OLD MARY SORLEY
"Do that? I would as soon think of robbing a corpse!"
--AS IS SAID IN GLENMORNAN.
I devoted the fifteen shillings which remained from my wages to my own
use. My boots were well-nigh worn, and my trousers were getting thin at
the knees, but the latter I patched as well as I was able and paid half
a crown to get my boots newly soled. For the remainder of the money I
bought a shirt and some underclothing to restock my bundle, and when I
went out to look for a new master in the slave market of Strabane I had
only one and sevenpence in my pockets.
I never for a moment thought of keeping all my wages for myself. Such a
wild idea never entered my head. I was born and bred merely to support
my parents, and great care had been taken to drive this fact into my
mind from infancy. I was merely brought into the world to support those
who were responsible for my existence. Often when my parents were
speaking of such and such a young man I heard them say: "He'll never
have a day's luck in all his life. He didn't give every penny he earned
to his father and mother."
I thought it would be so fine to have all my wages to myself to spend in
the shops, to buy candy just like a little boy or to take a ride on the
swing-boats or merry-go-rounds at the far corner of the market-place. I
would like to do those things, but the voice of conscience reproved me
for even thinking of them. If once I started to spend it was hard to
tell when I might stop. Perhaps I would spend the whole one and
sevenpence. I had never in all my life spent a penny on candy or a toy,
and seeing that I was a man I could not begin now. It was my duty to
send my money home, and I knew that if I even spent as much as one penny
I would never have a day's luck in all my life.
I had grown bigger and stronger, and I was a different man altogether
from the boy who had come up from Donegal six months before. I had a
fight with a youngster at the fair, and I gave him two black eyes while
he only gave me one.
A man named Sorley, a big loose-limbed rung of a fellow who came from
near Omagh, hired me for the winter term. Together the two of us walked
home at the close of the evening, and it was near midnight when we came
to the house, the distance from Strabane being eight miles. The house
was in the middle of a moor, and a path ran across the heather to the
very door. The path was soggy and miry, and the water squelched under
our boots as we walked along. The night was dark, the country around
looked bleak and miserable, and very few words passed between us on the
long tramp. Once he said that I should like his place, again, that he
kept a lot of grazing cattle and jobbed them about from one market to
another. He also alluded to another road across the moor, one better
than the one taken by us; but it was very roundabout, unless a man came
in from the Omagh side of the country.
There was an old wrinkled woman sitting at the fire having a shin heat
when we entered the house. She was dry and withered, and kept turning
the live peats over and over on the fire, which is one of the signs of a
doting person. Her flesh resembled the cover of a rabbit-skin purse that
is left drying in the chimney-corner.
"Have ye got a cub?" she asked my master without as much as a look at
me.
"I have a young colt of a thing," he answered.
"They've been at it again," went on the old woman. "It's the brannat cow
this time."
"We'll have to get away, that's all," said the man. "They'll soon not be
after leavin' a single tail in the byre."
"Is it me that would be leavin' now?" asked the old woman, rising to her
feet, and the look on her face was frightful to see. "They'll niver put
Mary Sorley out of her house when she put it in her mind to stay. May
the seven curses rest on their heads, them with their Home Rule and
rack-rint and what not! It's me that would stand barefoot on the red-hot
hob of hell before I'd give in to the likes of them."
Her anger died out suddenly, and she sat down and began to turn the turf
over on the fire as she had been doing when I entered.
"Maybe ye'd go out and wash their tails a bit," she went on. "And take
the cub with ye to hould the candle. He's a thin cub that, surely," she
said, looking at me for the first time. "He'll be a light horse for a
heavy burden."
The man carried a pail of water out to the byre, while I followed
holding a candle which I sheltered from the wind with my cap.
The cattle were kept in a long dirty building, and it looked as if it
had not been cleaned for weeks. There were a number of young bullocks
tied to the stakes along the wall, and most of these had their tails cut
off short and close to the body. A brindled cow stood at one end, and
the blood dripped from her into the sink. The whole tail had been
recently cut away.
"Why do you cut the tails off the cattle?" I asked Sorley, as he
proceeded to wash the wound on the brindled cow.
"Just to keep them short," he said, stealing a furtive glance at me as
he spoke. I did not ask any further questions, but I could see that he
was telling an untruth. At once I guessed that the farm was boycotted,
and that the peasantry were showing their disapproval of some action of
Sorley's by cutting the tails off his cattle. I wished that moment that
I had gotten another master who was on a more friendly footing with his
neighbours.
When we returned to the house the old woman was sitting still by the
fire mumbling away to herself at the one thing over and over again.
"Old Mary Sorley won't be hounded out of her house and home if all the
cattle in me byre was without tails," she said in rambling tones, which
now and again rose to a shriek almost. "What would an old woman like me
be carin' for the band of them? Am I not as good as the tenant that was
here before me, him with his talk of rack-rint and Home Rule? Old Mary
Sorley is goin' to stay here till she leaves the house in a coffin."
The man and I sat down at a pot of porridge and ate our suppers.
"Don't take any heed of me mother," he said to me. "It's only dramin'
and dotin' that she is."
Early next morning I was sent out to the further end of the moor, there
to gather up some sheep and take them back to the farmyard. I met three
men on the way, three rough-looking, angry sort of men. One of them
caught hold of me by the neck and threw me into a bog-hole. I was nearly
drowned in the slush. When I tried to drag myself out, the other two
threw sods on top of me. The moment I pulled myself clear I ran off as
hard as I could.
"This will teach ye not to work for a boycotted bastard," one of them
called after me, but none of them made any attempt to follow. I ran as
hard as I could until I got to the house. When I arrived there I
informed Sorley of all that had taken place, and said that I was going
to stop no longer in his service.
"I had work enough lookin' for a cub," he said; "and I'm no goin' to let
ye run away now."
"I'm going anyway," I said.
"Now and will ye?" answered the man, and he took my spare clothes and
hid them somewhere in the house. My bits of clothes were all that I had
between me and the world, and they meant a lot to me. Without them I
would not go away, and Sorley knew that. I had to wait for three days
more, then I got my clothes and left.
That happened when old Mary Sorley died.
It was late in the evening. She was left sitting on the hearthstone,
turning the fire over, while Sorley and I went to wash the tails of the
wounded cattle in the byre. My master had forgotten the soap, and he
sent me back to the kitchen for it. I asked the old woman to give it to
me. She did not answer when I spoke, and I went up close to her and
repeated my question. But she never moved. I turned out again and took
my way to the byre.
"Have ye got it?" asked my master.
"Your mother has fainted," I answered.
He ran into the house, and I followed. Between us we lifted the woman
into the bed which was placed in one corner of the kitchen. Her body
felt very stiff, and it was very light. The man crossed her hands over
her breast.
"Me poor mother's dead," he told me.
"Is she?" I asked, and went down on my knees by the bedside to say a
prayer for her soul. When on my knees I noticed where my spare clothes
were hidden. They were under the straw of the bed on which the corpse
was lying. I hurried over my prayers, as I did not take much pleasure in
praying for the soul of a boycotted person.
"I must go to Omagh and get me married sister to come here and help me
for a couple of days," said Sorley when I got to my feet again. "Ye can
sit here and keep watch until I come back."
He went out, saddled the pony, and in a couple of minutes I heard the
clatter of hoofs echoing on the road across the moor. In a little while
the sounds died away, and there I was, all alone with the corpse of old
Mary Sorley.
I edged my chair into the corner where the two walls met, and kept my
eye on the woman in the bed. I was afraid to turn round, thinking that
she might get up when I was not looking at her. Out on the moor a
restless dog commenced to voice some ancient wrong, and its mournful
howl caused a chill to run down my backbone. Once or twice I thought
that someone was tapping at the window-pane behind me, and feared to
look round lest a horrible face might be peering in. But all the time I
kept looking at the white features of the dead woman, and I would not
turn round for the world. The cat slept beside the fire and never moved.
The hour of midnight struck on the creaky old wag-of-the-wall, and I
made up my mind to leave the place for good. I wanted my clothes which I
had seen under the straw of the kitchen bed. It was an eerie job to turn
over a corpse at the hour of midnight. The fire was almost out, for I
had placed no peat on it since Sorley left for Omagh. A little wind came
under the door and whirled the pale-grey ashes over the hearthstone.
I went to the bed and turned the woman over on her side, keeping one
hand against the body to prevent it falling back on me. With the other
hand I drew out my clothes, counting each garment until I had them all.
As soon as I let the corpse go it nearly rolled out on the ground. I
could hardly remove my gaze from the cold quiet thing. The eyes were
wide open all the time, and they looked like icy pools seen on a dark
night. I wrapped my garments up in a handkerchief which was hanging from
a nail in the bedstock. The handkerchief was not mine. It belonged to
the dead woman, but she would not need it any more. I took it because I
wanted it, and it was the only wages which I should get for my three
days' work on the farm. While I was busy tying my clothes together the
cat rose from the fireplace and jumped into the bed. I suppose it felt
cold by the dying fire. I thought at the time that it would not be much
warmer beside a dead body. From the back of the corpse the animal
watched me for a few minutes, then it fell asleep.
I took my bundle in my hand, opened the door, and went out into the
darkness, leaving the sleeping cat and the dead woman alone in the
boycotted house. The night was fine and frosty and a smother of cold
stars lay on the face of the heavens. A cow moaned in the byre as I
passed, while the stray dog kept howling miserably away on the middle of
the moor. I took the path that twisted and turned across the bogland,
and I ran. I was almost certain that the corpse was following me, but I
would not turn and look behind for the world. If you turn and look at
the ghost that follows you, it is certain to get in front, and not let
you proceed any further. So they said in Glenmornan.
After a while I walked slowly. I had already left a good stretch of
ground between me and the house. I could hear the brown grass sighing on
the verge of the black ponds of water. The wind was running along the
ground and it made strange sounds. Far away the pale cold flames of the
will-of-the-wisp flitted backwards and forwards, but never came near the
fringe of the road on which I travelled.
I heard the rattle of horse's hoofs coming towards me, and I hid in a
clump of bracken until the rider passed by. I knew that it was Sorley on
his way back from Omagh. There was a woman sitting behind him on the
saddle, and when both went out of sight I ran until I came out on the
high-road. Maybe I walked three miles after that, and maybe I walked
more, but at last I came to a haystack by the roadside. I crept over the
dyke, lay down in the hay and fell asleep, my head resting on my little
bundle of clothes.