FORECASTS
When Mrs. Joyce used in her last days to predict regretfully that her
youngest daughter would never marry, she said a bold word, for at this
time still Theresa's years fell short of twenty, and she was generally
recognised as the prettiest girl to be seen at Mass in the small, ugly
chapel down beyant near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that
she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and
she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of
colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the
insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes
and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and
frailer for their knots of ebon stamens, or the delicate moth who shows
fine black pencillings among his pearly down. Still, nobody denied that
she had "an uncommon purty face of her own," and the neighbours,
moreover, always found her "plisant and frindly and gay enough," when
they found her at all. But they remarked among themselves that one
seldom seen e'er a sight of Therasa Joyce these times anywheres about.
They supposed she was took up wid lookin' after her mother, who wasn't
gettin' her health over well this good while back. I think myself that
Theresa's invisibility could be only in part accounted for thus, as the
explanation does not cover the fact that to slip the wrong side of the
dyke, or turn aside among screening hillocks and hollows when she
noticed the approach of her acquaintances, was the course she always
adopted if she could achieve it without hurting anybody's feelings.
Theresa much disliked doing this, as a rule, though she broke it on one
occasion in a way that surprised and puzzled those who knew her best.
But whether Mrs. Joyce forecast the future rightly or wrongly, she had
certainly an erroneous impression on her mind when, as often happened,
she wound up her disconsolate musings by saying resentfully, "And the
back of me hand to some I could name." If she had proceeded to do so,
she would probably have mentioned persons who had done nothing to bring
about the result she was deploring, and she never thought of connecting
it with the events which had accompanied Ody Rafferty's flitting from
the Three Mile Farm more than a twelvemonth before Denis O'Meara came to
the place.
Until Ody took up his abode at Lisconnel he had always lived with his
father, who farmed a remote bit of land out towards Lough Glenglas. It
was a holding which had been wrested from the grip of a surrounding bog
by earlier generations of Raffertys, who were a strenuous race; but in
Ody's father's time their energies had taken a turn not conducive to
reclamation, or even to the maintenance of what was already won. All
Ody's many elder brethren--sisters there were none--had run wild, and
ended by running it so far afield that the narrow, whitewashed house,
lonesome and bleak, saw them no more. Its mistress also died, failing,
perhaps, other means of exit--running wild being in her case
impracticable--and finding life impossibly dreary without Ned, the
least-good-for of her sons; and the household was thus reduced to old
Michael Rafferty, and his aunt, and little Ody. These domestic changes,
in conjunction with other untoward chances, sadly hindered farming
operations, and nature made prompt use of the pause. Season by season
the patch of tilled ground seemed to shrink at the wish of the greedy
black land that girdled it about. The outlying fields grew first garish
with golden ragweed and scarlet poppies, and then dull green again with
the brown-knotted rushes and sombre sedge, and all other marish growths,
until the re-annexation was complete, and they once more were
homogeneous part and parcel of the conquering bog. Old Michael used to
trudge heavily round his dwindling territories, which were haunted by
memories of better days. There had been a time when they had actually
"kep' a pair of plough-horses." I believe that he would have fretted his
heart out much sooner than he did if it had not been for Ody, his only
remaining son, "whose aquils," his aunt Moggy sometimes remarked rather
bitterly, "he consaited you wouldn't find plintier in the world than an
apple sittin' on a sloe-bush." As the boy grew up the old man's pride
and pleasure in him were tempered by apprehensions lest he should "take
off wid himself like the other lads." However, Ody never did this nor
anything worse than wax somewhat over-confident and self-opiniated; and
a year or so before his father's death he became associated with Felix
O'Beirne in the management of an illicit still off away in the bog,
which gave him an object in life, and had a sobering and settling effect
upon him.
He was not more than twenty when his father suddenly died one early
spring morning, and he found himself left responsible for a few acres
well cropped with weeds, and sundry arrears of rent to be extracted from
their produce. Whereupon he resolved to abandon the struggle, and set up
on a less ambitious footing in one of the cabins at Lisconnel. So he got
ready for the move by selling off his little bit of live stock, all
except Rory, the old black pony, who had a very large head and a white
face like a grotesque mask, and with whom he would not have parted on
the most tempting terms. As for his great-aunt Moggy, when she heard of
this arrangement, she resigned herself to her fate, which was obviously
the Union away at Moynalone. What else should become of her, since she
was past field-work, and nobody could expect Ody now to be bothered with
keeping her idle, and he with scarce a penny to his name after settling
with Mr. Nugent. "Ody," she reflected, "didn't mind a thraneen what way
he had things in the house, and didn't care to be keepin' fowls, so what
good 'ud he get out of her at all?" Moggy was a dull and rather
cross-tempered old person, who had grown up in souring shade, and never
had a life of her own to live, nor yet a faculty for slipping smoothly
into other people's. Her slight intercourse with Ody had hitherto
chiefly consisted of quarrels. In fact, only the day before his father's
death, they had fallen out abusively about the broiling of some bacon,
and this seemed to make her destination all the more inevitable.
Therefore Moggy likewise set about her few dismal preparations,
oppressed by a stunned sense that the black hour she had been dreading
most of her life was now just going to strike.
On the morning of the day Ody was to flit she held a sort of carouse at
her solitary breakfast over the remnant of a pound of tea which she had
saved after the wake. Tea was ten prices fifty years ago, and a very
rare luxury at the Three Mile Farm. As she poured it strong and black
out of the badly broken teapot, the whole one being packed up, she
thought that was the last time she'd ever have the chance again in this
world to be wetting herself a cup of tea, and she thickened it
recklessly with lumps of damp brown sugar, and swung it round in her
cracked saucer to cool, and tried hard to enjoy it. She was still
lingering over it when Ody came into the kitchen, which caused her, poor
soul, instinctively to thrust away the betraying teapot out of sight on
the black hob.
"What way was you intindin' to go, then, aunt?" said Ody.
"To Moynalone?" she said, turning to face her future with a deep sinking
of heart. "Sure, I suppose it's trampin' over I'll be."
"And I won'er how long you think to be doin' it," said Ody--"a matter of
ten mile?"
"Where's the hurry at all, supposin'?" said his aunt, desperately.
"Blathers!" said Ody, "there's room in the cart waitin' ready. You'd be
better bundlin' yourself into it than to be sittin' here all the mornin'
delayin' us."
"'Deed, then, beggars drive as chape as they walk," she said, "and I
might as well be gettin' the lift as far as you can take me."
The old white-faced pony preferred to pace slowly on the long bog-road,
and, as Ody always respected his whims, the journey barely ended with
the March daylight. The old, sad-visaged woman sat all the while under
her muffling shawl in silent apathy undisturbed, and as during the
latter stages of the drive a blinking drowsiness co-operated with her
want of interest in the scenes through which she jogged, she naturally
looked around her in bewilderment when roused by the jerk of the
stopping cart. She expected to find herself in the streets of Moynalone,
drawn up, probably, at the door of the big Union workhouse. But, instead
of its long rows of casements staring down blankly on her, she saw only
the one mole's-eye window of a tiny whitewashed cabin peering at her
from beneath its thatched eaves, and all about it the great lonely bog
spreading away with never a trace of any town.
"Och, wirrasthrew, man, what are you after doin' on me?" she said,
beginning to bewail herself querulously. "Sure you haven't brought me to
any place at all. Every hour of the black night it'ill be afore ever
I'll get there now, and the Union'ill be shut, and what's to become of
me then I dunno. You'd a right to ha' tould me----"
"Blathers!" said her nephew, "git down out of that wid your yawpin'.
D'you want the folk here to think you're a sackful of ould hins? And go
in and be seein' after a bit of fire; it's late enough to be sure. What
fool's talk have you about the Union, and bad luck to it? You'll find
the things for the supper in the inside of the ould churn. Union,
moyah!"
And old Moggy, alighting with cramped limbs, entered her home at
Lisconnel, feeling blissfully as if she had been _unpacked_ out of a
most horrible nightmare.
Ody was probably actuated by several unassorted motives in dealing thus
with his superfluous old great-aunt. Pride and pity and perversity and
generosity--all had, no doubt, some influence upon his conduct, while
long use and wont had unawares given her the same sort of hold upon his
affections that was possessed in a much higher degree by Rory, the pony,
whose humours were of course easier to put up with than human foibles.
But the old woman measured his magnanimity by the immensity of the
benefit which it had conferred upon her, and with a strong revulsion of
feeling she formed an opinion of his virtues and talents as exalted
quite as that which she had often secretly jibed at in his father.
Accordingly she sang his praises unweariedly among their new neighbours,
and, as Ody was vain enough not to dislike the echoes which reached him,
he soon began to look upon her with more complacency, so that they
agreed much better than heretofore. She found no small solace, too,
after her long cronyless isolation up at the Three Mile Farm, in the
company of Mrs. Joyce, and Mrs. Keogh, and the other Lisconnel dames. In
short, a kind of Indian summer of content seemed to be setting in for
her. Moggy's mind, however, was of the self-tormenting type, and soon
devised means of marring it. They took the form of apprehensions that
Ody would presently get married, and that thereupon "the wife would put
her out of it." If she had only known, Ody was at this time, as for many
years ensuing, far too much taken up with himself, and Rory, and "the
little consarn away in the bog," to entertain any such project; but as
it was she felt that the event, with all its direful consequences,
perpetually hung over her, and might at any moment bring her new
prosperity to a miserable end. Her impending great-niece-in-law was a
vaguely appalling spectre, who threatened to take the roof from over her
head, and the bit out of her mouth, and turn her adrift to founder
hopelessly on the workhouse doorsteps. But it was not until more than a
year after their settlement at Lisconnel that she endued her bogey with
one definite form, by making up her mind that Ody "was thinkin' of
Theresa Joyce."
Her reason was that she had one fine evening seen him carrying Theresa's
water-pail for her down the hill, an ordinary act of courtesy enough,
but the sight of which suddenly darkened the world before her foolish
old eyes more dismally than if the golden fleece of the summer sunset
had been smothered under the blackest pall ever woven in cloud-looms.
"Fine colloguin' they're havin' together," she said to herself as she
watched them and their long shadows down the slope, "and he sloppin' the
half of it over the edge instead of mindin' what he's doin'. It's
throwin' me out on the side of the road she'll be." In reality Theresa
was wondering why there would be, a quare black sidimint like, in the
water on some days and not on others; and Ody was explaining the
phenomenon confidently and erroneously on an extemporised theory of his
own. But to old Moggy's fears it seemed quite possible that they might
be fixing the wedding-day. For Theresa Joyce herself she had no manner
of misliking at all, considering her to be "a very dacint plisant-spoken
little girl," but Mrs. Ody Rafferty seemed none the less certain to
evict her without remorse. And Ody's aunt retired to rest that night in
a despondent mood.
It was just about this time that Denis O'Meara came to stay at Lisconnel
on sick leave. The O'Mearas lived in one of the three cabins which used
to stand near the O'Beirne's forge, but which the great Famine and Fever
year left tenantless for ever after. Their household consisted of the
two infirm old people with their melancholy middle-aged son Tim, and
their sickly grandson, little Joe Egan, who was Denis's cousin. Now
Denis had been wounded in a battle somewhere out in India, and had been
promoted sergeant--"and he but a young boyo so to spake"--and owned four
medals, and stood six foot three in his stockings, and was as fine a
figure of a man as you could wish to see, let alone his gorgeous scarlet
uniform, which was a sight to behold; so if he was not a hero, get me
one, as we say in Lisconnel. But Lisconnel was quite satisfied with him
in that worshipful character, and found it very easy to adopt the
appropriate attitude towards him. For Denis was good-natured and
cheerful and never conceited at all, nor vain when there was anything
more to the purpose for him to be; qualities which have an irresistible
fascination in distinguished personages and make their followers' duty
a pleasure. It was wonderful how his sojourn enlivened everybody, even
his mournful little old grandmother, whose gratification expressed
itself chiefly in regrets that his poor father and mother had not lived
to see the illigant man he'd grown. When she said this to the younger
matrons of Lisconnel, they thought that the crathurs' fate was
commiserable indeed, and earnestly hoped that they themselves would be
spared, plase God, to witness the splendid careers that lay before their
own Denises at present playing among the puddles. But the older ones had
to content themselves with the knowledge that if they had only just so
happened to get the same chances, their own lads would have done the
very same things; a fact which seemed to give them a sort of
hypothetical proprietorship in Denis's glory. His presence brightened up
society as a tall poppy brightens up all a sombre potato-plot, and his
conversation brought strange lands and extraordinary events within one
remove--a single pair of eyes and ears--of everybody's experience. For
many years after "the summer we had Denis O'Meara up here" made a vivid
time-mark in our annals; and I fancy that the stories of some of his
exploits, with their outlines looming large through a mythical
mistiness, still float in our atmosphere. There is at least one legend
relating how a soldier out in the East cut off a mad elephant's head at
a stroke of his sabre, with the hero of which Denis O'Meara could
probably be identified. Altogether he was so exceptionally brilliant a
figure both in himself and in his fortunes, that the interest which he
excited had no element of envy in it, as might have been the case had
emulation seemed less utterly beyond everybody's reach.
Next to his cousin, Joe Egan, a stunted, starved-looking sprissawn of a
lad, perhaps the most appreciative of his admirers was big Hugh
McInerney, whom people were apt to call an omadhawn. He also was,
comparatively speaking, a stranger at Lisconnel, having come there only
that spring to give John O'Driscoll a hand with the building of his mud
cabin, after which he stayed about doing what odd jobs offered at that
slack season of the year. Now and then he tramped on distillery business
for Felix O'Beirne, and generally acquitted himself in a manner which
appeared worthy of contempt to young Ody Rafferty, who was his companion
on these expeditions. Ody expressed his opinion in unqualified terms,
saying, "Sure it 'ud disgust you to see him moonin' along like an ould
donkey strayed out of a fair." But his senior partner, rather to his
annoyance, persisted in replying, "But, mind you, the chap's no fool."
He had nobody belonging to him at Ballybrosna, whence he came, and some
people said that he had been a workhouse child.
At the time of Denis O'Meara's arrival, he was darning the widow Joyce's
thatch for her, and "not killin' himself ever the job," as people said,
when they reckoned how many days he had been visible crawling about on
the top of her little house, a conspicuous position in which he looked,
Mrs. Con Ryan remarked, "a quarer great gawk than he did on dry lan'."
He was occupied thus on the first afternoon that Denis walked up there
with some of the other lads, and while they talked to Mrs. Joyce and
Theresa underneath, the thatcher took a leisurely and critical survey of
the scarlet and golden newcomer, from his wonderfully polished boots to
his sleek dark head and fierce moustache. The verdict he pronounced to
himself with unfeigned satisfaction was, "Grandeur's no name for him."
Hugh himself, of large and lumbering frame, had a shag of reddish
flaxen hair, which made thatch-like eaves above his small, light-blue
eyes and high burnt-brick-coloured cheek-bones. He wore whitey-brown
rags. After the rest had gone on and in, he slithered down to the ground
and told Theresa, who was still standing by the door, that she didn't
look the size of a bit of a lady-bird beside the soldier fellow. If
anybody else had made this personal remark, Theresa might have been a
little hurt by it, as she wished herself of more imposing stature; but
sure nobody minded poor Hugh McInerney; at any rate she said, "Aye, he's
a terrible big man, isn't he? Apt to knock the head off himself he'd be
if he was offerin' to come in at our door."
However, on the very next day Denis contrived to accomplish that feat
without any such accident when he called in at the Joyces' to ask was
his grandmother there--which she was not, nor indeed likely to be.
Failing to find the old woman, he postponed his quest for the present
and stayed talking to Theresa, who, as it happened, was at home; and
then he stopped again outside to help Hugh McInerney by handing him up
some rolls of green-sodded scraws and slippery bundles of rushes. His
long reach made him serviceable here, though his left arm was still
partially disabled by the sabre-cut that had invalided him. The gleam of
the red coat at the Joyces' door had apparently as fascinating an effect
upon Lisconnel as if the place had been inhabited by a population that
bellowed and gobbled its greetings instead of saying, "How's yourself,
lad?" and "It's a grand day, thank God," as it came sauntering up
dispersedly from various quarters. Before many minutes had passed quite
a numerous group were collected, for in these long midsummer days there
is little to be done up here except save the turf, a business which fine
weather makes short work of. In the weeks before the potato-digging,
employment becomes as scarce as the pitaties themselves, and the hours
hang limp and flaccid between the meals which punctuate them with a
plateful of coarse-grained gruel. Therefore to Christy Sheridan and
Terence Kilfoyle, with half a dozen of their neighbours, the sight of
their distinguished visitor was an oasis in a very arid desert, and they
made towards it thirstily.
By and by the group drifted away from the road before the Joyces' house
into the rough sward behind it; rather literally drifted, as the cause
of the move was the wind, a strong soft west wind which had been blowing
over the bog all the morning in great wide gusts. They seemed to lean
hard against whatever they met, and made standing still an effort, and
devastated conversation by carrying off important fragments of it
uncaught, no matter how loudly one bawled. But the big boulders and
furze-clumps strewn about in a slight depression close by offered seats
and shelter opportunely; so amongst them presently appeared Denis
O'Meara's scarlet tunic, and Theresa Joyce's brown-striped shawl, and
Mrs. Ryan's white-frilled flapping cap, which she said was bein'
fluttered to destruction off her ould head, and Hugh McInerney's
many-rifted caubeen, for he declared that until the flurry of the blast
went down a bit you might as well be lettin' on to thatch the sails
whirlin' of a win'mill. And the rest of the company following suit might
be described in terms of their attire as for the most part sad-coloured
and dilapidated. It was just such a gathering as may be sitting to sun
themselves at Lisconnel this day--if it happens to be a fine summer
one--but with a touch of brilliance, both for eye and ear, added by the
young soldier's presence. They had, however, but fitful gleams to bask
in, for the sky was all feathered over with little silver-white plumes,
which the wind kept ruffling by so fast that the light flickered in and
out continually, as if it had come through a canopy of large slowly
waving leaves. Still, they gossiped beneath it with much satisfaction,
and catechised Denis about his adventures, and told him all the news of
the countryside; and there seemed to be no particular reason why they
should not go on doing so indefinitely. What in the end broke up the
assembly was a slight mishap that befell Theresa Joyce.
It cannot be denied that Theresa was rather vain about her long black
hair, which she had only of late begun to put up in thick silken coils.
Her mother said you had to take your two hands to a one of them, like as
if you were twisting a big _suggawn_ (hay-rope); and they looked almost
too heavy for her small head, no matter how closely they were wound
about it. A rippling wave, moreover, ran through these tresses, which
were exceedingly soft and fine; so her vanity was perhaps excusable. At
any rate, it led her to fashion herself a small knot of cherry-coloured
ribbon made of a bit that had trimmed the sleeve of her mother's purple
merino gown. It was a _very_ small knot, because most of the bit had got
mildewed lying up, before Theresa grew to concern herself about such
things. But it looked as bright in her hair as a ruddy berry on a dark
foliaged creeper, and she wore it with a pleasure, which was destined to
be brief. For as she sat knitting with the quietly creeping fingers of
an expert in that art, a vagrant gust maliciously whisked off her little
gawd, and tossing it contumeliously on the ground, as if it were not
worth carrying, began to puff it along, skimming over the heather and
tussocks. Denis O'Meara all but rescued it for her, only that Hugh
McInerney--the omadhawn--starting forward at the same time, blundered up
against him, and tumbled with him into a furze-bush. And before they
picked themselves up, the cherry-coloured knot had met its fate in the
shape of the Ryans' black and white kid. She was tethered close by, and
had been apparently absorbed in scratching her forehead with her left
hind foot in a way that said much for the limberness of her youthful
joints. But as the bit of ribbon flirted past her she made a rapid
snatch, and swallowed it at a gulp. Mrs. Ryan stood dismayed at possible
serious consequences to the kid, and Theresa at the certain loss of her
scrap of finery; and everybody else was saying to Hugh McInerney: "Och,
you great omadhawn, why couldn't you keep yourself aisy? He had it safe
enough on'y for you gettin' under his feet"--everybody, that is, except
Denis O'Meara, who said: "Sure now the both of us wasn't mindin' rightly
where we was chargin' to; and the raison of that belike was the nayther
of us thinkin' so much of what we was runnin' after, as of who we was
runnin' for--and small blame to us bedad."
But Hugh's self-esteem was not restored by the good-natured excuse. He
said: "Truth it is, I'd a right to ha' sted quiet. For the on'y notion I
had was puttin' meself for'ard to be gettin' a hould of it before any of
the others." And he walked off crestfallen to resume his perch on the
thatch.
As for Theresa, she ignored Denis's pretty speech, and said 'deed now
she remembered her mother had bid her step up and see what way Ody
Rafferty's aunt was that morning. And she, too, withdrew from the group
to make this visit of inquiry.
As she passed on her way under the place where Hugh was thatching, he
dropped a small handful of rushes on her head to call her attention, and
when she looked up she saw his red-brick-hued face in a wild
tow-coloured halo peering down at her from over the eaves. "I am sorry I
lost it on you," he said.
"Ah, no matter about it; and it wasn't your fau't more than another's,"
said Theresa.
"You'd ha' had it now," said Hugh, "if it wasn't for the little goat
gettin' the chance to ait it while himself was tumblin' over me. But I'd
as lief have your hair the way it is now. It is the blackest ever I
seen. One might think you'd gathered it out of the middles of them red
poppies there. Stick a couple of them in it, if you want anythin'; but
to my mind it's better widout. On'y if you've the fancy to be tyin' the
bit of red string through it, I'm sorry it was ate."
Hugh's head drew back, and disappeared from her view; but next moment
she heard him say mournfully: "What am I after doin'? Puttin' me fut
that far down a houle it's caught fast between a couple of rafters.
Firrm it is, begorrah. If I don't mind what I'm at, it's pullin' the
half of their house down, and wranchin' me ankle I'll be before I free
meself." And she saw him struggling cautiously on the roof all the
while she was ascending the slope to Ody Rafferty's door, within which
his aunt was at present a prisoner.
A reluctant and repining one she was, having been seized with a bad
attack of lumbago at a time when she felt particularly anxious to keep a
vigilant eye upon what occurred in her neighbourhood, instead of being
left dependent upon hearsay for a knowledge of anything happening
outside her four draughty walls. Many a care-infested hour she fretted
away between them. For how could she tell with what insidious steps the
calamity to ensue from Ody's courtship of Theresa Joyce might all the
while be stealing on her? She dared not confide her fears to any
neighbour, nor would she have put much faith in the report of
observation unwhetted thereby; and she lived in daily dread of hearing
the news announced as no mere conjecture or rumour, but a very hard
fact. As the days wore on the idea took possession of her more and more
completely, but she could only wreak her helpless ill-humour by doing
foolish and futile things, such as dilating to Ody upon the imprudence
of getting married, and the undesirable qualities of black-looking slips
of colleens--a simple and ingenious expedient for putting him out of
conceit with all and any of them; while she assumed towards Theresa a
demeanor so glum and repellent that the girl could not attribute it
entirely to the irritability caused by rheumatic twinges, and from one
of her charitably intentioned visits returned with a disconcerted
expression, and a resolve, which she kept, to pay no more. But in fact
Ody was during these weeks even more than usually engrossed by the
affairs of the inobtrusive little manufactory, which he and Felix
O'Beirne superintended away in a retired part of the bog; and not they
alone, but Lisconnel collectively, had been going through some
excitement on this account. This was occasioned by the livelier interest
which the police had recently manifested in that branch of home
industry, stimulated by admonitions from their authorities to the effect
that the hunting down of illicit stills, and confiscation of the
produce, might with advantage be carried on more energetically. Hence
had resulted several appearances in Lisconnel of the constabulary from
Ballybrosna and other stations, and when these occurred Ody was in his
element of wiles and stratagems. More than once he enjoyed the moment of
their visitors' departure on a wild-goose chase, "consaitin' they've got
us be the hind leg this time for sartin;" and long did he chuckle over
the evening when they came and "sat discoorsin' as plisint and aisy as a
rabbit in its houle," by a hearth where there was "enough of the stuff
to float the lot of them lyin' widin six inches of their shiny brogues."
It was, however, thought expedient to guard against a repetition of this
perilous entertainment, and the contraband crocks were transferred to a
still more secluded hiding-place in the queer tiny sod-and-stone shanty
with Hugh McInerney, who had displayed unexpected strategical ability
and presence of mind under late emergencies, now knocked up for himself
in a hollow behind the hill. So old Moggy's fears might have been better
employed. Then about this time, too, a thrill was caused by the
mysterious horseman, who visited the O'Beirnes' forge one night, and got
old Felix to break open for him an immensely strong, small iron box
which he carried. The same box being found next morning lying empty in
the little Lisconnel stream, beside which the horse, "a grand big roan,"
was quietly grazing, while his rider was nowhere, nor was ever after
anywhere, to be seen; an incident which gave scope for infinite
speculation at Lisconnel.
All these things happened before Ody's aunt got about again. By that
time it was well on in August, and the season having been hot and dry,
Lisconnel's oat-patches were already reflecting as if in a mirror,
tarnished somewhat and rusted, the broad golden blaze that had looked
down on them so steadily, and people had begun to think about reaping.
The Ryans' field, indeed, was so ripe by the day of Ballybrosna Big
Fair, that Paddy Ryan commissioned Hugh McInerney to bring him back a
reaping-hook from it. Hugh was going to attend it on business of his
own, and Ody Rafferty had some bulkier commissions to execute in behalf
of his neighbours. But he encountered some difficulties in getting under
way, due to the inopportune devices of old Rory, whom he proposed to
bring with him. Ody had been careful not to put on his best clothes
until he had caught the beast, because, as he remarked, "He well knew
the crathur 'ud be off wid himself hidin' in the unhandiest place the
divil 'ud put in his mind, if he noticed e'er a dacint stitch on him."
Yet despite this precaution, when his master went to look for him after
breakfast, no black pony was in sight.
"And he that'll be foosterin' everywhere under your feet other whiles,
he's that fond of company," said Ody's aunt, who hobbled out of doors
for the first time to assist in the search. "Belike he's seen you
rubbin' up your brogues, and be raison of that he's took off wid
himself. Bedad, now the big ould head of him is as full of desate as it
can hould."
"He's a notorious schemer, God forgive him," Ody said, rather sadly, for
it went against the grain with him to admit defects in Rory.
But his scheming bade fair to prove successful, as Ody after long
hunting stood baffled at the door, with his expedition seemingly
frustrated, when Hugh McInerney passing by reported that he "was after
seein' the baste lanin' gathered up close agin the back of the big stone
above there, wid a continted grin on the ould gob of him that 'ud
frighten you wid the villiny was in it." Whereupon the two young men
went to dislodge him from his fool's paradise, and the three started
together without further delay.
Till a short way down the road they met old Felix O'Beirne, and with him
Denis O'Meara, at whose heels followed Joe Egan, ragged and small, his
habit being to dog his splendid cousin so persistently that old Mrs.
Byers next door said she wondered "the young chap didn't of an odd
while take him be the two shoulders and sling him over the dyke."
"So you're off to the fair," said old O'Beirne. "And is it sellin' the
pony you'd be at last? Sure, now, he'll be the pick of the market,
that's sartin."
"Ah, they'll niver give me me price for him, the naygurs," said Ody.
"Our Captin-Commandin' here had a right to take him off of you for a
throoper," said old O'Beirne, "and, faix, there wouldn't be his aquil in
the len'th and breadth of the army. What 'ud you offer for him, lad?
Look at the size of the head he has on him, and the onnathural white
face of him that's fit to scare a rigimint before it, if there was
nothin' else."
"Is it broke bankrupt you'd have me then?" said Denis, "settin' up to be
buyin' meself mounts of that expinsive discripshin?"
"Musha, good gracious, man, promise him the first thruppinny-bit you
meet floatin' down the river on a grindstone, and you'll be buyin' every
hair in his tail," said the old man. "But come along and don't be
delayin' thim. They're goin' after fairin's for their sweethearts, the
way you'd be yourself if you worn't too great a naygur. Or, maybe,
there isn't anythin' good enough for her to be had in Ballybrosna--is
that the raison of it?"
Little Joe was beginning to say in a resentful shout: "Naygur
yourself--he and I are goin' to get----" But Denis pulled him on
jocularly by the collar, and the parties went their several ways.
Ody then said: "Sweethearts is it? He's the quare ould man for talkin'.
Glory be to the great goodness, I'm throubled wid ne'er a one. 'Here's
out of it,' sez I. 'Onnathural,' sez he, musha cock him up, and himself
shoein' ould garrons all the days of his life. Hi along, Rory, jewel!"
But Hugh said, meditatively, and more than half to himself, which was
rather a habit of his: "Well, now, for the matter of the fairin', it's
just the best len'th of ribbon I can get thim to give me for a shillin'.
Yella it's to be. I wasn't long aither plannin' a way to find out the
colour she'd like. Sure, I gave her a bunch of flowers wid poppies in
it, and daisies, and furze-blossom, and foxglove, and forgit-me-not, and
midowsweet, and sez I to her, which of thim was the finest coloured.
And, sez she, the furze-blossom was, be raison of it bein' the bright
gould all over, that the others had mostly only a spark of somewheres
inside. So it's to be yella. Tellin' you the truth, I'd liefer she
wouldn't be wearin' e'er such a thing at all, anyways not in her hair,
that's a sight purtier just in the big black twists. But, sure, it's the
fancy she has, and morebetoken, I think bad of me lettin' the little
goat swally the weeny bit she had on her. Ay bedad, I'd a right to be
bringin' it to her; and, at all evints, I'd be doin' a foolish thing to
come home widout it, and me not gettin' the bit of fat bacon these six
weeks next Saturday to make up the price. I won'er now what len'th
they'd give you for one shillin'?"
But Ody, who had not been listening, only said, oracularly: "Och! that's
accordin'," which did not materially assist Hugh's speculations.
Yellow ribbons were not plentiful at Ballybrosna fair, and Hugh
McInerney had to ask for them vainly at several stalls before he came to
an old-clothes cart, where the proprietress, being hot and cross, took
him aback by replying: "And who ever heard tell of sellin' ribbons be
the len'th, you quare-lookin' stookawn?"
"Sure it's meself couldn't say but you might; I niver had any call to be
buyin' such a thing before. But a bit that one shillin' 'ud be the
price of is what I'm wishful to be gettin', if it was yella--and beggin'
your pardon, ma'am," Hugh answered with a glib meekness, which mollified
the old woman as much as his not undesigned mention of his shilling.
So she said, "'Deed, now, I believe I've a splindid yella bit
somewheres, a trifle creased in the folds, that I could make you a
prisint of for a shillin'." And she rummaged, and unrolled before him
interminable coils of vivid dandelion-hued ribbon. "The grand colour of
it couldn't be bet," she said, "in Ireland. You could see it a mile off,
and you wouldn't get the match of it in Dublin under half-a-crown. If
she wouldn't be plased wid that, you've got an odd one to satisfy."
Ody with Rory came by as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh,
pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved
tone: "It's a _terrible_ quantity they're about givin' me--yards and
yards--enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth,
now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of
the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she
will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been the half of it."
"What for then are you gettin' more than enough of whatever it is?" Ody
asked not unreasonably. "Supposin' you wanted any such thrash at all at
all."
"Ah, sure, I settled in me own mind to be spendin' me shillin' on it,
and that's the way it is," Hugh said resignedly. "Maybe she'll have more
wit, the bit of a crathur; she might never put it on. So now I've on'y
to see after Paddy Ryan's rapin'-hook, and then I'm done. And is it
carryin' them two bags all the way home you'd be? Sure there's plinty of
room for them on the baste."
"Ay, is there?" said Ody. "But the fac' is Rory's in none too good a
temper this minyit, goodness help him, and he'll be apt to thravel more
contint, the crathur, if he sees he's not the on'y body wid a loadin'."
"Rax me over the one of them," said Hugh, "I've nought barrin' the bit
of ribbon, and the rapin'-hook 'ill be nothin' to me at all."
And in this way they plodded back to Lisconnel.