HONORIS CAUSA
The evening of the day after Mr. Polymathers died was a very wild
black-and-white one out of doors all round Lisconnel, yet,
notwithstanding the flakes in the air and under foot, the O'Beirnes had
received some company. Not at a wake, however the purpose of their
assembly was to discuss a serious business matter, upon which old Felix
O'Beirne wished for friendly counsel. Hence his contemporary, old Paddy
Ryan, had prodded little round craters in the snow with his thick stick
all along the good step of bleak road which lay between his house and
the forge, and with him had come on the same errand Terence Kilfoyle,
who, although of so much junior standing, was esteemed as a man of
notably shrewd sense and judgment. But then neither he nor the
neighbours knew how often he took and gave Bessie Kilfoyle's advice.
These two were present by express invitation, but another pair of
guests, the Dooleys, would never have been asked for the sake of their
opinion, which they were indeed encouraged to keep to themselves, and
appeared at this domestic crisis merely by virtue of family ties. Old
Felix had always thought little of his daughter Maggie's mental powers,
and less ever since her marriage with Peter Dooley, who kept a shop in
the Town, and could be described as "an ould gombeen man," if one wished
to regard him from an unfavourable point of view, which his
father-in-law not uncommonly did. He had been heard to say of Peter that
"the chap was that smooth-spoken you might think he was after swallyin'
a one of his own graisy dipts, on'y he'd liefer be chaitin' some poor
body over the sellin' of it"--a perhaps not inexcusable preference. As
for Peter, he contemplated humanity with a jovial cynicism, and rather
enjoyed the society of the old blacksmith, despite the gruff sarcasms
which sometimes made their womenkind turn the conversation
apprehensively. _He_ had been heard to say of Felix that "It was aisy
work runnin' down other people's business, and small blame to th' ould
man if he had a fancy for a light job now and agin, when he would be
tired poundin' th' ould iron at a profit you couldn't see to pick up
widout a strong pair of spectacles." Proximity had brought to the
consultation Mrs. Carbery and Tim O'Meara from adjacent doors; and they,
with old ancient Mrs. O'Beirne and her daughter and the two lads, formed
quite a large party about the fire. The business to be brought before
them was Mr. Polymathers's Will.
Now, lest it should be thought that unseemly haste was displayed in
attending to this affair while Mr. Polymathers still lay in the little
next room, I must explain that for special reasons the nature of the
funeral arrangements depended upon the result of the conference; and how
deeply important such a point would be considered at Lisconnel I need
remind no one who has occasionally been perplexed by our propensity for
the pinching and scraping which takes toll of a life-long penury, that a
brief show of pomp may invest the last scene of all. This propensity is
not seldom misconstrued into the outcome of a mere personal vanity,
whereas it has its root in the worthier sentiment of veneration for our
Kind. Ould Pat Murphy, who has subsisted all his life upon an
insufficiency of pitaties, and inhabited a largish sty, never loses the
sense that he owes something better to himself in his character of a
human being, and he takes painful steps to ensure the ultimate discharge
of the debt. One of these days he who has hitherto come and gone in
unimposing guise shall be borne, on wheels if possible--but here I
mention grandeur never even dreamed of up at remote Lisconnel--in
unwonted state, certain to draw the gaze of every passer-by. But as if
with a fine touch of courtesy, he so times his assertion of dignity that
none of his fellows shall thereby be abashed nor envy-bitten. No ragged
wayfarer shall wish to change places with him as he passes solemnly
along, nor grudge him the unshared splendour of his sombre equipage; not
even if it display the crowning glory of woolly black plumes to waggle
over his head. Accordingly, when Pat has died on his humble bed, which
is as likely as not just earth tempered with straw, under his rifted
thatch, through which he may perhaps see the stars glimmer with nothing
except the smoke-haze and gathering mists between, he is conveyed thence
with whatever pomp and circumstance his savings permit, and all his
neighbours feel that the right thing has been done.
It is true that Mr. Polymathers had given no sign of any such sentiment.
When discreetly sounded on the subject during his last days, he had
replied: "Ah! man, it's very immaterial," in a tone of indifference as
unmistakable as the phrase was ambiguous. And from this fact, coupled
with his written instructions, it might, one would have thought, safely
have been inferred that he desired no costly magnificence at his
obsequies. Yet the point was obscured in his late host's mind by a thick
cloud of doubts and scruples.
Mr. Polymathers had died surprisingly rich, not less than twenty-five
pounds, seven shillings and threepence having been counted awestrickenly
out of his leathern pouch. The ground rents of all Lisconnel did not
reach to such a figure. It had been larger still before his disastrous
expedition to the University; but it had never undergone any diminution
so long as he abode under Felix O'Beirne's roof. On the first Saturday
after his convalescence he had inquired, pouch in hand: "And what might
be the amount of me pecuniary debt to you, sir?" And old O'Beirne had
replied: "And you spendin' your time puttin' the heighth of larnin' into
the two lads' heads! Bedad, sir, it's debt the other way round,
supposin' there was to be any talk about it." The same little scene,
dwindled at last into a mere form and ceremony, had taken place on
every succeeding Saturday. Not that Mr. Polymathers did not feel he had
grounds for more than merely formal demur. But he was then facing the
steep hill of his ambition, and had sometimes to stoop as he climbed.
But now, when he had turned back baffled, and all his climbing was done,
old Felix had no engrossing object to blunt a sense of many scruples
that must be removed before he himself or his family could with honour
derive profit from the event; as they would do if Mr. Polymathers's
instructions were carried out. For by that document, which he had
finished drawing up only just in time, all his property was left
unreservedly to Nicholas O'Beirne, with the injunction that as little of
it as possible might be expended upon "the burying." Of course it was an
extraordinary thing that such a piece of good fortune should befall,
such a number of pounds accrue to, anybody at all; but apart from this
there seemed to be nothing very strange in the bequest. Everybody knew
that Mr. Polymathers had entertained "a great opinion entirely" of
Nicholas' abilities. Time and again he had said that the lad would be
heard of in the world if he got his chance of some good teaching. And he
once more expressed the same conviction, only at fuller length and in
finer language, in the composition which had been the last effort of his
wearied brain. "It would give me," he wrote, "the utmost satisfaction to
think that the legacy may eventually smooth his path to the attainment
of those University distinctions which have eluded my own grasp." And
almost his latest moment of consciousness had been pervaded by a faint
thrill of pleased pride at the turn of the sentence as he read it over.
This high style was not, however, maintained throughout, and the purport
could not be misunderstood. Furthermore, everybody knew that he had said
he had not a relation belonging to him in this world; and that being so,
it was natural enough for him to make a promising and favorite pupil his
heir. At first sight, therefore, no difficulties presented themselves;
but old Felix slept upon the matter, and by morning grave doubts had
risen in his mind. The gist of them was that "If they took and grabbed
the ould gintleman's bit of money, and he after dyin' all his lone up
among them there, wid ne'er a one of his own folks near him to see he
had his rights, it might look ugly enough agin them, and set some people
passin' remarks he'd be long sorry to have made on him, or any of his
name;" and that for the precluding of such animadversions it might
behove them to provide "a buryin'" not merely decent but "very
respectable whatever," and to expend the remainder of Mr. Polymathers's
personality upon a headstone for his grave, and Masses for his soul. To
set against these apprehensions were Mr. Polymathers's wishes and
Nicholas's interests; and the longer the old man balanced them in his
mind, the more perplexing became their tremulous poise. So at last,
goaded by the urgent necessity for a prompt decision, he turned to seek
it among his neighbours. He could not forbear a hope that their voices
might be convincingly in favour of giving Nicholas his chances; still
his strongest feeling was that it would be a relief to get the matter
settled one way or the other.
Very different in its degree of intensity was the interest with which
his grandson Nicholas looked forward to the issue. The question to be
decided seemed to him of almost as vital importance as if it were:
Whether or no the sun should rise again next morning. For him at least,
it depended upon that whether his world should loom back again in a
dreary blankness, or waken lit with new and wondrous gleams. Nicholas's
thirst for knowledge and love of learning were much more essentially
part and parcel of him than his hands and eyes, and had so far found
little except dreams and desires to thrive upon. Even before the
memorable summer evening when the gaunt old man in the curious big hat
had asked for the night's lodging, which lengthened into a season's
sojourn, he had often wandered among visions of places where there were
as many books as anybody could read--a dozen maybe--and some people in
it with a power of book-learning--as much perhaps as his Reverence or
the Doctor--only neither priest nor quality, but just neighbours whom he
could question about anything that came into his head, as he used to
question his grandfather, and Paddy Ryan, and Terence Kilfoyle, until he
got tired of being asked, in reply: "Musha good gracious, and who could
be tellin' you that?" an answer which had repeatedly left him a
discouraged atom of bewilderment, symbolically environed by our
wide-spreading bog. Since Mr. Polymathers's visit, these visions had
grown clearer, but not under any rays of hope. His initiation into the
elements of mathematics had pointed out the road along which he should
travel, but had simultaneously revealed all its obstacles,
insurmountable for him solitary and unequipped. In those days his mind
was constantly fumbling at some insoluble problem with the sense of
frustration that one has who gropes vainly in the dark, well knowing how
a single unattainable match-flare would put what he is seeking into his
hands. And no brighter prospect seemed to lie before him anywhere in his
future.
So when he suddenly learned that Mr. Polymathers had left all his
money--sums and sums--to be spent on "getting schooling for Nicholas
O'Beirne;" and when the sums and sums were actually counted out on the
table, he felt as if a door into enchanted regions had majestically
opened in a blank wall. That night he went to bed in a state of joyous
excitement, only dashed by some pangs of self-reproach for being unable
to feel more sorrow at the flickering out of his poor old teacher's dim
life. He had to frame excuses for himself by recollecting how his
great-aunt Bridget had said, "Ah, sure the crathur's better off, God
knows. What else 'ud he do, and the heart of him broke, but quit out of
it, if he got the chance? Ay, bedad, some people have the quare good
luck."
And when he got up with his happiness still fresh and strange in the
morning, there was his grandfather declaring "he didn't know if they'd
have a right to touch the bit of money at all; it might be no thing to
go do; schoolin' or no schoolin', he wouldn't be givin' people any call
to say the O'Beirnes were after playin' a dirty thrick." At this
Nicholas's experience was like that of a desert traveller who should see
a mirage of palms and pools grow swiftly before his delighted eyes into
a substantial oasis, and then anon, or ever he could approach it,
shimmer back, with all its sheen and shade, into mocking illusion again.
For thus did it fare with his hopes as his grandfather talked of
renouncing Mr. Polymathers's bequest. Moreover, the grounds which the
old man alleged forbade his grandson, lothfully though he listened, to
utter a word of protest, and even made him half ashamed of his vehement
longing to do so. Nicholas had been an O'Beirne for but fourteen years,
yet he had already entered upon his inheritance of family pride. Only he
could not bring himself to believe that the honour of his house called
for so prodigious a sacrifice; and he could have urged a dozen arguments
against it, if some other person had been the legatee. As it was, all
that delicacy would permit him to do for himself was to give piteously
inadequate expression to his sentiments in casual remarks about the
grandeur of getting a bit of learning, and the difficulty of
understanding some things out of one's own head. Altogether that day was
the longest and the most anxious that he had ever spent.
Dan also, though his fortunes were not involved to the same extent as
his younger brother's, was not easy in his mind. All day he had been
thinking rather badly of himself, and suspecting that other people
thought worse of him than he deserved, and the reflection was depressing
and irritating. The news of the legacy certainly had not given him
unmixed pleasure, as he felt that it ought to have done; but at the same
time he was aware that he neither grudged nor envied Nicholas his good
fortune, and that this unamiable frame of mind would nevertheless
probably be ascribed to him, if he betrayed any dissatisfaction or
disapproval. The truth was that he could not help feeling some
mortification at the way in which both Mr. Polymathers and his
grandfather assumed the forge to be his destiny and portion in life. Dan
did not by any means despise it: he took an interest in the work, and a
pride in the fact that farmers sent their horses thither from beyond the
Town, so well reputed was old Felix O'Beirne's shoeing. But it did not
follow that he wanted to be a blacksmith all his days. Even if he had
done so, he was sixteen, and consequently of an age to resent any
prescribed calling, especially since he knew that the selection here had
been made as the result of an unfavourable comparison of his abilities
with those of another person. "Dan is no fool, mind you," Mr.
Polymathers had said once. "But for intellect you need never name him on
the same day of the month as Nicholas," a verdict which fell with a
slight shock upon Dan, accustomed to the precedence given by two years'
seniority, superior strength, and a more practical turn of mind. What
was far more serious, however, Dan secretly cherished an ambition of his
own. It took the form of thinking that it would be a wonderfully fine
thing if he could ever get to learn the doctoring, and be able to drive
about on a car like Dr. Hamilton, with a name and a remedy for
everybody's ailment. A particularly fine thing it seemed to understand
the construction of bones and joints, a knowledge which would put it in
his power to prevent people from coming to such grief as, for instance,
poor Matt Haloran down at Duffclane, who must limp on a crooked leg to
the end of his days, because the man who pulled in his dislocated ankle
for him had made a botch of it, through not knowing rightly what he was
about. Dan had been much impressed, too, by several cases where a few
drops of brown stuff out of a bottle had put people to sleep when
various aches and pains had long hindered them from closing an eye, a
result which the neighbours were occasionally disposed to view with
mistrust, as rather probably wrought through the agency of "some quare
ould pishtrogues (charms)," but which to Dan's mind proved the
possession of a skill as enviable as it was beneficent. Beside it
hammering out horseshoes appeared a tedious and aimless pursuit, and he
sometimes thumped away in a very vague dream of one of these days
finding himself more congenially employed. Now, however, it was
perfectly clear to him that if Nicholas "took off wid himself to get
scholarship," his own portion must be to stick to the anvil. For
otherwise supposing his grandfather got past his work, or anything else
happened him, there would be nobody left to look after Dan's great-aunt,
who was not very old, and his great-grandmother, who was such a
wonderful age entirely that no one could say how much longer she mighn't
live. Even the wildest of dreams are not quite easy to scare away, and
it was this chiefly that marred his content with Mr. Polymathers's
testamentary dispositions. Still, when he heard his grandfather's
doubts, and saw his brother's downcast looks, he became almost as
anxious as Nicholas himself that the neighbours might talk away the old
man's scruples and allow the will to stand.
Thus there were many eager hopes and fears lodged that evening in the
O'Beirnes' living-room, which was all throbbing with fire-light, as the
neighbours began to drop in talking out of the dark. People are apt to
speak loudly when they get their breath after a battle with snowy
blasts; and the sound of voices came strangely into the stillness close
by, where there was only a cold glimmer of candle-light, and nobody
conversing, unless we count old Bridget O'Beirne, who had slipped in to
repeat a few prayers, and say to herself with a sort of grudging
wistfulness that everybody else was getting away. Then she came back to
her world again, and mended the crumbling red-hot bank with sods out of
her apron, and shovelled up the snow-balls shaken off their visitors'
clogged brogues, that they might not melt into mud patches on the floor.
To Dan and Nicholas, looking on from opposite corners, it seemed a long
while before anything to the purpose was said. Everybody had to comment
upon the snow, and Paddy Ryan's remark was that "if it kep' on at it
that-a-way, they'd be hard enough set to get through the dhrifts be the
day of the buryin'." This caused Mrs. Carbery to remember how she "had
been at a one up in the County Cavan, where the gate into the
buryin'-ground was all blocked up, so that the whole of them had to lep
over what would be be rights a ten-fut wall. And if they did, the half
of them plumped up to their necks in a soft place on the other side, and
came as near losin' their lives as could be thought. Bedad now, they
were comical to behould, goodness forgive her for sayin' so, all bawlin'
and flounderin' about like a flock of sheep stuck in a bog, on'y it was
a white bog and black sheep, as she minded Tom Ennis, that was a quare
codger, sayin' at the time." And this again started old O'Beirne upon
reminiscences of remarkable buryings which had come under his own
observation.
"Comical it may have been," he said, "but I'll bet you me best brogues
ne'er a one of yous ever witnessed a quarer buryin' than a one I seen
down in the south some ould ages ago, when I was a slip of a lad. But
I'll maybe ha' tould you the story, ma'am--about the flood in the
Tullaroe River?"
"Was that the time it riz up suddint and dhrownded the crathur that was
diggin' the grave?" said Mrs. Carbery.
"Sure not at all: that happint up at Lough Gortragh, and this I'm
talkin' about was in the Tullaroe River, a dale souther of the Lough.
Outrageous it does be in the wet saisons. So one harvest day, when it
was flowin' over all before it, there was a walkin' funeral about
crossin' at the ford. The way of it was, they were after hangin' a lad
up at the jail. In those days it's very ready they were wid the hangin',
and in a hurry over it too sometimes. Howane'er the frinds of this lad
had got lave to be buryin' him dacint after he would be hanged; and me
poor father, and meself, and plinty of other people were follyin'. Till
they come to the ford, and when they seen the manner the wather was
runnin' wild, the bearers had a notion to be turnin' back; but they made
up their minds, and on they wint. And as sure as they did, one of the
lads must needs slip his fut, and they right in the middle of the river,
and down wid the whole lot of thim, like a stook of oats in a gale of
win'; 'twas twinty wonders e'er a man of thim ever got his feet under
him agin. Faix, now the yell every sowl let you might ha' heard
anywheres at all; for some of thim was thinkin' the misfort'nit body was
apt to be swep' away and mortally dhrowned to the back of bein' hung;
and some of thim wasn't thinkin' any such a thing. But as for the
coffin, I'll give you me word if it didn't take and set off wid itself
floatin' away bobbin' along atop of the wather as light now, as if it
was a lafe dhropped down from the boughs archin' over our heads--and
wasn't that cur'ous enough? And as quare as anythin' it was to behould
the people all peltin' along be the two wet banks of the river as hard
as they could dhrive, and thrippin' theirselves up over the roots of the
trees, and slitherin' into the pools, wid the coffin just skimmin' and
swimmin' away down the sthrame ahead of them, as aisy and plisant as if
it was a bit of a pookawn. You might ha' sworn there was ne'er a nothin'
in it, to look at it. And he they were after hangin' a fine big man,
'ud weigh every ounce of fourteen stone. I tould you it was a quare
thing. So where it would be sailin' to nobody could say; very belike out
into the bay below. But sure when it come where the river runs past th'
ould church, the strong current that was racin' under it just gave a
sort of lap round wid it, and washed it clane up on the flat stones at
the gate goin' into the buryin'-ground, and left it lyin' there, same as
if the lads had set it down off their shoulders. Bedad now it was a very
lucky thing it so happint there was none of the pólis or red coats
about, be raison of their gettin' notice the buryin' was somewhere
else--oncommon lucky."
"It's as quare as the rest of it," said Peter Dooley, who had heard the
story before, "that nobody among them had had the wit to put a few
brickbats in it, or some good big lumps of heavy stones. Stones is
plinty, and chape enough."
"They're things you haven't the sellin' of then, I'll go bail," said old
Felix. He spoke in resentment of the interruption, but Mr. Dooley took
the speech as a flattering tribute to his business capacity, and
acknowledged it with a good-humoured smirk.
So Bridget might have spared herself the uneasiness which made her say
hurriedly to her brother: "If you was lookin' for Mr. Polymathers's bit
of writin', Felix, I left it lyin' convanient to you under the plate
there on the table."
"Oh, ay, bedad, that's what's been botherin' me," said the old man,
reachin' for it, "I dunno rightly what to say to it. But sure any of
yous that like can be readin' it, and see what he sez for yourselves."
Reading was not a question simply of liking with all members of the
company; but everybody could hold the paper and look wise, and if he
were none the more so afterwards, that may have been only because he
knew the contents of it beforehand. When it was Peter Dooley's turn he
examined the signature closely, and said, "But what name's this he's put
to it? 'John Campion' I see, but divil a sign of any Polymathers."
"Ah, that was another thing was botherin' me, too," said old O'Beirne,
rather dejectedly, "a little while ago, when Dr. Hamilton was comin' to
see him. For th' ould gintleman tould him Campion was his name; and it
appairs Polymathers is some discripshin of thrade, and not rightly
called to anybody at all. So I was thinkin' he was maybe annoyed wid
our callin' him out of his name all the while; but he said all that
ailed it was it was a dale too good for him; and better plased he seemed
we would keep on wid it. Oh ay, 'John Campion's' right enough."
"I niver heard of any such a thrade as polymatherin'," said his
son-in-law; "would it be anythin' in the pedlarin' line?"
"Is it pedlarin'?" said old O'Beirne, "and he that took up wid larnin'
and litherature he couldn't ha' tould you the price of a pinny loaf.
Faix, man, if I was Maggie I'd just put a good dab of strong glue in
your place behind the counter down-below, and stick you standing steady
in it, for buyin' and sellin's all the notion you have in your head here
or there. Pedlarin', sez he."
"Well, at all events," said Peter Dooley, unperturbed, "he's got
together a dacint little fortin one way or the other. Maybe he didn't
come by it any worser; but sure that's no great odds now. And plain
enough he sez the young chap there's to have it--that's all the one
thing wid yourself. But, anyhow, I dunno who could aisy conthrive to be
takin' it off you, and he lavin' no one belongin' to him. You have it
safe enough. Grab all you can, and keep a hould of it when you've got
it, sez I. But you're safe enough, no fear."
Nicholas, watching his grandfather's face from his corner, would have
given ten years of his life to throttle his uncle's reassuring speech
midway.
"There's no mistake, I should say, about what he was intendin'," said
Terence Kilfoyle, in whose hands the paper was by this time; "and who'd
be apt to know better than himself what he had in his mind so long as he
was right in his head."
"And if he wasn't, it's little likely he'd be to ha' got that written.
Hard enough work it is, accordin' to what I can see, even when a body
has all his wits to the fore," said old Paddy Ryan, whose acquaintances
did as a rule get more out of breath over a letter than over a wrestling
match or the recapture of an active pig.
"Mad people do be surprisin' cute some whiles, mind you," said Mrs.
Carbery. "There was a deminted body used to be up at our place--Daft
Jimmy they called him--and if you axed him the time of day he'd tell you
to the minyit, exacter than any clock that ever sthruck, and he belike
not widin a mile of e'er a one."
"It seems a sight of money to be layin' out on larnin'," pursued old
Paddy; "I dunno where you'd be gettin' the vally of it that-a-way,
onless he was larnin' everythin' twyste over, same as you put two coats
of whitewash on a wall if you're after mixin' a drop more than you want.
You might do it then."
His friends' arguments and illustrations had apparently a depressing
effect upon old Felix, and he said with impatience, "Weary on it,
man-alive! Sure there's no doubt about what he was manin', at all at
all. The question is, have we any call to be takin' him at his word, and
spendin' it away from aught 'ud do him a benefit--the buryin' and Masses
and such?"
"That might be a diff'rint thing," said Mrs. Carbery.
"I'd scarce think it," said Terence Kilfoyle, "considherin' he'll say no
more to make it so. The job's out of his hand, and 'ill stay the way he
left it."
"He might ha' changed his mind afore now, for anythin' we can tell,"
said Mrs. Carbery.
"'Deed, then, he might so, the poor man, Heaven be his bed," said Mrs.
Dooley.
"You could ax the priest about it," Tim O'Meara said diffidently, out of
the melancholy muteness which it was his habit to maintain.
"That's as much as to say it should go for Masses," said old Felix,
clutching at any shred of definite opinion, "for it's on'y in the nathur
of things his Riverence 'ud be recommindin' thim."
But Tim shrank away from the shadow of responsibility, protesting, "Och,
not at all, not at all. I wasn't as much as sayin' anythin'."
The old man tossed up his chin disgustedly, and meditated gloomily
during a brief pause.
"There's no denyin'," he said then, "that poor Mr. Polymathers had a
won'erful great opinion of himself over there." He nodded towards
Nicholas's corner, and used this periphrasis with a sense that he had
taken a precaution against perilously arousing the boy's vanity. "Times
and agin last summer he was sayin' to me the lad 'ud do credit to us yet
if he had his chances. A pity it 'ud be, he said, if he didn't iver git
to school, or maybe College itself. And gave him his books and all. But
sure, I dunno would that make it look any the better for us if we was to
be grabbin' his bit of money, and we the on'y people he had to see he
got fairity after he was gone. Ne'er a word have I agin schoolin' and
College if there would be no doubtin' over the matter; but there's some
things you can't stand too clear of, like the heels of a kickin' horse.
It might have a quare, bad apparance, rael mane; and long sorry I'd be
for that. What 'ud you say, now?"
He looked slowly round the flickering room, but met with no response
from old or young; all silent, from his mother, asleep in her
elbow-chair by the hearth, to his grandson Nicholas, very wide awake, in
a nook beyond her. Then his eyes travelled across to the opposite
corner, and as they lit there upon his other grandson, he specialised
his question into, "What 'ud _you_ say, Dan?"
Dan, thus abruptly called upon, was intensely conscious that two eyes
shining out of the shadow over against him had fixed him with an
unwavering gaze. And it is hard to say how he would have answered their
urging if at the same moment Mr. Dooley at his elbow had not been loudly
whispering to Mrs. Dooley--
"Colleges? Sure that's just talk he has be way of an excuse for keepin'
it. A great notion he has of spendin' it on Colleges. He knows better,
bedad."
Mr. Dooley, who was rather like several sorts of rodent animals in the
face, wore a smile at his own penetration.
"I dunno but it might look ugly," Dan suddenly said.
He was staring straight before him, yet he knew somehow, as if by a
sixth sense, that the shining eyes opposite ceased their watch with an
angry flash; and he had scarcely spoken before he would have given
anything to call back his irrevocable speech.
His grandfather's puzzled will closed on the opinion with a vice-like
grip, as if at a touch given to a powerful spring. Indecision was with
him an unwonted mood, from which it was an irresistible relief to
escape, even at some cost. And nobody who knew him could suppose that
his mind, once made up, would alter.
"Begorrah, Dan, I believe it's true for you," he said. "'Twould be no
thing to go do, and divil a bit of me 'ill do it. Whatever's over from
the buryin' and bit of a grave-stone may go for Masses; sorra a penny of
it a one of the O'Beirnes 'ill touch."
So Nicholas lost his chances, which seems a pity when one considers how,
for the sake of bringing them to him, old Mr. Polymathers, dazed and
enfeebled and hope-bereft, came tramping on that long, long journey, day
after weary day, under the scowling wintry sky, and against the
ruffling blasts, back again across the breadth of Ireland. The road was
all strewn for him with the wreckage of his shattered dream, and the one
gleam of consolation that lighted him on the way had been the thought
that his savings might now give a help to the lad up at Lisconnel. This
had often been in his mind when he set off, shivering in the bleak
morning, and when he stopped to shift his over-heavy bundle, and when he
roused himself painfully from the bewildering lethargies that fell upon
him. But he had reckoned without the pride of the O'Beirnes.
It was a pity, too, that the affair should have led to an estrangement
between the two brothers, which set in as tacitly as a black frost, for
neither of them ever said a word to the other about Dan's intervention.
This silence left him in the thorny grip of misgivings as to the motives
with which Nicholas might be charging him. That he had done it on
purpose to spoil Nicholas's chances out of spite was one of these. And
although Dan knew very well that he had spoken from an altogether
different impulse, he was conscious of having had feelings which seemed
to give him a cruelly clear insight into the possible workings of
Nicholas's mind. "Consaitin' that it was because I was invyin' him,
that's what he's thinkin' agin me," he said to himself as the days went
by, and he perceived, or fancied, that Nicholas in his disconsolate
moping about had no other aim than to keep away from wherever Dan might
be.
But Dan's unhappiness took an acuter phase in a fortnight or so, when
Nicholas began to resume his mathematical studies. There lies just
opposite the O'Beirnes' front door a low turf bank, gently sloping, and
mostly clothed with short, fine grass, but liable to be cut into brown
squares, if sods are wanted for roofing a shed, or for spreading a green
layer of scraws under new thatch. This had been done on a rather large
scale in the past autumn, and the boys had been in the habit of
utilising the smooth, bare patches as tablets whereon to trace with
pointed sticks, or any handy implements borrowed from the forge, the
figures and diagrams occurring in Mr. Polymathers's scientific lectures.
Nicholas now, albeit he had buried both teacher and hope, began once
more to draw his circles and triangles and polygons on the soft mould,
as it grew damply and darkly through the wearing snow coverlid.
Sometimes in the excitement of demonstrating involved relations between
AB's and BC's he would for a while forget his disappointment almost as
completely as he did the wet-winged winds that had been flapping and
wheeling about the house ever since the thaw set in. His obliviousness
could not, however, ensure him against the effects of cold shower-baths,
and before long his geometrical drawing was done to the accompaniment of
a hollow-sounding cough, which made Dan remember a time some years ago
when Nicholas had been so seriously ill with pleurisy that voices had
said at their door, "Ah, the crathur, he'll scarce last the night. Dr.
Hamilton has no opinion of him at all. 'Deed, now, his poor
grandfather's to be pitied, losin' such a fine young lad." And he also
remembered having occasionally heard his great-aunt say that Nicholas
took after his poor mother, and would never comb a grey head. Now,
therefore, the figure of Nicholas sitting out on the bank in a vibrating
mist of rain, with his feet in a puddle, and his hair flickering in damp
strands about his thin face, became for Dan an ominous and saddening
spectacle.
But while he was ruefully contemplating it one day, a happy idea struck
him. He would get Nicholas some clean white paper to draw his _dygrims_
on. "And then belike he'd be contint to sit in be the fire, instead of
to be catchin' his death scrawmin' out there in the mud under teems of
rain." Grand writing-paper was to be had at Isaac Tarpey's, down in
Ballybrosna, and Dan at this time happened to be in possession of a
whole shilling, which he dedicated more than willingly to the purchase.
Isaac Tarpey presided over the Ballybrosna Post-office, which was in
some respects a singularly complete establishment, as not only was the
raw material for a letter kept in stock there, but the letter itself
could, for a consideration, be written on the premises by the postmaster
in person. It is true that Isaac did not supply more than the barest
necessaries of scribes, the bread and water, so to speak, of stationery,
the very plainest pens and paper and ink. He kept his ink in a single
moderate-sized jar, out of which he measured penn'orths and ha'p'orths
into the various receptacles brought by customers who came to demand "a
sup" or "a drain." On these sales his profits were certainly enormous,
not less than cent. per cent., but then the consumption of that article
was extremely small in Ballybrosna. It took a long while to reach the
sediment at the bottom of the jar, and Isaac's letter-writing, done at
the rate of thruppence a-piece, probably was a more lucrative branch of
his business, though the correspondence of the Town was not large enough
to put his services in frequent requisition. Partly on this account, and
partly because he was by nature a strong conservative, Mr. Tarpey set
his face sternly against the spread of education. He was distressed by
the appearance of any symptoms of it among the neighbouring youth, even
when it took the form of an inquiry for his limp paper and skewer-like
pens. In fact, the diffusion of penmanship was what he most seriously
deprecated and discountenanced. "The Lord knows," his main argument ran,
"the foolery them spalpeens 'ill be gabbin' permiscuis would sicken you,
widout givin' them the chance to be sittin' down aisy and invintin' it."
His wife once suggested that "the crathurs might be more sinsible like,
when they were takin' time to considher themselves." But Isaac said,
"Pigs may fly."
At the time when Dan came for his paper the office was occupied by Norah
Fottrell, engaged in dictating a letter to her sweetheart, Stevie Flynn,
away in Manchester. The composition still looked discouragingly brief,
despite Isaac's big, flourishing hand, yet Norah's ideas had already
run so short that she was staring in quest of more up among the cobwebby
rafters over her head.
"You might say," she said, after a pause, "that I hope he's gettin' his
health where he is."
"I've said that twyste before," Isaac objected severely.
"Och, murdher, have you?" said Norah, reverting to the rafters with a
distracted gaze.
"Couldn't you tell him the price your father got for the last baste he
sould?" said Isaac.
"Bedad, I might so," said Norah; "'twas on'y thirty shillin', but it 'ud
take up a good bit of room. And look-a, Mr. Tarpey, couldn't we lave the
rest of the page clane? As like as not the bosthoon wouldn't be
botherin' his head spellin' out the half of it."
The adoption of this course expedited Norah's love-letter to a happy
close. But when Dan took her place at the counter Isaac assured him, not
without satisfaction, that "they were cliver and clane run out of all
their writin' paper, barrin' it might be a sort of butt-ind of loose
sheets left litterin' at the bottom of the drawer, and they that thick
wid dust you could be plantin' pitaties in them, forby gettin' mildewed
lyin' up in the damp so long."
It was not so much compunction at Dan's disappointed countenance as an
irresistible hankering after a good bargain that ultimately led the
postmaster to sweep this uninviting remnant together, and fix upon it
the price of sixpence. The charge was exorbitant, considering the small
quantity and damaged state of the goods, yet Dan carried off his little
packet quite contentedly, announcing that he would step over again for
another sixpenn'orth next week, when, as Isaac reluctantly admitted, a
fresh supply of stationery would have arrived.
As Dan left the office he passed an unknown gentleman, tall, with a
shrewd sallow face, dark, peaked beard, and alert grey eyes, who had
been leaning against the door while the bargain was struck. The stranger
was Mr. Alfred B. Willett, of New York, a wealthy engineer, who on his
way home from Europe had been visiting his friend Dr. Hamilton of
Ballybrosna. His curiosity now was roused by Dan's evident eagerness to
acquire materials for the drawing of diagrams, the pursuit striking him
as so strangely incongruous with the aspect of the brown-faced stalwart
ragged youth, that he stepped inside when the place was empty to make
inquiries on the subject. The post-master's information was to the
effect that "the O'Beirnes above at the forge had always had the name of
bein' very dacint respectable people up to then, and he'd never before
seen any of the young ones settin' themselves up to be askin' after such
things. He hoped it mightn't be a sign that the old man was goin'
foolish, and lettin' the lads get past his control. But sure enough we
must all of us put up wid growin' good for nothin' sometime, unless we
happint to ha' never been worth anythin' to begin wid. And he wished he
had a penny ped him for every one of that sort he'd met in the coorse of
his life."
This cynical disquisition was not very enlightening. However next week
when Dan slipped over again for his second sixpenn'orth, Mr. Willett it
chanced was there too, having called to report on the excessive
thickness and other undesirable peculiarities of some ink lately
supplied to him. It had been, in fact, composed of "the sidimint"
artfully diluted with a drop of vinegar; but Isaac Tarpey said it was
"thick wid the stren'th was in it," and set about uncorking his fresh
jar with an affronted air, when his customer persisted in pointing out
that its adhesive properties were less valuable in ink than in glue.
Meanwhile Mr. Willett fell into a conversation with Dan, which ended in
his engaging the lad to accompany him as guide on a shooting expedition
next day. The arrangement turned out satisfactorily, and was repeated
more than once, with the consequence that Dan and the stranger talked
about many things in the course of several long tramps, until one
evening the latter, sitting on a stone wall after a steep pull uphill,
made Dan an offer which caused the most familiar objects to seem unreal,
because a marvellous dream was coming true among them. For Mr. Willett
proposed to take Dan home with him, and have him taught whatever he most
wished to learn. "You're a smart lad, Dan," he said, "and I reckon
you'll make more of that in the States than in this country."
"Ah! the doctorin'," said Dan, turning as red as the young sorrel
leaves, and letting his darling wish slip out in his surprise as
involuntarily as he would have blinked at a flash of lightning. But next
moment he remembered Nicholas, and fell silent; Nicholas, who had not
looked him in the face since that snowy evening weeks ago. The dream
seemed to stop coming true.
"There's no need to make up your mind in a hurry," said Mr. Willett,
"you can be thinking it over between this and Monday."
Dan did think it over deeply that night and the next day and the day
after. He thought how fine, if rather fearful, it would be to go on such
a journey; and what a splendid thing to learn the doctoring business,
and some day come home again able to cure everybody of anything that
ailed them. "For out in the States, like enough, they had all manner of
contrivances the people over here had never taught Dr. Hamilton," whose
skill was occasionally baffled. He imagined the neighbours' surprise
when he came driving up on his car; if possible he would be driving a
little blue-roan mare like Farmer Finucane's Rosemary, with whom he had
made friends in the course of many shoeings. He thought he would be
sorry to miss seeing them all for so long; and yet it would certainly be
very pleasant, in a way, to get to a place where things were a bit
different sometimes, not like here where when you were getting up in the
morning you knew what was bound to be happening all day just as well as
you did when you were going to bed that night. And next he thought that
such days would be coming to Nicholas, while he himself was away seeing
and learning "all manner of everything;" and that if he had held his
tongue that time, maybe Nicholas would have got his chance with Mr.
Polymathers's money, instead of its all being spent away on nothing. And
he thought that it wasn't his fault, for what else could he say when he
was asked all of a minute, except the first thing that came into his
head? And he wondered how it would be if anything happened to his
grandfather. Nicholas wasn't over-strong, and too young altogether
besides. And then he thought again that Mr. Willett was cleverer than
anybody he had ever seen, and more good-natured; it was a pleasure to go
about with him; and people were great fools to give up their chances.
Maybe Nicholas might get another some day. And maybe Mr. Polymathers had
been mistaken in thinking that he was the one best worth teaching.
All these things Dan thought, and the result of his cogitations was that
on the Monday he stole a sheaf of Nicholas's most complicated
cobweb-like diagrams from their hiding-place in the wall, and brought
them with him when he went by appointment to meet his patron off beyond
Knockfinny. And when Mr. Willett said to him: "Well, Dan, what about the
States and the doctoring?" he replied inconsequently by holding out the
sheets of paper with the explanation: "It's me brother, Nicholas, sir,
does be doin' them mostly out of his own head."
Mr. Willett looked at them for some minutes with interested
ejaculations. "Upon my word," he then said, "if these were done out of
his own head, he must have about as much mathematics located in it by
nature as a spider."
"Aren't they good for anythin' at all then, sir?" said Dan, not knowing
exactly what he hoped and feared.
"Good? They're astonishing," said Mr. Willett. He asked some questions
about Nicholas's age, schooling, and so forth; after which he said: "You
must take me to see this brother of yours, Dan. I expect he'll have got
to come right along with us."
But Dan stared round and round the spacious brown-purple floor they were
standing on, and after a far-off flight of wild fowl, and up at the sky,
where the clouds travel without let or hindrance, before he answered
hesitatingly: "The two of us couldn't ever both go, sir. How could we
be lavin' the forge and all on me ould grandfather? And Nicholas never
makes any great hand of the work."
"Ah! is that the way the land lies?" said Mr. Willett, as if half
impatient, and half amused, but not best pleased. He looked hard at Dan,
and thought he saw how matters stood, "You've no mind to leave the old
grandfather and the rest of the concern, but you think it would be more
in the other lad's line."
As a matter of fact Dan was at that particular moment feeling strongly
how easily he could have reconciled himself to the separation, and how
entirely it would be the making of him to do so. But he did not gainsay
Mr. Willett's statement. To himself he said, "He's a right to have his
chances; and the one of us is bound to stop in it"--a mode of expressing
his sentiments which showed that he had much need of culture; and aloud:
"Nicholas always had a powerful wish to be gettin' some larnin'; and I'm
a fool to him at the geomethry anyway."
The upshot of it all was that when some six weeks later Mr. Alfred B.
Willett sailed for New York, Nicholas O'Beirne accompanied him, and Dan
O'Beirne remained at Lisconnel. It was on a gleamful April day that they
set out, with soft gusts roaming all around, as if they had come from
very far off, and were eagerly exploring the strange places, and many
light clouds flitting by swiftly above, as if they had a long journey
before them, and were in a joyous flurry over it. Dan spent the
slow-paced hours in the forge, where he hammered loud and long, and
seldom looked across the threshold. The pleasantest thought in his mind
was the remembrance of a short conversation which he had had with
Nicholas while they were tying up Mr. Polymathers's old books at the
kitchen-door just as the grey chink in the east filled with rose-light,
and the earliest breeze came over the bog waving the withered grasses.
Dan had said to Nicholas: "Sure I wouldn't be grudgin' you e'er a bit of
good luck, lad." And Nicholas had replied: "And never did."
After Nicholas's departure many days bad and good rose on Lisconnel, but
few of them brought any tidings of the absent. Letters passed now and
then, laggard and uninstructive as such letters must be, and they grew
rarer and briefer as time went on. Perhaps a dozen years had gone by,
when Dan one day received simultaneously an American newspaper and a
parcel. The newspaper was marked with large blue chalk crosses at a
paragraph which related how the degree of D.Sc. had been conferred.
_Honoris Causâ_ upon Mr. Nicholas O'Beirne by the University of
Sarabraxville. And in the parcel, more astonishing still, was a
brown-covered book, lettered on the back: _A Treatise on Conic Sections,
by Nicholas O'Beirne_. By this time Dan had been left alone at the
forge; but he was courting Mary Ryan, Mick Ryan's daughter, so he
naturally conveyed to her this remarkable news. It produced a profound
impression. Old Paddy her grandfather was with difficulty brought to
realise the fact that "they were after makin' a doctor of young Nicholas
O'Beirne, him that went out to the States the year before the Famine."
And when he had got the idea into his head, it seemed to act like a
swivel-joint, and set him nodding to the tune of: "Well tub-be sure;
glory be to God; young Nicholas O'Beirne."
"I wish to goodness he'd come over and cure Mick, poor man," said Mick's
wife. "For he hasn't been worth pickin' up off the road ever since he
was bad with the fever last year, and he might as well be dhrinkin' so
much ditch-wather as the ould stuff Dr. Carson's givin' him."
"Ah but it's not the medical doctorin' Nicholas has gone to," said Dan,
the shadow of a shadow crossing his face, "there'd be diff'rint letters
for that." And he proceeded to read out the report of the degree
conferred _honoris causâ_ upon the distinguished young Irishman, Mr.
Nicholas O'Beirne, whose recent contributions to the study of the higher
mathematics had roused so much interest in scientific circles.
"Ay, true for you, Dan," said Mary; "you don't hear them callin' Dr.
Carson an Honory-causy."
Dan's shred of Latin had grown rustier than the oldest iron in his
stock, but was not yet utterly worn away. "The manin' of that," he
explained, "would be, _be raison of honour_, and I should suppose,
they've gave it to him for the sake of what all he's after doin'."
"Bedad then, Dan," said Mrs. Mick, "some one had a right to be givin'
you an Honory-causy yourself, considherin' the cure you're after makin'
on Mr. Finucane's ould mare, and everybody of the opinion she'd never
stand on four feet again to the ages' ind."
"Och blathers, ma'am," Dan said, modestly, "sure anybody wid the sight
of their eyes might aisy enough ha' seen what ailed the crathur. That
was no great comether. And look at what Nicholas is after doin'; he's
wrote a book, no less."
The "Treatise on Conic Sections" created an even stronger sensation than
the news of the honorary degree, especially among those who had letters
enough to spell out the familiar name on the title-page. Dan's Mary was
not one of these scholars, but she found another page to admire, saying
that the circles "drew in and out of aich other like a lot of
soap-bubbles, had an oncommon tasty look, and so had all them weeny
corners, wid the long bames between, the moral of a chain-harrow, you
couldn't mistake it. Sure it's proud of it anybody might be."
Probably Nicholas was very proud of this first heir of his invention,
diagrams, and all. Whether it ever had any successors seems doubtful;
certainly none of them arrived at his old home. But his Treatise is
still safely stowed away there in a corner of the dresser. Most likely
it is the only copy of "O'Beirne on Conic Sections" existing in Ireland;
and who would expect to find it lodged in a smoke-stained cabin on the
wild bogland between Duffclane and Lisconnel?