I
“Coilin,” says my father to me one morning after the breakfast, and I
putting my books together to be stirring to school--“Coilin,” says he,
“I have a task for you to-day. Sean will tell the master it was myself
kept you at home to-day, or it’s the way he’ll be thinking you’re
miching, like you were last week. Let you not forget now, Sean.”
“I will not, father,” says Sean, and a lip on him. He wasn’t too
thankful it to be said that it’s not for him my father had the task.
This son was well satisfied, for my lessons were always a trouble to me,
and the master promised me a beating the day before unless I’d have them
at the tip of my mouth the next day.
“What you’ll do, Coilin,” says my father when Sean was gone off, “is to
bring the ass and the little car with you to Screeb, and draw home a
load of sedge. Michileen Maire is cutting it for me. We’ll be starting,
with God’s help, to put the new roof on the house after to-morrow, if
the weather stands.”
“Michileen took the ass and car with him this morning,” says I.
“You’ll have to leg it, then, _a mhic O_,” says my father. “As soon as
Michileen has an ass-load cut, fetch it home with you on the car, and
let Michileen tear till he’s black. We might draw the other share
to-morrow.”
It wasn’t long till I was knocking steps out of the road. I gave my back
to Kilbrickan and my face to Turlagh. I left Turlagh behind me, and I
made for Gortmore. I stood a spell looking at an oared boat that was on
Loch Ellery, and another spell playing with some Inver boys that were
late going to Gortmore school. I left them at the school gate, and I
reached Glencaha. I stood, for the third time, watching a big eagle that
was sunning himself on Carrigacapple. East with me, then, till I was in
Derrybanniv, and the hour and a half wasn’t spent when I cleared
Glashaduff bridge.
There was a house that time a couple of hundred yards east from the
bridge, near the road, on your right-hand side and you drawing towards
Screeb. It was often before that that I saw an old woman standing in the
door of that house, but I had no acquaintance on her, nor did she ever
put talk or topic on me. A tall, thin woman she was, her head as white
as the snow, and two dark eyes, as they would be two burning sods,
flaming in her head. She was a woman that would scare me if I met her in
a lonely place in the night. Times she would be knitting or carding, and
she crooning low to herself; but the thing she would be mostly doing
when I travelled, would be standing in the door, and looking from her up
and down the road, exactly as she’d be waiting for someone that would be
away from her, and she expecting him home.
She was standing there that morning as usual, her hand to her eyes, and
she staring up the road. When she saw me going past, she nodded her head
to me. I went over to her.
“Do you see a person at all coming up the road?” says she.
“I don’t,” says I.
“I thought I saw someone. It can’t be that I’m astray. See, isn’t that a
young man making up on us?” says she.
“Devil a one do I see,” says I. “There’s not a person at all between the
spot we’re on and the turning of the road.”
“I was astray, then,” says she. “My sight isn’t as good as it was. I
thought I saw him coming. I don’t know what’s keeping him.”
“Who’s away from you?” says myself.
“My son that’s away from me,” says she.
“Is he long away?”
“This morning he went to Uachtar Ard.”
“But, sure, he couldn’t be here for a while,” says I. “You’d think he’d
barely be in Uachtar Ard by now, and he doing his best, unless it was by
the morning train he went from the Burnt House.”
“What’s this I’m saying?” says she. “It’s not to-day he went, but
yesterday,--or the day ere yesterday, maybe.... I’m losing my wits.”
“If it’s on the train he’s coming,” says I, “he’ll not be here for a
couple of hours yet.”
“On the train?” says she. “What train?”
“The train that does be at the Burnt House at noon.”
“He didn’t say a word about a train,” says she. “There was no train
coming as far as the Burnt House yesterday.”
“Isn’t there a train coming to the Burnt House these years?” says I,
wondering greatly. She didn’t give me any answer, however. She was
staring up the road again. There came a sort of dread on me of her, and
I was about gathering off.
“If you see him on the road,” says she, “tell him to make hurry.”
“I’ve no acquaintance on him,” says I.
“You’d know him easy. He’s the play-boy of the people. A young, active
lad, and he well set-up. He has a white head on him, like is on
yourself, and grey eyes ... like his father had. Bawneens he’s wearing.”
“If I see him,” says I, “I’ll tell him you’re waiting for him.”
“Do, son,” says she.
With that I stirred on with me east, and left her standing in the door.
* * * * *
She was there still, and I coming home a couple of hours after that, and
the load of sedge on the car.
“He didn’t come yet?” says I to her.
“No, _a mhuirnín_. You didn’t see him?”
“No.”
“No? What can have happened him?”
There were signs of rain on the day.
“Come in till the shower’s over,” says she. “It’s seldom I do have
company.”
I left the ass and the little car on the road, and I went into the
house.
“Sit and drink a cup of milk,” says she.
I sat on the bench in the corner, and she gave me a drink of milk and a
morsel of bread. I was looking all round the house, and I eating and
drinking. There was a chair beside the fire, and a white shirt and a
suit of clothes laid on it.
“I have these ready against he will come,” says she. “I washed the
bawneens yesterday after his departing,--no, the day ere yesterday--I
don’t know right which day I washed them; but, anyhow, they’ll be clean
and dry before him when he does come.... What’s your own name?” says
she, suddenly, after a spell of silence.