One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy was sitting on a
broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands in her lap, and her
bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She was so quiet that a party of ducks,
which had hung uncertainly about the open door for some time, filed
slowly in, and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long,
dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though satisfied to
accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens and turkeys, had drawn the
line at them and their cousins the geese, and they adventured themselves
within the forbidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side
glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless figure in the
chair. They had made their way to a plate of potato skins and greasy
cabbage on the floor by the table, and, forgetful of prudence, were
clattering their bills on the delf as they gobbled, when an arm was
stretched out above their heads, and they fled in cumbrous
consternation.
The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; Julia Duffy had
merely extended it to take a paper from the table, and having done so,
she looked at its contents in entire obliviousness of the ducks and
their maraudings. Her misfortunes were converging. It was not a week
since she had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had
taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an hour since
she had been struck by this last arrow of outrageous fortune, the letter
threatening to process her for the long arrears of rent that she had
felt lengthening hopelessly with every sunrise and sunset. She looked
round the dreary kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of
past respectability, at the rusty hooks from which she could remember
the portly hams and flitches of bacon hanging; at the big fire-place
where her grandfather’s Sunday sirloin used to be roasted. Now cobwebs
dangled from the hooks, and the old grate had fallen to pieces, so that
the few sods of turf smouldered on the hearthstone. Everything spoke of
bygone plenty and present wretchedness.
Julia put the letter into its envelope again and groaned a long
miserable groan. She got up and stood for a minute, staring out of the
open door with her hands on her hips, and then went slowly and heavily
up the stairs, groaning again to herself from the exertion and from the
blinding headache that made her feel as though her brain were on fire.
She went into her room and changed her filthy gown for the stained and
faded black rep that hung on the door. From a band-box of tanned
antiquity she took a black bonnet that had first seen the light at her
mother’s funeral, and tied its clammy satin strings with shaking hands.
Flashes of light came and went before her eyes, and her pallid face was
flushed painfully as she went downstairs again, and finding, after long
search, the remains of the bottle of blacking, laboriously cleaned her
only pair of boots. She was going out of the house when her eye fell
upon the plate from which the ducks had been eating; she came back for
it, and, taking it out with her, scattered its contents to the turkeys,
mechanically holding her dress up out of the dirt as she did so. She
left the plate on the kitchen window-sill, and set slowly forth down the
avenue.
Under the tree by the gate, Billy Grainy was sitting, engaged, as was
his custom in moments of leisure, in counting the coppers in the bag
that hung round his neck. He looked in amazement at the unexpected
appearance of his patroness, and as she approached him he pushed the bag
under his shirt.
“Where are ye goin’?” he asked.
Julia did not answer; she fumbled blindly with the bit of stick that
fastened the gate, and, having opened it, went on without attempting to
shut it.
“Where are ye goin’ at all?” said Billy again, his bleared eyes
following the unfamiliar outline of bonnet and gown.
Without turning, she said, “Lismoyle,” and as she walked on along the
sunny road, she put up her hand and tried to wipe away the tears that
were running down her face. Perhaps it was the excitement with which
every nerve was trembling that made the three miles to Rosemount seem as
nothing to this woman, who, for the last six months, had been too ill to
go beyond her own gate; and probably it was the same unnatural strength
that prevented her from breaking down, when, with her mind full of
ready-framed sentences that were to touch Mr. Lambert’s heart and appeal
to his sense of justice, she heard from Mary Holloran at the gate that
he was away for a couple of days to Limerick. Without replying to Mary
Holloran’s exclamations of pious horror at the distance she had walked,
and declining all offers of rest or food, she turned and walked on
towards Lismoyle.
She had suddenly determined to herself that she would walk to Bruff and
see her landlord, and this new idea took such possession of her that she
did not realise at first the magnitude of the attempt. But by the time
she had reached the gate of Tally Ho the physical power that her impulse
gave her began to be conscious of its own limits. The flashes were
darting like lightning before her eyes, and the nausea that was her
constant companion robbed her of her energy. After a moment of
hesitation she decided that she would go in and see her kinswoman, Norry
the Boat, and get a glass of water from her before going further. It
wounded her pride somewhat to go round to the kitchen--she, whose
grandfather had been on nearly the same social level as Miss Mullen’s;
but Charlotte was the last person she wished to meet just then. Norry
opened the kitchen door, beginning, as she did so, her usual snarling
maledictions on the supposed beggar, which, however, were lost in a loud
invocation of her patron saint as she recognised her first cousin, Miss
Duffy.
“And is it to leg it in from Gurthnamuckla ye done?” said Norry, when
the first greetings had been exchanged, and Julia was seated in the
kitchen, “and you looking as white as the dhrivelling snow this minnit.”
“I did,” said Julia feebly, “and I’d be thankful to you for a drink of
water. The day’s very close.”
“Faith ye’ll get no wather in this house,” returned Norry in grim
hospitality; “I’ll give you a sup of milk, or would it be too much
delay on ye to wait till I bile the kittle for a cup o’ tay? Bad cess to
Bid Sal! There isn’t as much hot wather in the house this minute as’d
write yer name!”
“I’m obliged to ye, Norry,” said Julia stiffly, her sick pride evolving
a supposition that she could be in want of food; “but I’m only after my
breakfast myself. Indeed,” she added, assuming from old habit her usual
attitude of medical adviser, “you’d be the better yourself for taking
less tea.”
“Is it me?” replied Norry indignantly. “I take me cup o’ tay morning and
evening, and if ’twas throwing afther me I wouldn’t take more.”
“Give me the cold wather, anyway,” said Julia wearily; “I must go on out
of this. It’s to Bruff I’m going.”
“In the name o’ God what’s taking ye into Bruff, you that should be in
yer bed, in place of sthreelin’ through the counthry this way?”
“I got a letter from Lambert to-day,” said Julia, putting her hand to
her aching head, as if to collect herself, “and I want to speak to Sir
Benjamin about it.”
“Ah, God help yer foolish head!” said Norry impatiently; “sure ye might
as well be talking to the bird above there,” pointing to the cockatoo,
who was looking down at them with ghostly solemnity. “The owld fellow’s
light in his head this long while.”
“Then I’ll see some of the family,” said Julia; “they remember my
fawther well, and the promise I had about the farm, and they’ll not see
me wronged.”
“Throth, then, that’s thrue,” said Norry, with an unwonted burst of
admiration; “they was always and ever a fine family, and thim that they
takes in their hands has the luck o’ God! But what did Lambert say
t’ye?” with a keen glance at her visitor from under her heavy eyebrows.
Julia hesitated for a moment.
“Norry Kelly,” she said, her voice shaking a little; “if it wasn’t that
you’re me own mother’s sister’s child, I would not reveal to you the
disgrace that man is trying to put upon me. I got a letter from him this
morning saying he’d process me if I didn’t pay him at once the half of
what’s due. And Joyce that has the grazing is bankrupt, and owes me what
I’ll never get from him.”
“Blast his sowl!” interjected Norry, who was peeling onions with furious
speed.
“I know there’s manny would be thankful to take the grazing,” continued
Julia, passing a dingy pocket handkerchief over her forehead; “but who
knows when I’d be paid for it, and Lambert will have me out on the road
before that if I don’t give him the rent.”
Norry looked to see whether both the kitchen doors were shut, and then,
putting both her hands on the table, leaned across towards her cousin.
“Herself wants it,” she said in a whisper.
“Wants what? What are you saying?”
“Wants the farm, I tell ye, and it’s her that’s driving Lambert.”
“Is it Charlotte Mullen?” asked Julia, in a scarcely audible voice.
“Now ye have it,” said Norry, returning to her onions, and shutting her
mouth tightly.
The cockatoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a note of admiration.
Julia half got up, and then sank back into her chair.
“Are ye sure of that?”
“As sure as I have two feet,” replied Norry, “and I’ll tell ye what
she’s afther it for. It’s to go live in it, and to let on she’s as grand
as the other ladies in the counthry.”
Julia clenched the bony, discoloured hand that lay on the table.
“Before I saw her in it I’d burn it over my head!”
“Not a word out o’ ye about what I tell ye,” went on Norry in the same
ominous whisper. “Shure she have it all mapped this minnit, the same as
a pairson’d be makin’ a watch. She’s sthriving to make a match with
young Misther Dysart and Miss Francie, and b’leeve you me, ’twill be a
quare thing if she’ll let him go from her. Sure he’s the gentlest
crayture ever came into a house, and he’s that innocent he wouldn’t
think how cute she was. If ye’d seen her, ere yestherday, follying him
down to the gate, and she smilin’ up at him as sweet as honey! The way
it’ll be, she’ll sell Tally Ho house for a fortune for Miss Francie,
though, indeed, it’s little fortune himself’ll ax!”
The words drove heavily through the pain of Julia’s head, and their
meaning followed at an interval.
“Why would she give a fortune to the likes of her?” she asked; “isn’t it
what the people say, it’s only for a charity she has her here?”
Norry gave her own peculiar laugh of derision, a laugh with a snort in
it.
“Sharity! It’s little sharity ye’ll get from that one! Didn’t I hear the
old misthress tellin’ her, and she sthretched for death--and Miss
Charlotte knows well I heard her say it--‘Charlotte,’ says she, and her
knees, dhrawn up in the bed, ‘Francie must have her share.’ And that was
the lasht word she spoke.” Norry’s large wild eyes roved skywards out of
the window as the scene rose before her. “God rest her soul, ’tis she
got the death aisy!”
“That Charlotte Mullen may get it hard!” said Julia savagely. She got
up, feeling new strength in her tired limbs, though her head was reeling
strangely, and she had to grasp at the kitchen table to keep herself
steady. “I’ll go on now. If I die for it I’ll go to Bruff this day.”
Norry dropped the onion she was peeling, and placed herself between
Julia and the door.
“The divil a toe will ye put out of this kitchen,” she said, flourishing
her knife; “is it _you_ walk to Bruff?”
“I must go to Bruff,” said Julia again, almost mechanically; “but if you
could give me a taste of sperrits, I think I’d be better able for the
road.”
Norry pulled open a drawer, and took from the back of it a bottle
containing a colourless liquid.
“Drink this to your health!” she said in Irish, giving some in a mug to
Julia; “it’s potheen I got from friends of me own, back in Curraghduff.”
She put her hand into the drawer again, and after a little search
produced from the centre of a bundle of amorphous rags a cardboard box
covered with shells. Julia heard, without heeding it, the clink of
money, and then three shillings were slapped down on the table beside
her. “Ye’ll go to Conolly’s now, and get a car to dhrive ye,” said Norry
defiantly; “or howld on till I send Bid Sal to get it for ye. Not a word
out o’ ye now! Sure, don’t I know well a pairson wouldn’t think to put
his money in his pocket whin he’d be hasting that way lavin’ his house.”
She did not wait for an answer, but shuffled to the scullery door, and
began to scream for Bid Sal in her usual tones of acrid ill-temper. As
she returned to the kitchen, Julia met her at the door. Her yellow face,
that Norry had likened by courtesy to the driven snow, was now very red,
and her eyes had a hot stare in them.
“I’m obliged to you, Norry Kelly,” she said, “but when I’m in need of
charity I’ll ask for it. Let me out, if you please.”
The blast of fury with which Norry was preparing to reply was checked by
a rattle of wheels in the yard, and Bid Sal appeared with the
intelligence that Jimmy Daly was come over with the Bruff cart, and
Norry was to go out to speak to him. When she came back she had a basket
of grapes in one hand and a brace of grouse in the other, and as she put
them down on the table, she informed her cousin, with distant
politeness, that Jimmy Daly would drive her to Bruff.