BOYS' WAGES
One leaden-roofed morning in the winter after his brother Nicholas had
gone to the States, young Dan O'Beirne was in rather low spirits, and
rather out of humour. It was not unnatural that such a mood should
occasionally overtake him, since he had reached apparently a straight
and monotonous tract of road, which would have looked interminable to
the eyes of seventeen had not his household companions been now all
declining folk, whose presence brought under his constant observation
the last stages of "a long journey in December gone." Half a century or
so of smithy work, even with some unlicensed doctoring and illicit
distilling thrown in, was not by any means the future that he would have
liked his oracle to predict for him. And though he forecast it
accurately enough without the intervention of any soothsaying, this no
more helped him to avoid it than if he had been an old-world tragical
hero, whose friends were seeking by vain devices to circumvent the
promulgated decrees of his destiny. Dan, indeed, took no steps of that
sort. For him, as for most of us, the skirts of circumstance were as the
meshes of the net in which Fate holds us, and his evil star was an
object of which it seemed very hard to get a good grip. I have always
wondered myself how people set about it. At any rate, Dan continued to
walk under his; that is to say, if it were really bad luck that kept him
at the forge. Upon this point there might be differences of opinion.
Terence Kilfoyle, for instance, who dropped in to escape from a
snow-shower in the course of that morning, would not, evidently, have
taken such a view. For when Dan said something grumblingly about
Lisconnel being "a slack sort of a place, where one didn't get much
chance of doin' anythin' at all;" he replied, "Bedad now, if I'd the
fine business you and your grandfather have to be puttin' me hand to, I
wouldn't call the Queen me aunt."
In those times the district around our bogland was more thickly
inhabited than it is at present, and the blacksmith's jobs were
proportionately plentier. Nowadays the forge is liable to long spells
of silence, but Dan, who as young Dan has been superseded, philosophises
over them, and talks no more about chances. On this occasion his remarks
were overheard by his grandfather, perhaps because the old man had begun
to have thoughts of chances which made him sensitive to signs of
discontent in his assistant. And by and by when Terence had gone, he
said, "Terence said a very sinsible word; a lad might aisy get a worse
start in life, ay indeed he might so, if it was twyste as slack. But
anyhow there's them here that 'ud be hard set to make a shift for
themselves if the two of us was out of it; and I'm apt to be quittin'
before Biddy at all events." To which Dan replied, "Why what talk was
there of quittin'?" and the subject ceased out of the conversation.
During the subsequent silence Dan thought, among other things, that it
was "aisy for his grandfather to be talkin';" but in this he made a
mistake. For old O'Beirne remembered vividly that he had once had his
own restless ambitions, and his chances, too, of realising them, in
times when he did more stirring things than merely forge pike-heads.
Therefore he guessed what lent an unnecessary vehemence to his
grandson's hammering, and if he could have thought of any consolatory
remark, he would have made it. But it only occurred to him to say that
the days would soon be len'thenin' now, anyway; and even to himself this
seemed cold comfort. Dan replied, "Och, they're plinty long enough," and
sent a thick swarm of fiery bees flitting up the dark-throated chimney.
That evening when Dan closed the broad-leaved forge doors, he shut
himself out into a world as black and white as moonlight on turf and
snow could make it. Though the morning's flutter of snow had left but a
meagre sprinkling on that great bogland, the moonbeams touching every
scattered flake, seemed to gather it all up widely in one stark spectral
gleam. Far away towards the horizon this dulled off into a shadowy zone
of mist, where the wind was muttering and moaning to itself, dimly heard
across the hushed floor of the night. Beyond that Dan was aware
wistfully of regions unknown, with all their possibilities fascinating
and mysterious. But he had small scope for speculation about what he
should find when he opened the house door fast by; and in fact he
discovered everything and everybody just as he could have foretold. The
fire-lit room was filled with the busy weaving of the web that ruddy
gleams and russet shadows never got finished, swiftly as they glanced,
and overhead the black spaces between the rafters gloomed down like
inlets of a starless sky. There sat his great-grandmother smoking her
dudeen in her nook by the hearth, and her big cloak--a very little of
wizened old woman to a great many heavy, dark-blue folds. There, too,
knitted her grey-haired daughter Bridget, who said, as she did every
evening, "Well, Dan, so you're come in," and would have not much more to
say for herself that night except the Rosary. And his grandfather, who
had come in just before him, was lighting his pipe in the opposite
chimney-corner. A year ago his brother Nicholas would have thrust a
head, all eyes and rumpled hair, into a patch of bright flickerings, to
pore over the tattered arithmetic-book; but by this time his absence had
become a matter of course. The only at all unusual feature was Joe
Denny, the blind fiddler, who had called in on his way home and had a
drop of poteen and a farrel of wholemeal cake. Yet Joe was indeed a
tolerably common incident, and his jokes altered not. He had begun his
parting one, which was to the effect that sorra a man in the counthry of
Connaught could see clearer than himself if the night was dark enough,
when Dan's arrival interrupted him, and made him declare, taking out his
fiddle, that 'twould be a poor case if the lad didn't get e'er a tune at
all. Dan was not much in the humour for tunes, but he said, "Ay, Joe,
give us a one, man-alive," and Joe struck up with twangle and squeak.
He was playing--
"Over the hills and far away,
Over the hills and beyond the say,
Over the hills and a great way off,
And the wind it blew--"
when a thudding knock on the door seemed to beat down the shriller
sounds and stop the sliding bow. Dan went to see who it was, and found
standing on the threshold a tall, lean old man in a long, ragged coat,
with a thick, knotted blackthorn in his hand. A few hard-frozen granules
pattered in at the opened door, which admitted a glimpse of the moon,
tarnished by a thin drift of scudding cloud.
"God save all here," said the old man, who was a stranger.
"Good-evenin' to you kindly, sir," responded old Felix from his fireside
corner; "and wudn't you be steppin' widin?"
"I'm on'y axin' me way to the place below there--Ballybrosna beyond
Duffclane," said the old man; "it's the road I must be steppin', for I'm
more than a thrifle late."
But he came slowly forward into the room as if lured by the fire, at
which he looked hungrily. He stooped and limped very much, and when he
took off his black caubeen, the sharp gleam of his white hair seemed to
comment coldly on those infirmities.
"I'm widin a mile or so of it, or maybe less, by now, I should suppose,"
he said.
"Faix, then, it's the long mile," said the fiddler. "Put half a dozen to
it, and you'll be nearer; and bedad it's aisier work doin' that in your
head than on your feet. Be the same token I must be leggin' it, or
they'll consait I'm lost at our place." And he stepped out darkly into
the veiled moonlight.
"Wirrasthrew and weary on it," the old man said to himself; and then to
the others, "Is it that far as he says?"
"Ay is it, every inch," said old O'Beirne. "And too long a thramp for
you altogether, sir, if I might make so free."
"For the matther of that," said the ragged old man, proudly, "I've
walked the double of it, and more, times and agin, widout so much as
considherin'. But your road's a bit heavy to-night, wid the snow--and
could."
"That's the worst of the roads," said the little old woman, peering
suddenly out of her corner; "the longer you walk them, the longer
they'll grow on you, till you begin to think there's no ind to them. And
after that, the best conthrivance is to keep off of them clivir and
clane, the way I do. Then they're no len'th at all."
"Ah, ma'am, but 'twouldn't be very handy if the young folk took to
thryin' that plan," the old man said. "_We_'re bound to keep steppin'
out."
A short silence followed this remark, because the hearers felt uncertain
whether he meant the pronoun for a jest. To evade the difficulty, old
O'Beirne bade Dan fetch a mug for a drop of poteen, and meanwhile said
to the stranger:
"Sit you down, sir, and take a taste of the fire. Where might you be
thravellin' from this day?"
"I was livin' over at Innislone," said the old man, sitting down on a
creepy stool.
"Musha, then, you didn't ever come that far all on ind--sure it's miles
untould."
"'Twas the day afore yisterday I quit. Last night I slep' at Sallinbeg,
and this mornin' I met a man who loaned me a grand lift in his cart."
"I used to know a man lived at Innislone," said old O'Beirne, "be the
name of Brian English. He come by here of an odd while after the stuff."
"Ay, bedad, and a very dacint ould crathur he was. Meself's one of the
Dermodys--young Christie they call me--but ould Christie that was me
poor father's dead this while back. Thank you kindly, lad," the old man
said to Dan, who now handed him a little delft mug half full of whisky.
"Why, you're nigh as long a fellow as meself. Are you good at the
wrestlin'?"
"Och, I'm no great things whatever," Dan replied with becoming modesty.
"There's not many heavy weights in the parish 'ud care to stand up to
me," said this young Christie, holding the mug in a gaunt tremulous
hand. "Faix, it's noways forrard they've been about it since the time I
come near breakin' Rick Tighe's neck. I've noticed that. Begorrah, now,
ivery sowl thought I had him massacred," he said, with a transient gleam
of genuine complacency. "You might have heard tell of it, belike?"
"It 'ud ha' happint before my recollections, sir, maybe," said Dan,
looking at him perplexedly, "if 'twas apt to ha' been a longish while
ago."
"'Twasn't long to say," said the old man. He drank the spirits
lingeringly, in slow sips, and seemed to sit up straighter as he did so.
Then he set down the empty mug on the table, and said, "_Boys' wages_."
But he had scarcely uttered the words when he perceived that he had
thought aloud irrelevantly, and made haste to cover the slip. "I'd
better be gettin' on wid meself," he said, rising, "Thank you, kindly.
That's an iligant fire you have." He looked at it regretfully, but
turned resolutely towards the door, still open, and framing the broad
dim whiteness out away to the bounding curtain of gloom. "It's a grand
thing," he said defiantly, "to have all the world before you."
The sentiment was not accepted without qualification.
"That depinds," said old O'Beirne. "Somewhiles I question wud you find
anythin' in it better than a warm corner and a pipe of 'baccy, if you
thramped the whole of it. And you might happen on a dale worse. What do
you say, mother?"
She was knocking ashes out of her pipe-bowl against the wall, and nodded
in assent.
"It's no place for people that can keep shut of it," she said.
"If you've ne'er a chance of gettin' into it," said Dan, "I dunno what
great good it does you bein' there afore or behind."
"Or if you knew there was nothin' left in it you wanted to be goin'
after," said his great-aunt, half to herself.
"Well, whatever way you look at it," said the strange old man, "I've a
notion I've a right to be gettin' somethin' more out of it be now than
boys' wages. Ay, it's time I was. Boys' wages; the lyin' spalpeen."
"If you axed me, sir," said old O'Beirne, "I'd say 'twas time somebody
else would be gettin' the wages. Isn't there any childer to be earnin'
for you? Haven't you e'er a son, that you need be thrampin' the counthry
that fashion, let alone talkin' about all the world, wild like?"
"I've a son, troth have I, if that was all," said the old man, turning
away, angrily.
"Then it's that much better off than me you are. The only one I had, he
took and died on me, himself, and his poor wife a couple of days after
him--God be good to them--when the lad there wasn't scarce the height of
that stool, and a less size on his brother, that's away now in the
States gettin' all manner of a fine edication. Very dacint poor childer
they always was, too; but it was a bad job."
"He might ha' done worse agin you than that," said Christie Dermody, "be
the powers he might." He had retreated as far as the door, but now he
faced round, and stood on the edge of the thin snow, leaning his right
shoulder against the post, and looking in at the other old man by the
fire. "He might ha' fooled you for years and years, and made a
laughin'-stock of you wid everybody about the place--and me wid ne'er a
thought of any such a thing--he might so, and bad luck to him....
'Foostherin' about and consaitin' to be doin' a fair day's work, when
he's the creep of a snail on him, and the stren'th of a rat.' That's
what I heard Tim Reilly sayin' and I goin' home on the Saturday night.
But if I come creepin' after him, the young baste, he'd maybe ha' ráison
to remimber it.... And himself and the wife lettin' on there was nothin'
like me; and he callin' me to come into his room--I heard him plain
enough all the while, no fear, but I wudn't be lettin' on. There's
ne'er a hap'orth ailin' him. Troth he may call till he's choked afore
iver I'll come next or nigh him. And sendin' the little girl slutherin'
to say her daddy wanted me. I tould her want might be his master. Sure
they're all the one pack, and the widest width there is in this world
I'll be keepin' between them and me. Shut of them I'll be for good and
all--and I'll make me fortin' yet, and no thanks to him. What talk have
they of ould men? Boys' wages. Good-night to you all."
To those in the room it seemed as if he dropped away back into the wan
dusk behind him, and next moment they saw him in motion a few paces
distant, limping fast, and gesticulating as though he were still
carrying on his monologue.
"That old crathur's asthray in his mind, I misdoubt," said old O'Beirne,
"and I wouldn't won'er if he was after gettin' bad thratement among his
own people."
"Goodness pity him," said his sister Bridget. "It's a cruel perishin'
night, and snowin' thicker. Where'll he get to at all? And carryin'
nought but an old stick. We'd better ha' kep' him."
"Sure we couldn't ha' stopped him anyhow," said the blacksmith, "no
more than one of them flustherin' blasts goin' by. When a body's took up
wid onraisonable notions, you might as well be hammerin' could iron as
offerin' to persuade him diff'rint. But he'll maybe turn in at the
Gallahers'."
They watched him until the dark imprints of his receding steps in the
thin snow-sheet could no longer be distinguished, and then Dan closed
the door, shutting out the wide world and the fortune seeker. "Things is
quare and conthráry," he said to himself.
Some two hours afterwards they were all sitting round the fire still. It
was nearly nine o'clock, which is late in Lisconnel, but they found it
hard to detach themselves from the cordial grasp of the warm glow.
Bridget, however, had put by her needles, and begun to tell her beads,
when another knock broke in upon them.
"He's come back belike," said old O'Beirne; but when Dan opened the
door, the person who stood there, though likewise tall and gaunt and
ragged, had grizzled black hair, and was not more than middle-aged. His
face was hollow-cheeked and drawn, and his eyes glittered while he
shivered and panted. The night had grown wilder as the moon sank low,
and the snow went past the door like rapid wafts of ghostly smoke. This
newcomer stumbled into the room without ceremony, as if half blinded,
and said breathlessly--
"Did any of yous be chance see an ould man goin' this road to-day? An
ould ancient man, somethin' lame; be the name of Christie Dermody?"
"Ay, sure enough, himself was in it not so long ago," said old O'Beirne.
"If it hadn't been you, 'twas very apt to ha' been him come back."
In the man's face one trouble seemed to be relieved by another at the
tidings.
"Glory be to goodness, then, that I've heard tell of him at last," he
said. "But God help the crathur, what's to become of him streelin' about
this freezin' night? The snow's as dhry as mail-dust. Perished he'll be.
Och, he's the terrible man to go do such a thing on us. What way did he
quit? It's me ould father, sir, that's over eighty years of age."
"And is he after strayin' away on you?" said old O'Beirne.
"Follyin' him since yisterday mornin' I am," said the other, "when it's
in me bed I should be be rights, for I'm that distroyed wid the could
on me chest I've scare a bit of breath in me body. But sure what matter
if I can come be the crathur agin. Is it that a-way he went, did you
notice?"
"You're bound to wait till the flurry of the win's gone by," said old
O'Beirne, for his visitor pointed out into a shrieking whirl, shrilling
higher and fiercer. "Sorra a minyit you'll lose, for you couldn't stir a
step in that or see a stim. Sit you down a while. What was it set him
rovin'?"
"Did he say anythin' agin us? Anythin' of bein' thrated bad?"
"Well, I wouldn't say he seemed altogether satisfied in himself," said
old O'Beirne, remembering his suspicions. "Somethin' he said of bein'
made a fool of, and tould lies to----"
"And gettin' boys' wages," said Dan.
"Ay, ay, wirrasthrew, that was the very notion he had, goodness help us.
What will we do at all wid him? You see, sir, me father's a won'erful
proud-minded man; he is that. And a great big man, and as strong as ten
he was, ontil he got rael ould entirely. So it's cruel bad he thinks of
not bein' able for everythin' the way he used to be; and he won't let on
but he is, be no manner of manes he won't. 'Deed no, he sez he's as good
a man as ever he was in his life."
"Belike now he's of the opinion the sun doesn't dhrop down out of the
sky of an evenin'," said little old Mrs. O'Beirne, with sarcasm. "What
does the ould body expec'?"
"I dunno, ma'am, I dunno. Sure it's agin nathur and raison. There's
meself gettin' as grey as a badger, and noways that supple as I was. But
me father's a terrible cliver man. You'd niver get the better of an
argufyment wid him, for he wouldn't listen to a word you'd be sayin'. So
you see the way of it was, the two of us is workin' this great while on
Mr. Blake's lan', that's a dacint man enough; and it might be three year
ago, he sez to me one Saturday night--for be good luck 'twas me and not
me father he'd mostly be payin'--sez he to me, 'Look it here, Ned, it's
the last time I'll be givin' man's wages to your father, for bedad an
infant child 'ud do as much as he any day of the week. So I'll put him
on boys' wages,' he sez, 'that'ill be three shillin's, and every penny
as much as he's worth,' sez he. And sure I knew it was the truth he was
sayin', but 'twould break me father's heart.
"So nought better could I do on'y to make out 'twas he would be gettin'
the man's wages, and meself the boy's. Diff'rint raisons I conthrived,"
he said, with some natural pride in the details of his strategy, "but
mostly I let on 'twas because of me bein' such a fool about the horses
they couldn't trust me wid any except the ould ones. Anyway me father
was contint enough; faix, some whiles he seemed a bit set up like,
considherin' he had the pull over me, and he'd be sayin' what at all 'ud
we do without him, and I such an omadhawn. Niver a cross word we had
until last week I got laid up wid this mischancy could and the pain in
me chest, so sorra a fut could I go to me work; and I well knew the
whole thing 'ud come out, if he went when I didn't. Bedad I dhramed it
all the night asleep and awake, till I was fairly moidhered in me head."
"Tub-be sure," said old O'Beirne, "that's the worst of lettin' on. If
anythin' goes crooked, it's like the bottom bursted out of a sack of
mail; you're carryin' about nothin' at all before you know what's
happint you."
"Well, we done the best we could, me wife and me, to dispersuade him off
of goin' on Saturday. Bad wid the could too, we said he was; but och not
a fut of him but would go. So Barney McAuliffe was tellin' me wife, when
the men was payin' in the yard, me father he ups and says to Mr. Blake:
"'Beg pardon, sir, but you're after givin' me no more than me son's
money, and it's meself was workin' this week, not him.'
"And Mr. Blake sez, just goin' off in a hurry, 'What are you talkin'
about, man? Whethen now, you don't suppose I've been payin' you full
wages, that hasn't done a stroke of work worth namin' this half-dozen
year? That'ill have to contint you till Ned's back agin.'
"And Barney sez my father had ne'er a word out of him, but just went
home dazed like. And me wife sez when he come in, he sits down on the
form be the door, and niver opens his lips. So she knew right well what
ailed him, and she said iverythin' she could think of--how it's
disthroyed we'd be on'y for him now I was laid up, and the won'erful man
he was, and this way and that way. But niver a word he heeded, nor near
the fire he wouldn't come, and had her heart-scalded seein' him sittin'
there in the draught of the door. And I meself was tired callin' him to
come in and spake to me, and I lyin' in bed, but next or nigh me he
niver come, not even for little Maggie that he always thought a hape
of. And the next mornin' if he wasn't quit out of it early, afore
anybody knew, in the bitter black frost, and a quare threatinin' of
snow. So then as soon as I heard tell, I up wid me and come after him.
Troth, I left the wife frettin' wild, the crathur, thinkin' I'd get me
death; but what else could I do? And now I must be steppin' on again.
Och no, thank you, lad, if I took a dhrop of spirits, I'd be choked wid
coughin'. But you might just set me on the right road."
"I'll go along wid him," said Dan, aside to his grandfather, "and if I
can bring him, or the both of them, back here, I will. It's my belief
he's as bad as he can stick together."
So Dan and old Dermody's son went out into the night. A lull in the wind
had come, and the light of the moon, hung near the horizon's rim,
flickered out dimly ever and anon as the edge of the drifting mist
lapped up wave-like and touched her. It was piercingly cold. Ned Dermody
leaned heavily on Dan as they walked, only till he fetched back his
breath, he said, but it was slow in coming. They had not gone many
hundred yards, yet vast tracts of solitude seemed to have folded round
them, before Dan caught sight of something that somehow startled and
shocked him--a group of boulders by the road, with a shadow under one of
them strangely like a human form. A few paces further on he became aware
that it really was a man--the old man--sitting huddled up under the big
glimmering stone. Thus far had he carried his forlorn quest after
Fortune, and mutiny against Fate. His snaggy stick lay at a little
distance, a black line on the snow, and the sight of that made Dan's
heart stumble. But Ned Dermody shouted out hoarsely and loud: "Be the
Lord it's himself," and, as Dan afterwards used to tell, "took a flyin'
lep at him, as if he'd a mind to ha' lep over the world."
"Musha now, and is it there you would be sittin' to catch your death of
could?" he began, in a tone of gleeful reproach, shaking the old man by
the shoulder. "Goodness forgive me for sayin' so, but it's yourself's
the pernicious ould miscreant. Fine thrampin' over the counthry I've had
after you--forby givin' us the greatest fright altogether. Sure I give
you me word the whole of them at home was runnin' in and out of the
house on Sunday mornin' like so many scared rabbits about a bank. And
ne'er a man-jack of them, you persaive, had the wit to find out where
you was off to till meself riz out of me bed to go look. And now,
man-alive, git up wid yourself and come along, for it's mortal could
here, and there's tons' weight of snow this instiant minyit ready to
dhrop down on our heads. Come along. Sure it's niver disthressin'
yourself you'd be about ould Blake and his wages? Musha sure Norah and
meself was sayin' on'y on Saturday night that there wasn't many
stookawns like me had fathers to be bringin' them home shillin's every
week as regular as the clock, and givin' prisints to the childer, and
all manner. There's little Maggie frettin' woful to be missin' you out
of it. Don't be keepin' me standin' on me feet, there's a good man, for
it's quare and bad I've been, and the doctor was sayin' he couldn't tell
what ruination mightn't be on me if I didn't mind what I was at. And
here's the dacint lad waitin' to show us the road. We're just comin'
along this instant, boyo. Look-a-daddy, 'twas all a mistake, and we'll
settle it up next week, when we're both workin' agin. Very belike Mr.
Blake didn't rightly know what he was sayin'. Wake up and come along....
Daddy darlint, don't you hear what I'm tellin' you? It's raisin' your
wages they'll be after Lent, I wouldn't won'er, raisin' them a shillin'
belike--rael grand it'ill be--God Almighty!"
He stood up suddenly and looked towards Dan, but at neither him nor
anything else. The moon began to shine clearer in a chink between two
straight leaden bars, and the great white bog seemed to grow wider and
stiller under the strengthening light. The very wind had forsaken them,
and gone off keening into the far distance. It seemed to Dan that even a
flake fluttering down would have been some company, but not a single one
was in the air. He felt himself seized by a nameless panic, such as had
not come over him since he was a small child a dozen years ago.
"What's the matter at all?" he said futilely to Ned Dermody, knowing
well enough.
"Gone he is," said Ned, "the life was vexed out of him among us all.
He's gone. And it's follyin' him I'd liefer be, on'y for them crathurs
at home."
But in another moment he came staggering against Dan, and clutched his
arm, saying wildly: "Ah, lend me a hand--for pity's sake--a hand for a
minyit. Don't let go of me." And he leant such a heavy dead weight on
him that all Dan could do was to let it slip down and down as softly as
might be, until the snowy earth took it from him.
Ned had followed in spite of the crathurs at home.