MRS. KILFOYLE'S CLOAK
The opprobrious proverb already mentioned is not the only permanent mark
of unpopularity that the Tinkers have earned for themselves at
Lisconnel. Their very name has become a term of reproach among us, so
that "an ould tinker" is recognised as an appropriate epithet for any
troublesome beast or disagreeable neighbour. If they were not
case-hardened by long experience, they would surely be mortified
sometimes at the reception with which they meet almost wherever they go.
The approach of the two queer vehicles in which they now generally
travel is watched by displeased eyes all over our countryside, and they
are so to speak lighted on their way by the gleam of suspicious or
resentful glances. And it must be admitted that their evil reputation
has not been bestowed upon them gratuitously. According to Ody Rafferty,
"The like of such a clanjamfry of thievin' drunken miscreants, you
wouldn't aisy get together, if you had a spring-trap set for them at the
Ould Fellow's front door for a month of Sundays. And if himself didn't
do a hard day's work the time he was consthructin' them, he niver done
one in his life, and that's a fac'." But Ody is apt to be particularly
severe in his strictures upon the Tinkers, because he feels an
aggravated form of rivalry existing between him and them. For the
wiliness which is understood to be Ody's forte also pre-eminently
characterises many of the Tinkers' nefarious proceedings, and this makes
it seem to him that they not only set their wits against his, but throw
discredit upon his favourite quality by the glaring moral defects which
they exhibit in conjunction with it. One's pleasure in being described
admiringly as "the ould boyo that's in it," is much diminished when one
hears the same thing said bitterly of some slieveen who has filched a
poor body's meal bag, or run off with a lone widdy woman's fowl.
Still, although the Tinkers' name has become a by-word among us through
a long series of petty offences rather than any one flagrant crime,
there is a notable misdeed on record against them, which has never been
forgotten in the lapse of many years. It was perpetrated soon after the
death of Mrs. Kilfoyle's mother, the Widow Joyce, an event which is but
dimly recollected now at Lisconnel, as nearly half a century has gone
by. She did not very long survive her husband, and he had left his roots
behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had farmed
not wisely, but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains to
expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white boulders. But
instead he moped about fretting for his fair green fields and few
proudly-cherished beasts--especially the little old Kerry cow. And at
his funeral the neighbours said: "Ah bedad, poor man, God help him, he
niver held up his head agin from that good day to this."
When Mrs. Joyce felt that it behoved her to settle her affairs, she
found that the most important possession she had to dispose of was her
large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage,
and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, its dark-blue cloth
being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being
double-lined and quilted, and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend
to describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment.
If Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I
think she would have bequeathed it to her younger daughter Theresa,
notwithstanding that custom clearly designated Bessy Kilfoyle, the
eldest of the family, as the heiress. For she said to herself that poor
Bessy had her husband and childer to consowl her, any way, but little
Theresa, the crathur, had ne'er such a thing at all, and wouldn't have,
not she, God love her. "And the back of me hand to some I could name."
It seemed to her that to leave the child the cloak would be almost like
keeping a warm wing spread over her in the cold wide world; and there
was no fear that Bessy would take it amiss.
But Theresa herself protested strongly against such a disposition,
urging for one thing that sure she'd be lost in it entirely if ever she
put it on, a not unfounded objection, as Theresa was several sizes
smaller than Bessy, and even she fell far short of her mother in stature
and portliness. Theresa also said confidently with a sinking heart: "But
sure, anyhow, mother jewel, what matter about it? 'Twill be all gone to
houles and flitters and thraneens, and so it will, plase goodness,
afore there's any talk of anybody else wearin' it except your own ould
self." And she expressed much the same conviction one day to her
next-door neighbour, old Biddy Ryan, to whom she had run in for the loan
of a sup of sour milk, which Mrs. Joyce fancied. To Biddy's sincere
regret she could offer Theresa barely a skimpy noggin of milk, and only
a meagre shred of encouragement; and by way of eking out the latter with
its sorry substitute consolation, she said as she tilted the jug
perpendicularly to extract its last drop:
"Well, sure, me dear, I do be sayin' me prayers for her every sun goes
over our heads that she might be left wid you this great while yet;
'deed I do so. But ah, acushla, if we could be keepin' people
that-a-way, would there be e'er a funeral iver goin' black on the road
at all at all? I'm thinkin' there's scarce a one livin', and he as ould
and foolish and little-good-for as you plase, but some crathur'ill be
grudgin' him to his grave, that's himself may be all the while wishin'
he was in it. Or, morebetoken, how can we tell what quare ugly misfortin
thim that's took is took out of the road of, that we should be as good
as biddin' thim stay till it comes to ruinate them? So it's prayin' away
I am, honey," said old Biddy, whom Theresa could not help hating heart
sickly. "But like enough the Lord might know better than to be mindin' a
word I say."
And it seemed that He did; at any way the day soon came when the heavy
blue cloak passed into Mrs. Kilfoyle's possession.
At that time it was clear, still autumn weather, with just a sprinkle of
frost, white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight,
when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon. But about
a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel: with wild winds
and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the
great mountain-heads peering in over our bogland.
So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would
wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and
reaching it down from where it was stowed away among the rafters wrapped
in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased
folds. As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped
in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should
be promptly remedied before it spread any further. She was not a very
expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to
consult Mrs. O'Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and
most helpful person in Lisconnel.
"It's the nathur of her to be settin' things straight wherever she
goes," Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting
for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden
roof which sheltered her neighbour's head. It has long been lying low,
vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some
of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in
Lisconnel ever since.
The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its
drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples,
all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens
themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one
leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection
with such a very damp and disagreeable earth. You could not see far in
any direction for the fluttering sheets of mist, and a stranger who had
been coming along the road from Duffclane, stepped out of them abruptly
quite close, to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was
anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very
ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt
nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a
bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as
a ticket-of-leave. For although these were yet rather early days at
Lisconnel, the Tinkers had already begun to establish their reputation.
So when he stopped in front of her and said: "Good-day, ma'am," she only
replied distantly, "It's a hardy mornin'," and hoped he would move on.
But he said: "It's cruel could, ma'am," and continued to stand looking
at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured--erroneously
as it happened--hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances
what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a
redly-glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking
and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously
of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of
wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the
responsibilities of property are, no doubt, very imperfectly understood.
Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp: "Ah, thin, step
inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the
invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his
mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes,
whose earth-coloured skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within;
and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, on to the
chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be
the fire there, and git a taste of the heat."
Then she lifted her old shawl over her head, and ran out to see where at
all Brian and Thady were gettin' their deaths on her under the pours of
rain; and as she passed the Keoghs' adjacent door--which was afterwards
the Sheridan's, whence their Larry departed so reluctantly--young Mrs.
Keogh called her to come in and look at "the child," who being a new and
unique possession was liable to develop alarmingly strange symptoms, and
had now "woke up wid his head that hot, you might as well put your hand
on the hob of the grate." Mrs. Kilfoyle stayed only long enough to
suggest, as a possible remedy, a drop of two-milk whey. "But ah sure,
woman dear, where at all 'ud we come by that, wid the crathur of a goat
scarce wettin' the bottom of the pan?" and to draw reassuring omens
from the avidity with which the invalid grabbed at a sugared crust. In
fact, she was less than five minutes out of her house; but when she
returned to it, she found it empty. First she noted with a moderate
thrill of surprise that her visitor had gone away leaving his potatoes
untouched, and next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her cloak no
longer lay on the window seat where she had left it. From that moment
she never felt any real doubts about what had befallen her, though for
some time she kept on trying to conjure them up, and searched wildly
round and round and round her little room, like a distracted bee strayed
into a hollow furze-bush, before she sped over to Mrs. O'Driscoll with
the news of her loss.
It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbours together
exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair
going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had
attended. This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without
any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A
prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be
"a thrifle lame-futted," though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down
the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the
miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a
one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at
a grasshopper's lep, and then thinkin' better of it."
Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit
down the road, "leggin' it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of
somethin' under his arm that he looked to be crumplin' up as small as he
could"--the word "crumpling" went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle's heart--and
some long-sighted people declared that they could still catch glimpses
of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way towards
Sallinbeg.
"I'd think he'd be beyant seein' afore now," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who
stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door;
all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and
deaf, that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an
impression of somebody's house being on fire. "He must ha' took off wid
himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne'er a crumb had he
touched of the pitaties."
"Maybe he'd that much shame in him," said Mrs. O'Driscoll.
"They'd a right to ha' choked him, troth and they had," said Ody
Rafferty's aunt.
"Is it chokin'?" said young Mrs. M'Gurk, bitterly. "Sure the bigger
thief a body is the more he'll thrive on whatever he gits--you might
think villiny was as good as butter to people's pitaties--you might so.
Shame how are you? Liker he'd ate all he could swally in the last place
he got the chance of layin' his hands on anythin'."
"Och, woman alive, but it's the fool you were to let him out of your
sight," said Ody Rafferty's aunt. "If it had been me, I'd niver ha' took
me eyes off him, for the look of him on'y goin' by made me flesh creep
upon me bones."
"'Deed was I," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, sorrowfully, "a fine fool. And vexed
she'd be, real vexed, if she guessed the way it was gone on us, for the
dear knows what dirty ould rapscallions 'ill get the wearin' of it now.
Rael vexed she'd be."
This speculation was more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak,
though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable
property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little
Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay
sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come over her prospects.
"I wish to goodness a couple of the lads 'ud step home wid themselves
this minit of time," said Mrs. M'Gurk. "They'd come up wid him yet, and
take it off of him ready enough. And smash his ugly head for him if he
would be givin' them any impidence."
"Aye, and 'twould be a rael charity--the mane baste--or sling him in one
of the boghoules," said the elder Mrs. Keogh, a mild-looking little old
woman. "I'd liefer than nine nine-pennies see thim comin' along. But I'm
afeard it's early for thim yet."
Everybody's eyes turned, as she spoke, towards the ridge of the
Knockawn, though with no particular expectation of seeing what they
wished upon it. But, behold, just at that moment three figures, blurred
among the grey rain-mists, looming into view.
"Be the powers," said Mrs. M'Gurk, jubilantly, "it's Ody Rafferty
himself. To your sowls! Now you've a great good chance, ma'am, to be
gettin' it back. He's the boy 'ill leg it over all before him"--for in
those days Ody was lithe and limber--"and it's hard-set the thievin'
Turk 'ill be to get the better of him at a racin' match--Hi--Och." She
had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a
strangled croak, like a young cock's unsuccessful effort. "Och, murdher,
murdher, murdher," she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone.
"I'll give you me misfort'nit word thim other two is the pólis."
Now it might seem on the face of things that the arrival of those two
active and stalwart civil servants would have been welcomed as happening
just in the nick of time; yet it argues an alien ignorance to suppose
such a view of the matter by any means possible. The men in invisible
green tunics belonged completely to the category of pitaty-blights,
rint-warnin's, fevers, and the like devastators of life, that dog a man
more or less all through it, but close in on him, a pitiful quarry, when
the bad seasons come and the childer and the old crathurs are starvin'
wid the hunger, and his own heart is broke; therefore to accept
assistance from them in their official capacity would have been a
proceeding most reprehensibly unnatural. To put a private quarrel or
injury into the hands of the peelers were a disloyal making of terms
with the public foe; a condoning of great permanent wrongs for the sake
of a trivial temporary convenience. Lisconnel has never been skilled in
the profitable and ignoble art of utilising its enemies. Not that
anybody was more than vaguely conscious of these sentiments, much less
attempted to express them in set terms. When a policeman appeared there
in an inquiring mood, what people said among themselves was: "Musha cock
him up. I hope he'll get his health till I would be tellin' him," or
words to that effect; while in reply to his questions they made
statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so
bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more
for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in
attempts to disentangle them.
Thus it was that when Mrs. Kilfoyle saw who Ody's companions were, she
bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property.
For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without
apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken
off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The
impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables striding
quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind
with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, "Good-day
to you all. Did any of yous happen to see e'er a one of them tinkerin'
people goin' by here this mornin'?"
It was a moment of strong temptation to everybody, but especially to
Mrs. Kilfoyle, who had in her mind that vivid picture of her precious
cloak receding from her along the wet road, recklessly wisped up in the
grasp of as thankless a thievin' black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped,
and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting
instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point. However, she and her
neighbours stood the test unshaken. Mrs. Ryan rolled her eyes
deliberatively, and said to Mrs. M'Gurk, "The saints bless us, was it
yisterday or the day before, me dear, you said you seen a couple of them
below near ould O'Beirne's?"
And Mrs. M'Gurk replied, "Ah, sure, not at all, ma'am, glory be to
goodness. I couldn't ha' tould you such a thing, for I wasn't next or
nigh the place. Would it ha' been Ody Rafferty's aunt? She was below
there fetchin' up a bag of male, and bedad she came home that dhreeped,
the crathur, you might ha' thought she'd been after fishin' it up out
of the botthom of one of thim boghoules."
And Mrs. Kilfoyle heroically hustled her Thady into the house as she saw
him on the brink of beginning loudly to relate his encounter with the
strange man, and desired him to whisht and stay where he was in a manner
so sternly repressive that he actually remained there as if he had been
a pebble dropped into a pool, and not, as usual, a cork to bob up again
immediately.
Then Mrs. M'Gurk made a bold stroke, designed to shake off the hampering
presence of the professionals, and enable Ody's amateur services to be
utilised while there was yet time.
"I declare," she said, "now that I think of it, I seen a feller crossin'
the ridge along there a while ago, like as if he was comin' from
Sallinbeg ways, and accordin' to the apparence of him I wouldn't won'er
if he _was_ a one of thim tinker crathurs--carryin' a big clump of cans
he was, at any rate--I noticed the shine of thim. And he couldn't ha'
got any great way yet to spake of, supposin' there was anybody lookin'
to folly after him."
But Constable Black crushed her hopes as he replied, "Ah, it's nobody
comin' _from_ Sallinbeg that we've anything to say to. There's after
bein' a robbery last night down below at Jerry Dunne's--a shawl as good
as new took, that his wife's ragin' over frantic, along wid a sight of
fowl and other things. And the Tinkers that was settled this long while
in the boreen at the back of his haggard is quit out of it afore
daylight this mornin', every rogue of them. So we'd have more than a
notion where the property's went to if we could tell the road they've
took. We thought like enough some of them might ha' come this way."
Now Mr. Jerry Dunne was not a popular person in Lisconnel, where he has
even become, as we have seen, proverbial for what we call "ould
naygurliness." So there was a general tendency to say, "The divil's cure
to him," and listen complacently to any details their visitors could
impart. For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be
otherwise "a dacint lad," which, to do him justice, is commonly the
case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighbourly
gossips; the rule, in fact, being--Free admission except on business.
Only Mrs. Kilfoyle was so much cast down by her misfortune that she
could not raise herself to the level of an interest in the affairs of
her thrifty suitor, and the babble of voices relating and commenting
sounded as meaningless as the patter of the drops which jumped like
little fishes in the large puddle at their feet. It had spread
considerably before Constable Black said to his comrade--
"Well, Daly, we'd better be steppin' home wid ourselves as wise as we
come, as the man said when he'd axed his road of the ould black horse in
the dark lane. There's no good goin' further, for the whole gang of
them's scattered over the counthry agin now like a seedin' thistle in a
high win'."
"Ay bedad," said Constable Daly, "and be the same token, this win' ud
skin a tanned elephant. It's on'y bogged and drenched we'd git. Look at
what's comin' up over there. That rain's snow on the hills, every could
drop of it; I seen Ben Bawn this mornin' as white as the top of a
musharoon, and it's thickenin' wid sleet here this minute, and so it
is."
The landscape did indeed frown upon further explorations. In quarters
where the rain had abated it seemed as if the mists had curdled on the
breath of the bitter air, and they lay floating in long white bars and
reefs low on the track of their own shadow, which threw down upon the
sombre bogland deeper stains of gloom. Here and there one caught on the
crest of some grey-bouldered knoll, and was teazed into fleecy threads
that trailed melting instead of tangling. But towards the north the
horizon was all blank, with one vast, smooth slant of slate colour, like
a pent-house roof, which had a sliding motion onwards.
Ody Rafferty pointed to it and said, "Troth, it's teemin' powerful this
instiant up there in the mountains. 'Twill be much if you land home
afore it's atop of you; for 'twould be the most I could do myself."
And as the constables departed hastily, most people forgot the stolen
cloak for a while to wonder whether their friends would escape being
entirely drownded on the way back from the fair.
Mrs. Kilfoyle, however, still stood in deep dejection at her door, and
said, "Och, but she was the great fool to go let the likes of him set
fut widin her house."
To console her Mrs. O'Driscoll said, "Ah, sure, sorra a fool were you,
woman dear; how would you know the villiny of him? And if you'd turned
the man away widout givin' him e'er a bit, it's bad you'd be thinkin'
of it all the day after."
And to improve the occasion for her juniors, old Mrs. Keogh added, "Ay,
and morebetoken you'd ha' been committin' a sin."
But Mrs. Kilfoyle replied with much candour, "'Deed, then, I'd a dale
liefer be after committin' a sin, or a dozen sins, than to have me poor
mother's good cloak thieved away on me, and walkin' wild about the
world."
As it happened the fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from
her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have been
consolatory to her by any means. If she had heard of it, she would
probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the
misfort'nit crathur." For she was not of at all an implacable temper,
and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that
obliged her to appear at Mass with a flannel petticoat over her head
until the end of her days. Yet she did hold the Tinkers in a perhaps
somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers.
Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves, veritable birds of
prey, whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of
them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for
picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest
that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And
I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and
stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of
another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their
habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way off, and made their
collections by deputy.