is only a branch of a branch line, and while most of them have not
gone farther along it than Brockenbeg Junction, seven miles north,
by no means few have never got even so far. It is a place where in
soft weather the platform frequently takes a pattern of bare feet,
and bare feet seldom set out on long journeys by rail. As for Dublin,
that had hitherto seemed a goal which remoteness and magnitude made
hardly accessible even to imagination. Letterowen folk considered
vaguely that it would need a sight of money and a powerful length of
time to bring you thither, and what might be expected to befall you
there was so hard to say that your return seemed misty indeed. Yet
here was a printed notice boldly promising—“To Dublin and back for
two shillings,” and going into circumstantial details about a train
departing at six in the morning and arriving at noon, and leaving
again at midnight. “Twenty-four hours for twenty-four pence,” it
ended epigrammatically, and some of its readers felt no manner of
doubt that each one of them would be an hour of rapture unalloyed.
Others were less confident. Old Dan Molloy had heard tell of there
being such thick fogs in Dublin most whiles that people “were as apt
to walk plump into the river as anywhere else, which was a terrible
dangerous thing.” And the Widow Loughlin had been told that “thim
quare excursion trains as often as not got shunted off into a siding
before they came to any place, and the crathurs in them did be left
there perishin’ for nobody knew how long.” Several of the neighbours
also wondered whether the people would have to be sitting in their
seats all the time she was stopping in Dublin station, for that
wouldn’t be very gay at all. Mr Farrell, the station-master, was
frequently called upon to clear up this or some similar perplexity,
and he generally did so satisfactorily, pointing out at the same time
that the terms were uncommonly reasonable. I do not think that they
struck most of his hearers in just that light. The opinion rather
inclined to be that they certainly offered a great deal for the
money, but that the money, as certainly, was a great deal to pay. For
pence are pennies at Letterowen. Thus the price specified for the
four-and-twenty hours had in some cases an effect not intended by the
company.
“Four-and-twinty pence—goodness guide us; sure I would be four days
arnin’ meself that much at the weedin’ or stone-gatherin’ if I was on
full woman’s wages itself,” said Anne Reilly, who in slack seasons
often had to be content with half that amount; “and to go spind it
away between one mornin’ and the next, as if you could pick it up
handy along the side of the road. Musha, long life to them; I hope
they’ll be gettin’ their health till I do.”
“And, mind you, the two shillin’s isn’t the whole of it—where’s your
bit of food comin’ from? Or is it starvin’ you’d go there and back
again?” said Anne’s niece, Katty M‘Grehan, meaning to discourage her
sister Maggie, whom she suspected of harbouring extravagant ideas,
which Maggie quite understood, and rejoined to, saying with some
heat: “Then is it aitin’ nothin’ at all a body’d be, supposin’ they
was sittin’ mopin’ at home? ’Twould be all the one thing to take it
along in the ould can. For the matter of that there’s nothin’ aisier.”
“Nor wastefuller,” Katty said, sticking obdurately to her point,
with her worst suspicions confirmed. She wanted to save those two
shillings, having planned a treat for her crippled father, “the
crathur.”
“Well, glory be to goodness, Jimmy,” old Mrs Walsh remarked to
her contemporary, James M‘Evilly, who, like herself, had listened
dispassionately to the little skirmish, “you and me is too ould and
ancient altogether for to be botherin’ about goin’ or stayin’—the
trees in the hedges is as apt to be thinkin’ of takin’ runs up the
road, and it saves a power of throuble.”
This view of the situation prevailed more or less among the elders of
Letterowen, but not universally. Here and there an old body held an
alert and agile mind, which, according to circumstances, chafed at
its restraints, or made a shift to get about in spite of them. Such
was the case with Mrs Rea, whose age, never estimated at less than
“rale ould entirely,” is by some people asserted to be “every day of
ninety year.” She herself acquiesces cheerfully in any figure between
that and threescore and ten. Certain it is, at all events, that she
seems quite as active and vigorous as many of her much less venerable
neighbours. Still they were surprised when, a few days later, she was
amongst the first to announce that she intended to “thry her chance,
and see what sort of a place Dublin might be at all at all.” Behind
her back, they declared that it was “no thing for the ould crathur
to take upon herself to be doin’,” and that “she might very aisy
lose her life over it if she didn’t mind what she was at.” And some
of them called upon her in her house at the end of the post-office
row, fronting the railway embankment, for the express purpose of
remonstrating with her in scarcely less outspoken terms. “Ah, woman
dear,” they would say, “is it dotin’ you are, or what at all’s come
over you to put such a notion in your head? Sure it’s losin’ yourself
ten times you’ll be going that far, let alone breakin’ the ould bones
of you clamberin’ in and out of them high carriages, and up and down
them cruel steep stairs. Or else, ma’am, desthroyed you’ll surely
be in the streets, where they say an ould person creepin’ about is
as apt to get dhruv over as a weeny chucken that sets itself up to
be runnin’ under the people’s feet, and they coming out from Mass.”
But for all of these she had the same answer: “Well now, ma’am, if I
amn’t ould enough to take care of meself at this time of day, I dunno
when I’m likely to be.” To which piece of inconsequence they commonly
replied, “that them that was wilful’d go their own way,” and took
leave huffily, unconvincing and unconvinced.
Their axiom was truer in Mrs Rea’s case than might have been
anticipated from her circumstances; for she was a solitary widow,
and the way that such persons go is often determined by quite other
considerations than their own wilfulness, especially if there be a
question of as much as two shillings involved. Mrs Rea, however, had
one son prospering in the States, and another long established as
under-gardener to very high-up quality in the county Sligo, and both
of them were “rale good lads to their mother,” which set her above
anything she or her neighbours would have called want. Just now,
moreover, her “odd few ould hens,” had been laying unusually well,
so that her railway fare was forthcoming with little difficulty. The
chief obstacle she encountered was public opinion, which, although
she thought as lightly of it as might be, she could not completely
disregard. It is impossible to set out on a great enterprise with an
unperturbed mind in the face of unanimous prophecies that you will
never come back alive; even if you do let on to consider them “all
blathers and nonsense.” So Mrs Rea, while dealing summarily with the
objections urged by her ordinary acquaintances, would condescend
to argue the matter at much length with her especial crony, Julia
Carroll.
Julia disapproved of the project rather decidedly for her, she being
by no means an opinionated person. “’Deed, now, Joanna,” she said,
in the course of their first discussion, “supposin’ I had the chance
itself, which I havn’t, it’s long sorry I’d be to be settin’ off
on any such a deminted sthravade. Sure, woman alive, them that has
the age on them of you and me is bound to be travellin’ prisintly,
whether or no, far enough to contint anybody, unless it was the
Wanderin’ Jew. So where’s the sinse of tatterin’ about afore thin in
them racketin’ smoky trains? I declare to you, I hate the noise and
smell of them passin’ by there, goodness forgive me, and it only the
nathur of them after all.”
“But bedad thin, Julia, that’s the very thing I was considherin’,”
said Mrs Rea. “For if it’s stuck down in the one place we’re to
be all the while till we’re took, we’ll get that disaccustomed to
everythin’ out of the way we won’t know what to do wid ourselves
anywheres else. So for that raison we’d a right to jaunt about now
and agin to diff’rint places the way we’ll be a thrifle used to what
we’re strange to, and not amazed and moidhered entirely wid the
quareness of it.”
“Well, now, I’d never have that notion,” said Julia Carroll, “for
it’s the quare quareness and the sthrange sthrangeness I’ll be
throublin’ me head about when once I get the chance of goin’ the
road after some of them that’s wint afore me. Sure as long as there
was the ould people in it it might be the most outlandish place one
could consaive and I’d niver notice it, I’d be that took up wid
meetin’ them, nor you wouldn’t aither, Joanna. Morebetoken, I’m often
thinkin’ these times that the old place is the sthrangest of all
since they’re quit out of it—and no fear of gettin’ used to it, sorra
a fear!”
“Maybe that’s very thrue for you,” said Mrs Rea. “But, talkin’ of the
ould people, there’s another raison I have. Do you remimber Biddy
Loughlin—thim that lived below the forge?”
“In a manner I remember her, but which of them was Biddy I couldn’t
say for sure. They was only slips of girls the time they stopped
here, and we never had much doin’s or dalin’s wid them.”
“Well, Biddy married a man of the name of Jackson that lives up there
in Dublin. Her aunt was telling me she heard from her last Christmas.
Keepin’ a fine little shop, they are, in some sthreet—I must ask her
the name—convenient to the railway station. So I was thinkin’ I’d
write her word when I was comin’, and maybe bid her meet me at the
thrain. ’Twould be pleasant to see a body one knew.”
“Middlin’ pleasant it might be. But, saints above, woman, you needn’t
tell _me_ that you’re takin’ off up to Dublin for a sight of Biddy
Loughlin, that I believe you’d scarce know from her grandmother’s
ninth cousin, as the sayin’ is, if she walked into the room this
instiant minyit. For that is too onraisonable a raison altogether.”
Mrs Rea looked rather defiantly conscience-stricken. “To spake the
moral thruth,” she said, “I wouldn’t wonder if all the while I wasn’t
goin’ for e’er a thing else except a bit of divarsion; and I dunno if
that’s any great sin.” “Sure not all,” Julia Carroll said, more from
politeness than conviction, for she was an ascetic both by nature and
training. “Only it’s the quare divarsion’d take me thravellin’ over
the counthry if I had a grand little room of me own to be stoppin’
paiceable in.” She glanced covetously round her friend’s house, in
which they were talking. For Julia, having lagged superfluously long
behind her own generation, was wearing out the fag end of her days in
a grand-nephew’s family, where the tolerance she met with, though
good-natured enough, could not benumb her sense that only in this
world she filled up a place which, albeit cold and comfortless, could
with difficulty be spared to her. Therefore she looked wistfully
round Mrs Rea’s domain and said, “Very paiceable I’d stop in it, ay
would I.”
“There’ll be a good few out of this goin’ on it besides me, you may
dipind,” said Mrs Rea, “Dinny Fitzpatrick is, for one, I know.”
“Ah, poor Dinny’s a young chap, the crathur; where’d he get a
ha’porth of wit,” said Julia, this time with unintentional severity.
“And be the same token, there was his head went by the windy. Gettin’
on for six o’clock it must be if he’s lavin’ work, and I’ve a right
to be steppin’ along wid meself.”
“Is it wit?” said Mrs Rea; “the lad has plinty of that, according to
aught I ever seen of him. If there’s anything ails him, it’s bein’
a thrifle ugly in his temper, as his father was before him. ’Deed,
them Fitzpatricks have the name of bein’ cross-tempered people—dacint
and cross-tempered. That’s the way he got quarrellin’ wid Norah
M‘Grehan, she he was spaking to a long while, just about the time
she took her situation in Dublin. And my belief is he has some notion
now of makin’ it up wid her, and that’s what’s startin’ him on the
excursion; for until he heard tell of it his mind was set on goin’ to
the Malahogue Races. I’d be glad if the two of them got frinds ag’in;
poor Norah’s a good-nathured little girl, the crathur, and all Dinny
wants is a bit of humourin’ to keep him plisant, and whativer the
raison may be, he’s mostly seemed as discontinted as an ould hin in a
shower of sleet ever since Norah quit.”
Denis Fitzpatrick, whose clear-cut profile and rough tweed cap had
just crossed Mrs Rea’s greenish pane on his way up the dusk-dimmed
street, was a good-looking sturdy young fellow, with a countenance
which bore out her assertion that he had plenty of wit. She was
right, too, in her conjectures about the motive which lay at the
bottom of his plans for St Patrick’s Day. At that very moment, in
fact, he was considering how he might best ascertain Norah M‘Grehan’s
Dublin address without compromising his dignity by any direct
inquiries from her family, who had been stiff enough for some months
past. He thought he would ask ould Mrs Rea, who was likely to know,
and, failing her, Norah’s sister Maggie, as she looked several
degrees less forbiddingly upon him than Katty had done since the
falling out.
But after all he need not have troubled himself with these
arrangements. On the afternoon of the Sunday before the holiday Mrs
Rea was happily busy over her fire when a long shadow fell in at her
door and ran up the wall.
“Well, Dinny,” she said, recognising it without turning her head,
“and what’s the best good news wid you?”
“Och nothin’ at all, ma’am,” said Dinny.
“There couldn’t be less,” Mrs Rea said cheerfully; “I’m makin’ meself
a bit of griddle bread to take along in the thrain, and I’ll ha’
plinty for you in it too, Dinny.”
“Thank’ee kindly, ma’am,” Dinny said, gloomily, “but divil a thrain
I’ll be thravellin’ in.”
“Mercy on us all—what’s after happ’nin’ you, man?” she said, whirling
round in consternation.
“Sure because I’m claned out—stone broke,” said Dinny. “Didn’t I
put me half-crown on Black Knot, that was runnin’ yesterday for the
Balmarina Cup, and what’d suit the baste but to go break his ugly
neck at the first lep? It was Sargint Duffy himself bid me put every
penny I could on him, and he knows people that knows all manner. Two
pounds he had on him himself. The divil’s in it.”
“You great, big, stupid ass, you,” said Mrs Rea. “Och, well now,
wouldn’t anybody think an infant child might have the sinse to keep
out of them ould barracks, where it’s bettin’ and foolery the len’th
of the day? And small blame, maybe, to the polis, that’s nothin’
betther to do, and plinty of money to be pitchin’ under the horses’
feet; but for the likes of you to go settin’ up to ruinate yourself!
Faix but you’re the quare fool.” Her genuine vexation at his mishap
came to the surface in a bubbling of wrath, while her plain speaking
was made all the more natural by the fact that it seemed to her only
the other day since six-foot Dinny stood scarcely as high as her
table, and that in Dinny’s recollections Mrs Rea had always been
a rather comical old personage, from whom desirable sugar-sticks
and cakes and negligible threats and reproaches were occasionally
forthcoming. “The grandest chance at all,” she said, “and everythin’
settled—and Norah, the crathur. Och, now, Dinny Fitzpatrick, if
yourself’s not the most unchancy stookawn of a gomeral on the
townland, just get me him that is?”
“I’ve raison to be greatly obligated to you, ma’am,” said Dinny;
“and the next time I want somebody to gab the hind leg off a dog, I
know where to be comin’ to.” So he went away in high indignation.
Whereupon Mrs Rea thought ruefully to herself, “Sure, maybe I’d no
right to be annoyin’ him, and he disappointed wid losin’ his holiday
and all, the mislucky bosthoon.”
Annoyed him she had, however, so seriously, that next evening he had
twenty minds at least to make as if he did not hear her calling him
across the street, when he was going by from his work. Only that
there seemed to be a hoarse sort of despair in her “Dinny, man,
Dinny,” resentment would undoubtedly have got the better of him; but
as it was, he came over and asked what ailed her.
Mrs Rea looked rather dreadful, for she had her head muffled in
two large shawls, one grey and one black, and had wisped round her
throat a white apron, which gave a curious conventual touch to her
appearance. She explained that she was destroyed with a very bad
cold, some sort of asthmy or influenzy she thought it must be,
it had come on so sudden, and her corroborative coughs were quite
alarmingly loud. “Ne’er a fut’ll I git out to-morra,” she said, “not
if the city of Dublin was just across the width of them two rails
there, instid of len’th-ways. And me writin’ word to poor Biddy
Loughlin I was comin’ at twelve o’clock. Lookin’ out for me she’ll
be.”
“Sure you could aisy send her a message be some of them that’s
goin’,” said Dinny. “Art Walsh is, I know, and his sisther.”
“’Deed but I wouldn’t like to be disthressin’ them to be wastin’
their day runnin’ about after me messages,” Mrs Rea said, “nor I
wouldn’t like poor Biddy to be losin’ her time expectin’ me.”
“Well, thin, I dunno how you can manage it,” said Dinny. “One thing
or the other you must do—send it or let it alone.”
“Where’s yourself, lad?” said Mrs Rea.
“And didn’t I tell you I hadn’t a penny to me name? Not unless it’s
borryin’ I was, and then where’d me wages be on Sathurday? I wouldn’t
mind if it was meself only, but I can’t be lavin’ the ould bodies at
home too short, and that’s the end of it. There’s no use talkin’.”
“Och, you gaby, wasn’t I manin’ you to go on me own couple of
shillin’s in place of meself, and take me message? Supposin’ you’d
nought betther to do. It’s too late to be writin’ be the post, and if
Biddy doesn’t get word, as like as not she’ll be in a fine fantigue,
considherin’ I’m lost and sthrayed away; but when you tould her that
kilt wid a cowld was all I was, she’d know nothin’ ailed me. Quite
convanient she lives to the station, so ’twouldn’t delay you above
a minyit, and then all the rest of the while you could be seein’
anybody else there was, and the sights of Dublin, and everythin’.”
Mrs Rea was so bent upon recommending her plan that she forgot her
hoarseness and bad cough. However, this signified little, as Dinny
was too well pleased with the project to be critical about symptoms.
“I give you my word, Judy, woman,” she said, when shortly afterwards
relating the incident to her friend, “the eyes of him shone out of
his head at the notion like the two bright lamps in the tail end of
the thrains runnin’ by there on a black night.”
Thus it came to pass that Denis Fitzpatrick was after all one of
the party who on the morrow made an early start from Letterowen.
It was a still, soft morning, discreetly hooded in grey, but with
an indefinable atmosphere abroad, as if the air were full of some
secrets that might be told when the sun got a little higher. Quite a
crowd of the neighbours were on the platform seeing the excursionists
off, some of them with rather envious eyes. And among those
malcontents was Maggie M‘Grehan, who felt herself aggrieved by her
failure to capture her railway fare, notwithstanding that she had the
prospect of a drive to the Malahogue Races for her holiday amusement
while her sister Katty looked after their bedridden father. Her mood
lightened, however, at the sight of Denis actually starting with the
rest, because, for reasons of her own, she had been considerably put
out by the stoppage of his expedition.
Mrs Rea did not appear. Of course it would have been unwise of
her to venture out with her cold, although her violent cough had
wonderfully subsided. But she saw the train whisked by as she was
making herself very busy over cleaning up the inmost recesses of
her dresser; and her comment was, “Ah, well; sure ’twould ha’ been
a pity to stand in their way, the crathurs.” Her day after this
passed without noteworthy incidents until about tea-time, when, as
she and Julia Carroll were sitting quietly at the brightening fire
something unwelcome occurred. To all appearances, it was nothing
worse than the entrance of a pleasant-looking, dark-eyed girl, in a
becoming velvet-trimmed hat and neat cloth jacket; yet the tone of
the ejaculations with which Mrs Rea greeted her clearly betokened
an untoward event. “Och, glory be to goodness, is it yourself here,
Norah M‘Grehan? Whethen now, how did you come whatever? Isn’t the
childer at your place took sick, the way you couldn’t git lave at
all, so Katty was tellin’ me—the last time you wrote?”
“But sure they’ve got finely now, and the misthress is takin’ them
out to Dalkey for a bit of a change. I wrote home word on Sathurday.
Didn’t they tell you?”
“Deed no; I seen naither of them; and there I am after packing off
poor Dinny Fitzpatrick up to Dublin this mornin’ arly. Ragin’ he is
this minyit of time, you may depind, findin’ nobody in it.”
“And what’d ail him to be ragin’?” said Norah, “or what call’d he
have to be thinkin’ of findin’ anybody? He knew as well as I did I
was comin’ down to-day. So off he wint, and joy go wid him and the
likes of him. Be good luck I’ll be out of it on the eleven o’clock
train to-night afore he’s back.”
“Well, if he knew, it’s a quare thing,” Mrs Rea began.
“Quarer it’d be if he didn’t,” Norah said, interrupting, “when he
heard it from Maggie last night. Katty was tellin’ me—for Maggie’s
off to the races—she seen her talkin’ to him outside, so she was
checkin’ her for havin’ anythin’ to say to him, not bein’ friendly
these times, since he took upon himself to give me impidence about
the Molloy’s party. And Maggie said he stopped her to ax would I be
comin’ home on the holiday, and she tould him as plain as she could
spake that I was. So that was the way of it, and the best thing could
happen.”
“Well, well, well, but that bangs Banagher,” Mrs Rea said, not
disguising her chagrin. “What was he up to then at all? Troth now,
you might as aisy make an offer to count the grains of sugar meltin’
in your tay as tell the contrariness and treachery there does be in
another body’s mind. But we’d betther just be sittin’ down; ’twill
be drawn be this time. Wait till I reach down a cup and saucer for
you, Norah alanna; it’s somethin’ to git a sight of you at all
evints.”
It is to be feared that Norah did not find this tea a very lively
entertainment, although she talked away at a great rate, telling all
her Dublin news. Mrs Rea listened with only a divided attention, the
other half, and the largest, being occupied by the thought that after
all she might better have gone on the jaunt herself. A sacrifice
thrown away is generally an irritating and depressing subject for
meditation; and Mrs Rea’s seemed to have been worse than merely
wasted, as she said to herself that “all the good her stayin’ at
home had done anybody was only harm.” These reflections made her a
dull and silent hostess. Then, during a pause in the conversation,
Julia Carroll expressed her belief that she herself “as like as not
wouldn’t be dhrinkin’ tay anywheres by next St Patrick’s Day.” The
little old woman spoke in a hopeful tone, looking as if she saw many
pleasant possibilities in the conjecture; but a slip of a girl of
Norah’s age and experience could scarcely share that view, and the
remark did not tend to cheer her.
However, when they had finished tea, Mrs Rea went out into the grey
dusk at the door to collect her hens with the few crumbs, and a
moment afterwards Norah, who was putting turf on the fire, heard a
sound that made her drop the sod out of her hand suddenly enough
to set the white ashes fluttering about like snow-flakes, while
the golden sparks darted up straight like shooting stars. It was
Mrs Rea exclaiming: “Och, mercy be among us! is it yourself, Dinny
Fitzpatrick? And what at all brought you back so soon, and how did
you conthrive to come?” To which the voice of Dinny replied: “Sure,
ma’am, when I got there I found there was nothin’ to be keepin’ me in
it whatsome’er, so one of the guards at the station was a dacint chap
from Youghal, and for the sixpence I had along wid me for a dhrink,
he let me come back on the two o’clock mail that stops next to
nowhere for man or baste, and that way I got home very handy. And was
you seein’ anythin’ to-day of Norah M‘Grehan? But, bedad, ’twould be
just of a piece wid the rest of it if she was on the road thravellin’
back to Dublin agin now.”
“Musha, thin, she’s not got very far yet, that’s sartin. But,
goodness help you, man alive, wouldn’t it ha’ been a dale more
sinsible to ha’ axed the question afore you took skytin’ the len’th
of the counthry, and nothin’ at the end of it?”
“And, begorra, didn’t I ax it? Sure I knew there was some talk of her
comin’ home, so I axed her sisther Maggie last night, and no, sez
she, sorra a fut could she get lave.”
“It was an onthruth she tould you,” said Mrs Rea.
“Troth, now, I had me doubts it was, ever since the ould woman I seen
at her place in Dublin said she well remembered Norah writin’ home to
say she was goin’; and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s not the first ugly
turn that Maggie’s after doin’ agin us. But did you say, ma’am, that
Norah was above at her house?”
“What for would _I_ go to be tellin’ lies on you? Sure, not at all,
but if you’ve a fancy to be standin’ on the one flure wid her, just
step your feet over the hins’ ould dish, and there you are.”
Dinny stepped accordingly, and immediately afterwards found himself
shaking hands vehemently with Norah M‘Grehan, and inquiring what way
she was this long while. Norah replied that she must be running home
to her poor father and Katty, for she’d presently have to be settin’
off again to catch the Dublin train. But Mrs Rea, bustling jubilantly
about the dresser, said, “Aisy now, honey. You’ll give the poor lad
time just to swallow his cup of tay, and then he’ll be all ready to
go along wid you.”