PINS AND PORK
“Sure, this is blessed Erin, an’ this the same glen;
The gold is on the whin-bush, the wather sings again:
The Fairy Thorn’s in flower—an’ what ails my heart then?”
MOIRA O’NEIL.
‟WELL—of all the deserters!”
“Is it me?” asked Wally, modestly. He made an enormous stride from a
half-submerged stone into the boat, and nearly lost his balance,
collapsing in the stern.
“You!” said Jim, steadying the boat, which endeavoured, under the
assault, to bury her nose in a muddy bank of rushes. “You, that was
going to catch several hundred trout, and instead cleared out——”
“In a plutocratic motor,” said Norah.
“With a bloated aristocrat,” added Jim.
“And never said good-bye!” finished Mr. Linton, with an artistic catch
in his voice.
“I did,” said Wally: “I did it all. And I didn’t want to.”
Sounds of disbelief rose from his hearers.
“You needn’t snort,” said the victim, inelegantly.
“I don’t think it betters your case to describe our just indignation as
snorting,” said Mr. Linton.
“If you were to grovel it would become you better,” said Norah.
“Not in this boat,” hastily remarked her father. “It isn’t planned for
gymnastics.”
“He’s too well-fed to grovel, anyhow,” said Jim brutally. “What did you
have in the ducal castle, Wal? ortolans and plovers’ eggs, and things?”
“Chops,” said Wally.
“Shades of Australia!” ejaculated Mr. Linton. “Is that what one eats in
company with dukes?”
“I don’t know,” Wally answered, patiently. “He isn’t a duke, anyhow.
Where did you people get your soaring ideas?”
“From a lame chauffeur who seemed to think you were getting a great deal
more than you deserved——” Jim began.
“That’s what I’m getting now!” said Wally.
“Well, he said you had gone off in the mothor to the big house. We
inferred from his tone that it was not merely big, but enormous. The
master had tuk you, he said; we further gathered that you might come
back when the master had finished with you. It sounded rather like Jack
and the Giant, and if we had known who had kidnapped you we might have
organized a search party. As we didn’t, we caught trout—lots of ’em.”
“Did you, indeed?” said Wally, with open envy. “Lucky beggars—I wish I
had!”
“And you rioting in baronial halls!” said Norah. “Some people don’t know
when they are well off.”
“If we let Wally have a word in edgeways for a few minutes we might find
out a little more about the baronial halls,” said Mr. Linton. “Tell us
what happened to you, Wally. Was it a duke?”
“It was not—only a poor hump backed chap with some sort of a handle to
his name. He’s Sir John O’Neill, and he has a lovely place; but you
never saw a man with less ‘frill,’” Wally remarked. “Simple as anyone
could be. And I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry for anyone.”
“Is he badly crippled?” Jim asked.
“No—only he seems awfully delicate, and subject to beastly fits of
illness. He’s got any amount of pluck—rides and shoots and fishes, and
has motored half over the world. But of course he’s terribly
handicapped; the wonder is that he has done half as much.”
“That must be the man Patsy was talking about—only he called him the
young masther,” Norah said. “Is he quite young?”
“Oh, I’d put him down at about forty,” said Wally, to whom that age was
close on senile decay: “I think the old hands here would call a man the
young master until he died of old age. He’s queer: at times he’s like a
kid; and then I suppose the pain gets hold of him, because, in a minute
he seems to grow quite old, and he drops laughing and gets bitter.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Linton. “How did you find him, Wally?”
“Why, I nearly fell on top of him getting down a bank into a lane,”
Wally answered. “He was sitting on a stone, hating himself, but he
didn’t seem to mind my sudden appearance at all, though I’m sure clods
hit him. Then we yarned, and I helped him back to his car, and he got me
to go back to lunch with him—I didn’t want to, but——” He was silent.
“I expect he was glad of someone to talk to,” Mr. Linton said.
“That’s it—he’s just as lonely as he can be. All his people are
fighting, and he’s knocked himself out over Red Cross work, and has had
to come back to Ireland and get fit. He’s coming to call on you,
sir—and he wants us all to go over to Rathcullen—his place—as much as
we can.”
“H’m,” said Jim and Norah, together.
“I wish baronial halls appealed more to my family,” said Mr. Linton,
laughing.
“I didn’t mean to be horrid; but trout and loughs and bogs appeal so
much more,” said Norah. “Of course we’ll go, if he wants us.”
“Well, it’s a jolly place, and he’s horribly lonely,” Wally answered.
“And I don’t know about his halls being baronial, but certainly his
stables are: they’re simply topping. He hasn’t many horses left—the
Government took most of them for the war; but there are two ripping
hunters, and some extra good ponies. And he wants to lend ’em to us.”
“Eh!” said Jim, sitting up. “Wally, my child, how did you manage it?”
“Didn’t have to,” said Wally, grinning. “He simply threw them at me.
Asked me if you could ride, Norah, so I suggested that if he had a quiet
donkey it might do.”
“We have one that is not quiet,” said Norah, regarding him with a fixed
eye. “Tell me the truth, Wally—is there something I can ride?”
“Wait till you see it—that’s all. And he’s going to teach us to jump
banks and ditches and things.”
“Oh-h!” said Norah, blissfully, “I said this place only wanted horses to
make it perfect!”
“Well, now you’re going to have the horses, little as you both deserve
’em,” said Wally; “and now, perhaps, you’ll all apologize humbly for
calling me unpleasant names!”
“Certainly not,” Jim said, firmly. “If you didn’t deserve them at the
moment (and I’m not sure that you didn’t), you’re sure to deserve them
before long. Never mind, look at this!”
He opened his fishing-basket carefully and showed a mass of damp grass,
among which could be seen glimpses of many trout. Jim dived in with his
finger and thumb, and drew out a speckled beauty, which he dangled
before Wally’s envious gaze.
“A pound and a half, by my patent spring-balance!” he declared,
triumphantly. “I played him for what seemed like three hours, and I
never was so scared of anything in my life. He got tired at last,
however, and Norah officiated with the landing-net.”
“Yes, and missed him twice,” said Norah, shame-faced. “It was the
greatest wonder he didn’t get off. But a big trout on the end of a
little line does wobble so much when it’s coming towards the net. It’s
much worse than a screwing ball at tennis.”
“I know—and you feel perfectly certain the line is going to break, if
the rod doesn’t,” Wally said. “I feel like that over a quarter-pounder:
I don’t know how you ever managed to make a collected effort for that
big fellow.”
“It wasn’t collected at all—I just swiped wildly, and got him by the
sheerest good luck,” Norah answered. “I mean to practise with a cricket
ball on a string, hung from the big tree outside my window: it would be
awful to miss another beauty like that.”
They were drifting down the little lough very slowly. There were purple
shadows under the hills, lying across the strip of bog that stretched
westward, where the curlew and golden plover were calling. A little
breeze sprang up, just rippling the surface of the water. Wally got out
his rod hastily; but though the conditions seemed ideal, the trout had
apparently gone to sleep, and when an hour’s casting had not yielded so
much as a rise, it was decided that there might be better things than
fishing, and the party returned to the shore. A small boy, lurking about
the landing stage, was entrusted with the rods and baskets, and
disappeared slowly among the trees fringing the path that led to the
hotel.
“What are we going to do?” Jim asked.
“I’m going to Gortbeg,” Norah said. “I want some pins.”
“Pins?” Jim echoed. “Why ever must you walk two miles for pins? I’m sure
you don’t use one in a year.”
“No, and so I haven’t got any,” Norah said. “And I must have some,
because I want to shorten my bog-lepping skirt, and I can’t turn up the
edge without pins to keep it in place.”
“But you sew that sort of thing, don’t you?” Jim asked, wrestling with
masculine obtuseness.
“Of course—after you’ve pinned it in place. Jimmy, you had better let
me attack that skirt in my own way!” said Norah, justly incensed. “If
you’d tried climbing a mountain in a too-long skirt you wouldn’t argue
about making it shorter.”
“I guess I would cut a foot off it without arguing at all,” said Jim,
laughing. “Skirts are fool-things out of a house. Well, lead on, my
child: I suppose we’re all going pin-hunting.”
The road to Gortbeg lay between high banks, with occasional gaps through
which could be seen pleasant moors and fields, and sometimes an old
mansion, almost hidden by enormous beech-trees. Most of the great houses
of the country were silent and closely-shuttered; the men of the family
away fighting, the women doing Red Cross work in London, or nursing as
near the firing-line as they could manage to establish themselves. In a
few were faint signs of occupation: a white-haired old lady on a lawn,
an old man, surrounded by a number of dogs, of many breeds, wandering
through the woods; but even in these houses there was an air of brooding
quiet and expectancy, of silent daily watching for news. The gardens
were gay with summer flowers, and nothing could spoil the beauty of the
trees; but there were weeds in the mould, and the paths were unkempt and
moss-grown. The district was never a rich one, and now the war had taken
all its men and money.
Down the road, to meet them, came a boy on a donkey: a cheery small boy,
sitting very far back with his knees well in. The donkey was guiltless
of bridle or saddle, obeying, with meekness, if not with alacrity,
suggestions conveyed to it by the pressure of the bare knees and
occasional blows with an ash cudgel.
“The asses of Ireland are a patient race,” remarked Wally.
“They had need to be,” Jim answered.
“It’s up to the ass to be patient in most places,” remarked Mr. Linton.
“Life isn’t exactly a picnic to him anywhere. On the whole, the Irish
donkeys seem well enough cared for; I have seen their brothers in other
countries far worse treated. That’s a nice donkey you have, sonny”—to
the small rider, who passed them, grinning cheerfully.
“He is, sorr”; and the grin widened.
“They’re such jolly kids in these parts,” Wally said. “They always greet
you as if you were the one person they had wanted to see for years; and
they’re so interested in you. It doesn’t seem like curiosity, either,
but real, genuine interest.”
“So it is, as far as it goes,” Jim said.
“Well it may not go far, but it’s comforting while it lasts—and it
generally lasts as long as one is there oneself. It’s just as well it
doesn’t go deeper, or visitors would leave an awful trail of unrequited
affection behind them. As it is, one feels they recover after one has
gone, after doing all they can to make one’s stay pleasant. Yes, I think
Ireland’s a nice, friendly country,” Wally finished. “And there’s
Gortbeg, looking as if it had forgotten to wake up for about five
hundred years.”
There was not much of Gortbeg. A busy little river flowed past it
hurriedly, and the village had sprung up along one bank: one winding
street, with a few cottages and a whitewashed inn which called itself
the Fisherman’s Arms. Some boats were moored in the stream near the inn,
where a crazy landing-stage jutted out. Scarcely anyone was to be seen
except a few children, playing on the green, which they shared with
numerous geese, a few donkeys, and some long-haired goats; while over
the half-door of one of the cabins a knot of shawled women gossiped.
“There’s your shop, Norah,” Mr. Linton said, indicating a dingy building
which bore in its window a curious assortment of cheap sweets, slates,
apples, red flannel, and bacon.
“It looks a bit queer,” Norah commented, regarding the emporium rather
doubtfully. “However, it’s sure to have pins.”
The shop was prudently secured, by a bolted half-door, against the
ravages of predatory geese or goats. Within, it was very dark, and
prolonged hammering on the counter failed to bring any response. Finally
Jim found his way into a back room and cooee’d lustily, returning in
some haste.
“Phew-w! There’s a gentleman in corduroys, asleep on a bed, and two dead
pigs hanging by their heels,” he said. “None of them took any notice of
me; but some one out at the back answered. Here he comes.”
The proprietor of the shop entered hurriedly: a plump little man, very
breathless and apologetic, and more than a little damp.
“I left a bit of a young gossoon to mind the shop,” he said—“and I
washin’ meself. It’s gone he is, playin’ with the other boys—sure I’ll
teach him to play when I get a holt of him. Pins, miss? Is it hairpins,
now, you’d be wanting?”
“No, just ordinary pins,” Norah told him.
“H’m,” said the shopman, doubtfully. “I dunno would I have them, at all.
If it was hairpins, now, there’s not a place in Donegal where you’d get
a finer selection. Pins . . .” He pondered deeply, and rummaged in a box
that seemed sacred to extremely sticky bull’s eyes. “Well, well, we’d
better look for them. It might be they’d be in some odd corner.”
The wall behind him was divided into innumerable little compartments,
and he looked faithfully through them all, striking match after match to
illumine his progress. There were assorted goods in the compartments:
nails and screws, tin saucepan-lids, marbles, boots, soap, oranges,
reels of cotton, biscuits, socks, and ass’s shoes; he searched them all,
turning over the contents of each until the match burned down to his
fingers, when he would throw it hastily on the floor, strike another,
and move on to the next collection. The box of matches was nearly
exhausted when at length he gave up his quest.
“They’re not in it at all,” he said, despondently. “I did have some, one
time, but I expect they’re sold on me. When the traveller comes I could
be getting some in from Belfast, if there was no hurry.”
Norah indicated that there was hurry, and asked if there were another
shop.
“There’s Mary Doody’s,” said the man of business, sadly; “at the least,
you might call it a shop, though it’s only herself knows what she sells.
That’s the only one.” He came to the doorway, and pointed down the
street. “The last house, it is. If ’twas anything in the wurruld now,
except pins, I’d have it.”
A little way from the shop, he caught them up, breathless, but aflame
with business enterprise.
“Is it from Moroney’s ye are? Would ye tell Mrs. Moroney that I’ve the
grandest bit of pork ever she seen—killed yesterday, an’ they me own
pigs that I rared on the place. Peter Grogan—sure, she’ll know me.”
“Thank you,” Jim said, hurriedly. “Good night.”
“Good night,” responded Mr. Grogan. “Tell her to-morrow’s early closing
day, an’ I could bring one over in the little ass-cart as aisy as not.”
The last words were uttered in a high shriek as the distance widened
between himself and the Linton party.
“Pork is a good thing,” said Mr. Linton, sententiously. “Isn’t it, Jim?”
“If you’d seen the room I saw!” said his son, with feeling. “Such a
bedroom: and the gentleman in bed, and I should say very drunk. No, I
don’t think I’ll deliver that message.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Linton.
Mary Doody’s place of business stood back a little from the road. There
was no window for the display of goods, and the door was shut. The
uninitiated might, indeed, have been pardoned for failing to regard it
as a shop, or for passing by, unnoticed, the brief legend over the door
which stated that Mrs. Doody’s residence was a Generil Store, and added
that she was further empowered to sell stout and porter. The inhabitants
of Gortbeg, however, were clearly to be numbered among the initiated,
for sounds of conviviality came, muffled, from within, and once a voice
broke into a snatch of a song. Norah hesitated.
“I suppose I needn’t knock.”
“They might not hear you, if you did,” Jim said. He opened the door.
Within, a long, low room was dim with a mixture of turf and tobacco
smoke, and heavy with the fumes of porter. A swinging lamp shed a
depressed ray over the scene. As her eyes grew accustomed to the smoky
twilight, Norah made out a number of men and a few women sitting on
benches near the fire, each with a mug that evidently held comforting
liquor. Every one seemed to be talking at once; but a dead silence fell
as the door opened on the unfamiliar figures. Norah resisted an
inclination to turn and seek fresh air. An immensely fat woman, with a
grimy shawl pinned across her bosom, waddled forward.
“Good evening, dear,” she said, dividing the greeting impartially
between Jim and Norah.
“Good evening,” Norah responded. “This is a shop, isn’t it?”
“It is, dear,” Mrs. Doody said, bridling a little at any doubt being
cast on her emporium. “Were you wantin’——?”
“Pins,” Norah said hastily. “Do you keep them?”
“I dunno would I,” said Mary Doody, unconsciously echoing Mr. Grogan.
“Pins. Would they be small pins, now?”
“Yes—just common pins.”
“Pins,” said Mary Doody, reflecting deeply. She turned and sought in
unsavoury boxes which held a stock as varied, if not so numerous, as
that of Mr. Grogan. The porter-drinkers became immensely interested.
Some of the women came nearer and stared at the strangers, and one or
two, catching Norah’s eye, smiled a greeting.
Mary Doody heaved her mighty form up from the box over which she had
been crouching.
“I had some, wanst,” she said. “But ’tis gone they are, or may be them
gerrls has them taken. Wouldn’t anything else do for you, dear?”
“No, thank you,” Norah said, hastily. She turned to go, pursued by Mrs.
Doody, who suddenly became interested in the case.
“Did you try Peter Grogan?” she asked. “He have a little shop up
yonder.”
Norah admitted having tried and failed.
“My, my!” said Mary Doody. “’Tis puttin’ a bad direction on a counthry
when you can’t buy a paper of pins in it, isn’t it, dear?”
Norah laughed. “I’m sorry you haven’t got them,” she said.
“No. There’s no call for them here, dear. We do be using buttons,” said
Mary Doody, blandly.
Under cover of this broadside Norah made a confused exit, to find Jim
and Wally helpless with laughter without.
“Never did I see anyone taught her place so beautifully!” said Jim,
ecstatically. “That will teach you to be tidy, young Norah!”
“Buttons!” said Norah, laughing. “I’d like to see Mary Doody shorten a
skirt with the aid of buttons. Anyhow, I’ve got to do it without the aid
of pins, that’s evident. Come home, you unsympathetic frivollers!”
It was two days later, that, coming in late and ravenously hungry after
a long tramp across the bog, the Lintons made a hurried toilet and a
still more hurried descent to the dining-room. Dinner had been kept
waiting for them, and they applied themselves to it with an energy born
of a long day in the open air and a sandwich lunch. It was when the
first edge of appetite had been taken off, and they were toying with a
mammoth apple-pie, that Mrs. Moroney bore down upon them.
“I’m afraid we were very late, Mrs. Moroney,” said Mr. Linton.
“Ah, ’tis no matter,” said the lady of the house, waving away the
suggestion. “In the heighth of the season there’s many a one roaring for
dinner, and it ten o’clock at night. Did you enjoy your dinner, now?”
“We did, indeed,” said Mr. Linton; “it was most excellent pork——”
He stopped, catching Jim’s eye, into which had come a sudden light of
comprehension.
“Pork!” said Jim faintly. “Yes, it _was_ pork. Mrs. Moroney, . . . I
wonder . . . did you . . . ?”
“Don’t tell me there was anything wrong with it,” said Mrs. Moroney,
aflame in the defence of the pork. “I never see better pigs than them
ones of Peter Grogan’s; and he after killing them only last Tuesday!”