris, all in an indescribable tangle. As Joe stumped
through it, he trucks his foot sharply against something hard, and
nearly tripped up. When he recovered his balance, he saw that the
obstruction was not the boulder which he had already execrated in
haste. It was a wooden box. In much excitement Joe picked it up, and
set it on the top of the wall for exacter scrutiny. The tides were
constantly sweeping in with miscellaneous fringes on the Kennys’
demesne, but seldom did they bring anything that might not be justly
termed “quare ould rubbish.” During all the course of Joe’s life,
and he was not in his first youth, no waif had been washed up so
promising in appearance as this box. About ten inches square it was,
and made of a fine grained dark wood, which seemed to have been very
highly polished. The corners were clamped with bronze-like metal,
elaborately wrought, and plates of the same inlaid the keyhole and
hinges. So strong was the lock, that when he tried to wrench off the
lid he seemed to have a solid block in his hands, and it shut so
tightly that the lines of juncture were almost invisible. Its weight
was considerable enough to increase his conviction that it held
something very precious.
Joe’s first impulse was to rush home with his prize, exhibit and
examine it. Immediately afterwards, however, it flashed across him
like an inspiration that here was Rose’s Christmas box; and upon
this followed a more leisurely resolve to keep it a secret until he
should present her with it intact on Christmas morning, still distant
three whole days. This course would cost him the repression of much
impatient curiosity, but it was recommended to him by a sense that
it would enhance the value of the gift. He would be making over to
Rose all the vague and wonderful possibilities of the treasure-trove,
which in his imagination were more splendid than any better-defined
object, as they loomed through a haze of unseen gold and jewels.
Disappointment had scanty room among his forecasts. “Sure, I’d a
right to give it to her just the way it is, wid anythin’ at all
inside it, for amn’t I axin’ her to take meself in a manner like
that, whether good, bad, or indiff’rint comes of it?—on’y it’s scarce
as apt, worse luck, to be any great things as the full of a grand
lookin’ box is. But she might understand ’twas as much as to say I’d
be wishful she had every chance of the best that I could git for
her, the crathur, if it was all the gold and silver and diamonds that
ever were dhrownded under the say-wather, and’d never think to be
lookin’ to reckon them, no more than if they were so many handfuls of
ould pebbles off of the strand.” Thus reflected Joe, who had a vein
of sentiment, which sometimes outran his powers of expression. And
thereupon, leaving the box atop of the wall, he went to look after
the pigs. He found them all surviving, though the storm had caused
some dilapidations in their abode, which obliged him to do a little
rough carpentry, and kept him hammering and thumping for several
minutes. And when he returned to the place where he had left the box,
the box was gone.
He searched wildly for it among the litter on both sides of the
wall, and nowhere could it be seen. Yet at that hour what man or
mortal was there abroad to have stirred it? Then he thought that
the weeds looked wetter than they had been, and he said to himself
that “one of them waves must ha’ riz up permiscuous and swep’ it
off in a flurry while his back was turned; and a fine gomeral
he’d been to go lave it widin raich of such a thing happenin’ it.”
So as no more satisfactory explanation was forthcoming, he turned
homeward, empty-handed and crestfallen. But before he had taken many
steps, he saw sitting under the lee of the yard-wall Tom O’Meara,
Rose’s brother, who was generally recognised to be courting Mary
Kenny, Joe’s youngest sister. The O’Mearas lived a good step beyond
the other end of the isthmus, and Joe had begun to speculate what
so early a visit might signify, when the greater wonder abruptly
swallowed the less as he became aware that Tom had the twice-lost box
in his hands.
“Look-a, Joe, at what I’m after findin’,” he called jubilantly.
“Findin’? Musha moyah! that’s fine talkin’,” said Joe. “And where at
all did you find it, then?”
“Where it was to be had,” said Tom, promptly adjusting his tone to
Joe’s, which was offensive.
“Then it’s sitting atop of our wall there it was,” said Joe.
“Whethen, now, some people has little enough to do that they can’t
keep their hands off meddlin’ wid things they find sittin’ on other
people’s yard-walls.”
“And suppose it was sittin’ on anybody’s ould wall,” said Tom, “what
else except a one of them rowlin’ waves set it sittin’ there wid
itself, and it all dhreepin’ wet out of the say? Be the same token
it’s quare if one person hasn’t got as good a right to be liftin’ it
off as another. Troth and bedad, I’d somethin’ betther to do than
to be standin’ star-gazin’ at it all day, waitin’ to ax lave of the
likes of yous.”
“I’ll soon show you the sort of rowlin’ wave there was, me man, if
you don’t throuble yourself to be handin’ it over out of that, and I
after pickin’ it up this half-hour ago,” said Joe, with furious irony.
“Come on wid you, come on!” Tom shouted, jumping to his feet with a
general flourish of defiance. At this point the dispute bade fair to
become an argument without words, and would probably have done so
had it not been that the two young men were the brothers of their
sisters. As it was, a sort of Roman-Sabine complication fettered and
handcuffed them. “Divil a thing else I was intendin’ to do wid it,
but bring it straight ways in to your sister Mary,” said Tom, “that
you need go for to be risin’ rows about the matter.”
“It’s for Rose’s Christmas box; that’s what I think bad of,” said Joe.
“Let’s halve it between the two of them, then, whatever it is,” said
Tom, feeling that a compromise was the utmost he could reasonably
expect from circumstances.
And so it was arranged, rather weakly on Joe’s part, he being the
better man of the two, and well within his rights, if he had chosen
to claim the box unconditionally. The joint presentation should take
place, they agreed, on Christmas Eve, the next day but one, when
Rose O’Meara would be visiting the Kennys; and then Tom departed
whistling, with the pick he had come to borrow the loan of, while Joe
consoled himself as best he could for this arbitrary subtraction of
more than half the pleasure and romance from his morning’s find.
Late on Christmas Eve, when the Kennys’ kitchen was full of glancing
firelight, and the widow Kenny, with her son and daughters and her
guests, Tom and Rose O’Meara, had all had their tea, Joe and Tom
were seen to often whisper and nudge one another, until at last
Joe got up and produced the box from its secret hiding-place. But
Tom hastened to forestall him as spokesman, placing considerable
confidence in his own perspicacity and grace of diction. He said—
“See you here, Mary and Rose. This consarn’s a prisint the two of us
is after gettin’ the two of yous—I mane it was Joe found it aquilly
the same as me, that picked it up somethin’ later. And it’s he’s
givin’ the whole of his half of the whole of it to Rose; but he’s
nothin’ to say to the rest of it; and it’s meself that’s givin’ Mary
the half of the whole of the half—och no, botheration! it’s the whole
of the—it’s the other whole half of it—”
“You’ve got it this time,” Joe remarked in a sarcastic aside.
“—I’m givin’ Mary. So that’s the way of it, and when we’ve got the
lid prized off for yous, you’ll just have to regulate it between
yous, accordin’ to what there is inside.”
“And if it’s all the gold and diamonds in the riches of the world,”
said Joe, “you’re kindly welcome to every grain of it, Rose jewel—ay,
bedad, are you.”
“To the one half of it,” corrected Tom, with emphasis. But his
sister tapped him with the pot-stick, and said, “Whisht, you big
omadhawn, whisht.”
“It’s a pity of such a thing to be knockin’ about and goin’ to loss,”
said Mary, rubbin’ her finger on the embossed metal-work; “and I
wonder what’s gone wid whatever crathur owned it. Under the salt say
he’s very apt to be lying this night—the Lord be good to him!” The
rustle of the waves climbing up the shingle outside seemed to swell
louder as she spoke.
“For anythin’ we can tell, he might be takin’ a look in at us through
the windy there this minute to see what we’re doin’ wid it,” said Joe.
Everybody’s eyes turned towards the dark little square of the window,
and Mary left off handling the box as suddenly as if it had become
red-hot.
“Oh, blathers!” said Tom. “Just raich me the rippin’-chisel that’s
lyin’ on the windy-stool, Norah, and we’ll soon thry what it is at
all.”
Norah, the elder sister, made a very long arm, and secured the tool
with as little approximation as might be to the deep-set panes. She
had neither sweetheart nor Christmas box, and was disposed to take a
rather languid and cynical view of affairs.
“There’s apt not to be any great things in it, I’m thinkin’,” said
the widow Kenny from her elbow-chair by the hearth. The truth was
that she had been reflecting with some bitterness how not so many
years since Joe would have “come flourishin’ in to her wid any ould
thrifle of rubbish he might ha’ picked up outside,” whereas now he
had kept this valuable property silently in his possession for three
days, for the purpose of bestowing it upon the O’Mearas’ slip of a
girl. Consequently, Joe’s mother held aloof from the eager group
round the table, and uttered disparaging predictions of the event.
Tom and Mary did make a prudent attempt to fend off their collision
with the disappointment which might emerge from the mists ahead
by repeating, as the chisel wrestled with the stubborn hasps and
springs, “Sure, all the while belike there’s on’y some quare ould
stuff in it, no good to anybody.” Joe and Rose, on the contrary,
chose to run under crowded sail towards the possible wreck of their
hopes, and talked of sovereigns and bank-notes and jewels while the
lid creaked and resisted.
But when at length it yielded with a final splinter, it disclosed
what no one had anticipated—namely, nothing. The box was quite
empty. Daintily lined with glossy satinwood, as if for the reception
of something delicate and precious, but bare as the palm of your
hand. There was not even so much vacant space as might have been
expected, for the sides were disproportionately thick. Very blank
faces exchanged notes with one another upon this result. Almost any
contents, however inappropriate and worthless, would have been their
“advantage to exclaim upon,” and more tolerable for that reason than
mere nullity, about which there was little to be said. Rose was the
first to rally from the general mortification, observing with forced
cheerfulness that “sure ’twould make an iligant sort of workbox, at
all ivints, and ’twas maybe just as handy there bein’ nothin’ in it,
because ’twould hould anythin’ you plased.” To which Mary rejoined,
dejectedly refusing to philosophise, “Bedad, then, you may keep it
yourself, girl alive, for the lid’s every atom all smashed into
smithereens.”