THE RELICT OF THE LATE MCGUIRE
Close beside the Watson estate with its strangely shaped dwelling stood
another small house, which was the earthly abode of one Mrs. McGuire,
also of Irish extraction, who had been a widow for forty years. Mrs.
McGuire was a tall, raw-boned, angular woman with piercing black eyes,
and a firm forbidding jaw. One look at Mrs. McGuire usually made a book
agent forget the name of his book. When she shut her mouth, no lips
were visible; her upturned nose seemed seriously to contemplate running
up under her sun bonnet to escape from this wicked world with all its
troubling, and especially from John Watson, his wife and his family of
nine.
One fruitful cause of dispute between Mrs. McGuire and the Watsons was
the boundary line between the two estates. In the spring Mrs. Watson
and the boys put up a fence of green poplar poles where they thought
the fence should be, hoping that it might serve the double purpose of
dividing the lots and be a social barrier between them and the relict
of the late McGuire. The relict watched and waited and said not a word,
but it was the ominous silence that comes before the hail.
Mrs. McGuire hated the Watson family collectively, but it was upon John
Watson, the man of few words, that she lavished the whole wealth of her
South of Ireland hatred, for John Watson had on more than one occasion
got the better of her in a wordy encounter.
One time when the boundary dispute was at its height, she had burst
upon John as he went to his work in the morning, with a storm of
far-reaching and comprehensive epithets. She gave him the history of
the Watson family, past, present, and future--especially the future;
every Watson that ever left Ireland came in for a brief but pungent
notice.
John stood thoughtfully rubbing his chin, and when she stopped, not
from lack of words, but from lack of breath, he slowly remarked:
"Mistress McGuire, yer a lady."
"Yer a liar!" she snapped back, with a still more eloquent burst of
invectives.
John lighted his pipe with great deliberation, and when it was drawing
nicely he took it from his mouth and said, more to himself than to her:
"Stay where ye are, Pat McGuire. It may be hot where ye are, but it
would be hotter for ye if ye were here, and ye'd jist have the throuble
o' movin'. Stay where ye are, Pat, wherever ye are." He walked away
leaving Mrs. McGuire with the uncomfortable feeling that he had some
way got the best of her.
The Watsons had planted their potatoes beside the fence, and did not
dream of evil. But one morning in the early autumn, the earliest little
Watson who went out to get a basin of water out of the rain barrel, to
wash the "sleeps" out of his eyes, dropped the basin in his
astonishment, for the fence was gone--it was removed to Mrs. McGuire's
woodpile, and the lady herself was industriously digging the potatoes.
Bugsey, for he was the early little bird, ran back into the house
screaming:
"She's robbed us! She's robbed us! and tuk our fence."
The Watson family gathered as quickly as a fire brigade at the sound of
the gong, but in the scramble for garments some were less fortunate
than others. Wee Tommy, who was a little heavier sleeper than the
others, could find nothing to put on but one overshoe and an old chest
protector of his mother's, but he arrived at the front, nevertheless.
Tommy was not the boy to desert his family for any minor consideration
such as clothes.
Mrs. McGuire leaned on her hoe and nonchalantly regarded the gathering
forces. She had often thought out the scene, and her air of
indifference was somewhat overdone.
The fence was on her ground, so it was, and so were two rows of the
potatoes. She could do what she liked with her own, so she could. She
didn't ask them to plant potatoes on her ground. If they wanted to
stand there gawkin' at her, they wur welcome. She always did like
comp'ny; but she was afraid the childer would catch cowld, they were
dressed so loight for so late in the season. She picked up the last
pailful as she spoke, and retired into her own house, leaving the
Watson family to do the same.
Mrs. Watson counselled peace. John ate his breakfast in silence; but
the young Watsons, and even Pearlie, thirsted for revenge. Bugsey
Watson forgot his Band of Hope teaching of returning good for evil, and
standing on the disputed territory, he planted his little bare legs far
apart and shouted, dancing up and down to the rhythm:
Chew tobacco, chew tobacco,
Spit, spit, spit!
Old McGuire, old McGuire,
Nit, nit, nit!
Mrs. McGuire did occasionally draw comfort from an old clay pipe--but
Bugsey's punishment was near.
A long shadow fell upon him, and turning around he found himself face
to face with Mary Barner who stood spellbound, listening to her lately
installed Band of Hoper!
Bugsey's downfall was complete! He turned and ran down the road and
round behind an elevator, where half an hour later Pearl found him
shedding penitential tears, not alas! because he had sinned, but
because he had been found out.
The maternal instinct was strong in Pearlie. Bugsey in tears was in
need of consolation; Bugsey was always in need of admonition. So she
combined them:
"Don't cry, alannah. Maybe Miss Barner didn't hear yez at all at all.
Ladies like her do be thinkin' great thoughts and never knowin' what's
forninst them. Mrs. Francis never knows what ye'r sayin' to her at the
toime; ye could say 'chew tobacco, chew tobacco' all ye liked before
her; but what for did ye sass owld lady McGuire? Haven't I towld ye
time out of mind that a soft answer turns away wrath, and forbye makes
them madder than anything ye could say to them?"
Bugsey tearfully declared he would never go to Band of Hope again.
Taffy or no taffy, he could not bear to face her.
"Go tell her, Bugsey man," Pearlie urged. "Tell her ye'r sorry. I
w'uldn't mind tellin' Miss Barner anything. Even if I'd kilt a man and
hid his corp, she's the very one I'd git to help me to give me a h'ist
with him into the river, she's that good and swate."
The subject of this doubtful compliment had come down so early that
morning believing that Mrs. McGuire was confined to her bed with
rheumatism. Seeing the object of her solicitude up and about, she would
have returned without knowing what had happened; but Bugsey's
remarkable musical turn decided her that Mrs. McGuire was suffering
from worse than a rheumatic knee. She went into the little house, and
heard all about it.
When she went home a little later she found Robert Roblin Watson, with
resolute heart but hanging head, waiting for her on the back step. What
passed between them neither of them ever told, but in a very few
minutes Robert Roblin ran gaily homeward, happy in heart, shriven of
his sin, and with one little spot on his cheek which tingled with
rapture. Better still, he went, like a man, and made his peace with
Mrs. McGuire!