MAD BELL
Not so very long before the sound of Con the Quare One's fiddle ceased
to enliven Lisconnel any more, Mad Bell's singing had begun to be heard
there occasionally, as it has been at intervals ever since she arrived
with her two housemates, Big Anne and the Dummy, and took up her abode
in the last of the cabins that you pass on the left hand, going towards
Sallinbeg. Perhaps Lisconnel should not reckon her among its residents,
so much of her time is spent on the tramp as an absentee. Still, she
sometimes has tarried with us for a long while, and she is understood to
have some property in the house-furniture, so it seems natural to
consider the place her home.
From the first it appeared obvious to all that the dementedness which
characterised the little wizened yellow-faced woman was of a much more
pronounced type than Con the Quare One's. Any attempt to spare people's
feelings by ignoring the fact would have been very futile, and it was
therefore lucky that the three new-comers, Mad Bell herself included,
were quite content to accept the situation. The neighbours were at first
inclined to commiserate Big Anne, who was pronounced to be "a dacint,
sinsible, poor woman," for the oddities of her household, the
incalculable flightiness of Mad Bell, and the impenetrable silence of
the Dummy. But to their condoling remarks she was wont to reply in
effect--"Ah sure, ma'am, that's the way I'm used to them, the crathurs.
Why, if Mad Bell said anythin' over-sinsible, or poor Winnie said
anythin' at all, it's wond'rin' I'd be what was goin' to happin us
next." And Big Anne evidently looked upon this as an uncomfortable frame
of mind. At first, too, they speculated much about the circumstances
which had brought the curious trio together beneath one thatch, and
found it especially hard to conjecture how the daft little vagrant had
come into possession of sundry tables and chairs. All its members,
however, being incommunicative persons, no satisfactory elucidation of
these points was arrived at in Lisconnel.
The coalescence of Big Anne's and the Dummy's fortunes is a simple
history enough. Anne Fannin, while yet a youngish woman, was left alone
in the world to do for herself in her little wayside cabin. Without a
dowry to recommend her rough-hewn features and large-boned ungainliness,
she never had any suitors, and she found it as much as she could
contrive to make out her single living by means of her "bit of poultry"
and her pig. Nevertheless, when her nearest neighbours--the
Golighers--died, leaving their daughter Winnie, "who had niver got her
speech, the crathur," to live on charity or the rates, what else was a
body to do except take her in? Anne would have put this question to you
with a sincere want of resource. So Winnie Goligher transferred to Anne
Fannin's house, herself and all her worldly goods, which consisted of
the clothes she had on, and a prayer-book, and a lame duck, and
thenceforward the two "got along the best way they could."
Mad Bell's history has more complications in it. They began one pleasant
April day when she was only a slip of a lass, who had taken a little
place at the Hunts' farm near her home, for the purpose of saving up a
few pounds against her marriage with Richard McBirney. She had been
given an unexpected holiday, and was running home across the fresh,
spring-green grass-fields, thinking to take her people by surprise, when
she came to a hedge-gap whence you look down into a steep-banked lane.
And at the foot of the bank Richard McBirney was sitting with his arm
round her sister Lizzie's waist.
To a dispassionate observer this transference of his attentions might
have seemed a matter of small moment. Most of their acquaintances, for
example, were just as well satisfied that he should court Eliza as
Isabella. But the sight turned all the current of her life awry. For it
set her off rushing away from it across the same sunny green fields, and
she never came home again. Nor ever again would she settle down quietly
anywhere. She had a strong, clear voice and a taste for music, and this
led her to take to singing ballads about the country at markets and
fairs. The harder she was thinking about fickle Richard McBirney, the
louder and shriller she sang. A very few years of such wandering
shrivelled up her plump "pig-beauty," so that in her little sallow,
weather-beaten face her own mother would scarcely have recognised pretty
Isabella Reid. Then, after a long spell of illness in a Union
infirmary, she began to grow noticeably odder and stranger in her looks
and ways; until at length the children shouted "Mad Bell" as she passed,
and that became her recognised style and title.
Such, briefly, had been her experience of life, when one September
evening she came by chance to Big Anne and the Dummy's door. She had got
a very bad cold, and felt hardly able to drag herself along between the
berried hedges, and was so hoarse that she could with difficulty ask for
the night's lodging, which they granted without demur. Their times had
been unusually bad of late. In fact, their room was looking several
sizes larger than they were accustomed to see it, because they had sold
any articles of furniture for which "e'er a price at all" could be
obtained. But to whatever accommodation this bareness permitted they
made Mad Bell kindly welcome, the crathur being sick and crazy, and she
stayed with them for three or four days. By that time, finding herself
recovered, she resumed her journey, setting off early in the morning
with the abruptness and absence of circumlocution which, as a rule,
distinguished her proceedings. A friendly nod and grimace she made serve
for announcement of departure and leavetaking all in one. As her
hostesses watched her out of sight down the road, Big Anne said--
"Well, now, I never seen that quare little body in this counthry before,
and we're very apt to not set eyes on her agin. God be good to us all,
but the likes of her is to be pitied. She's worse off than the two of
us. But bedad, Winnie, if thim hins there don't prisintly take to layin'
a thrifle, it's in a tight houle we'll be ourselves. I dunno what's
bewitchin' them. And the sorra an ould stick have we left in it that man
or mortal 'ud give us the price of a pullet's egg for--and small blame
to him, unless he was as deminted as herself that's quittin'."
Mad Bell's tramp that day was all along a sequence of lonesome winding
lanes, where few dwellings were dotted among the green and gold of the
fields. The bustle of the harvest, its reaping and binding, was over in
them, and they lay without stir or sound. In some of them the stooks
were still encamped, but some were smooth stubble, empty, except where a
flock of turkeys filled it with dark, bunchy shapes. She walked steadily
on the whole day without any adventure, but when the dew was beginning
to fall through the twilight she came to a short, shady reach of lane,
at the end of which stood, in a green nook, a small, prim white cottage
with two peaked windows and a door to match. That, at least, is how it
would under ordinary circumstances have presented itself to a passer-by.
Just then, however, nobody would have noticed anything about it except
the fact that out of the open door thick coils of woolly black smoke
were rolling and rolling, stabbed through every now and again by thrusts
of flame, which even in the lingering daylight gleamed strongly fierce
and red. The house was evidently on fire. As Mad Bell drew nearer, she
became aware of a wheaten-coloured terrier standing in front of it; and
when he saw her he began to bark vehemently. She was used to being
barked at, though not in this way, for howls were interspersed, and it
was clearly meant not for a menace but an appeal. No other live creature
was visible about the place, until she had come quite close to the
surging door, when a small gossoon jumped up out of the ditch on the
opposite side of the road and rushed across to her.
"What 'ill I do at all, then?" he said, whimperingly, catching hold of
her shawl. "If them childer's burnt up widin there, Mr. Wogan 'ill be
in a fine way. It's for killin' the whole of us he'll be. And it wasn't
me set it afire. Sorra the match was I meddlin' wid, I could swear it. I
wasn't out of it any time, gettin' a few ripe berries to pacify them
childer, agin they would be wakin' and roarin', and when I come back,
there it is all a smother of smoke. Divil a thing else was I doin' on'y
mindin' them childer, and not meddlin' wid the matches, and goin' after
a couple of blackberries. And Mr. Wogan himself's away to
Ballymacartrican wid his boxes in the ass-cart. And all of them goin' to
quit out of it to-morra, if it wasn't for them childer bein' burnt up
inside--or maybe it's smothered they are. It's as unhandy as anythin'.
It went afire of itself. And he'll be ragin'."
He bawled all this louder and louder in competition with the clamour of
the dog, who kept on jumping up at each alternately, and evidently
considered his remarks better entitled to a hearing. But Mad Bell merely
replied, "Whisht gabbin', and hould that," thrusting, as she spoke, her
little handkerchief bundle into his arms. And thereupon, making a sudden
dive, she vanished among the flame-sheathing smoke.
Scarcely had she disappeared when an empty donkey-cart came round the
turn of the lane, led by a rather dejected-looking middle-aged man,
whose countenance, nevertheless, had for some time back been gradually
clearing up at every wind of the way that brought him nearer to this
particular point of view. But as he caught sight of the black smoke
drifting and rolling, his aspect of reasonable melancholy changed to one
of a despair that could not have been wilder if the reek of hell-mouth
had blown into his face. He dropped the bridle, and hurled himself down
the road like the distracted body that he well might be. For a
twelvemonth ago he had lost his wife and both his elder children in one
week, and his pair of two-year-old twins were now all that stood between
himself and world-wide desolation. At the front door his frantic rush
was met and baffled by a choking puff, which sent him fleeing round in
hopes that entrance might be more possible through the back; and on the
way he came face to face with the wrathful visages of his son and
daughter, whom Mad Bell was carrying in the disregardful manner that
betides a cumbrous load snatched up in a mortal hurry. She had escaped
by the back door.
If the most radiant of guardian angels, in snowy plumes and golden
tresses, had restored his children to him with a befitting speech, poor
Matthew Wogan could not well have been more joyfully relieved from his
terror than he was when this odd little yellow-faced woman, with a red
handkerchief wisped round her head, and a singed grimness generally
pervading her, handed over to him Minnie and Tom, casually remarking,
"Bedad, it's the big heavy lumps they are." Minnie and Tom both were
crying and coughing loudly, because the smoke had got into their eyes
and throats, which they resented; and when their father returned with
them to the front of the house, this noise was swelled by the gleeful
yap-yapping of the terrier and the voices of a few other people who had
appeared upon the scene--a matronly looking woman and two or three
sun-burnt harvestmen. From Mrs. Massey's observations it could be
gathered that she had been minding the Wogan twins by deputy, and
further that she entertained the gloomiest views about the mental and
moral qualities of her son little Larry, who replied to her
animadversions with over-reaching protestations about matches and
theories of spontaneous combustion. While they wrangled in the
background, the young men inspected the conflagration, which proved to
be less extensive than it looked, though undoubtedly serious enough to
have soon put the sleeping children past waking, if rescue had not come.
A heap of blankets and other bedding, that smouldered and blazed near
the front door, was the source of the most stiffling smoke; and when it
had been subdued by many buckets of water, everybody began to drag what
bits of the furniture they could out of harm's way. There was not much,
because, as Wogan explained, he had sent "the marrow of it" to his
sister at Ballymacartrican; and the legs of the largest table were
charred so badly that it collapsed with a crash "the instiant minyit it
set its four feet on the ground," as Mrs. Massey said. However, there
were two smaller ones not much the worse, and three or four chairs, and
a couple of stools, and some pots and pans, and a small clothes-horse,
and a wagging clock, whose round white face glimmered through the dusk
like a fallen moon as it lay flat on the grass. All these things made a
little crowd on the plot of sward by the door.
"And what will you be doin' wid them now?" said Mrs. Massey. "There's
my place below you'd be welcome to stand them in as long as you plase.
'Deed would you, sir. The dear knows I'm not throubled wid too many
sticks of furnitur'. That's a very handy-sized washin'-tub Larry's after
carryin' out for you. I was noticin' to-day ours has a lake in it this
long while back that dhrips over everythin'. I must get himself to thry
mend it."
"That's a _lovely_ table," suddenly said Mad Bell, who had hitherto made
no remarks. "A rael grand one it is," she repeated, in a wistful sort of
way, smoothing the leaf fondly with her hand.
"And very welcome you'd be to have it in a prisint, ma'am, if you've
e'er a fancy for it; ay, or for the matter of that to the whole lot of
them altogether," said Matthew Wogan, who, with his arms full of the
smoky twins, felt a weight of gratitude which he would gladly have
expressed in deeds. "Little vally there is on them--it's a small thing
after what you're after doin' for us. I wouldn't like to be payin' away
me bit of money from the childer, or else--But if I auctioned them
things off the way I was intindin' it's on'y a thrifle of a few
shillin's they'd be bringin' me. Welcome you are to them, ma'am."
"Sure what use at all 'ud such a thing be to the likes of her?" put in
Mrs. Massey. "It's on'y annoyed you'd be, woman, wid tables and chairs.
And she thrampin' about, you may depind, wid ne'er a place to be
bringin' them to, if she had them twyste over, let alone any way of
movin' them. It's very convanient we are, just round the turn of the
road."
"She might take the little cart and the ould ass along," said Matthew
Wogan, looking at his equipage, which was straying towards them
intermittently as the beast grazed the green border of the lane.
"They're no use to me now. Then there'd be nothin' delayin' her that she
couldn't be cleanin' out of it wid them right away--You needn't throuble
yourself to be liftin' the little stool, Mrs. Massey. What wid fire and
water, that'll be no place to sleep in," he said, pointing to the still
smoking door. "The Mahonys 'ud take us in for to-night, and to-morra
early we're off to me sister's and next day to Queenstown. 'Twill be a
grand thing for the childer to be settled near their uncle Tom, that's
doin' right well in New Jersey, in case anythin' happint me. So I'd as
lief be shut of all that collection, supposin' they'd be any benefit to
this crathur."
"Saints bless us, but you're givin' away all before you, Mr. Wogan,"
said Mrs. Massey, with a discomfited laugh.
"Have you e'er a house you could be puttin' them in?" one of the
harvestmen asked of Mad Bell.
"Ay, bedad," she said. And with that she picked up a chair, and dumped
it down into the cart, which had come to a halt at the door.
This promptitude on her part seemed to settle the question. Without more
ado the rest of the salvage was loaded in, all except the handy-sized
washing-tub, which by means of an adroitly taken up position Mrs. Massey
contrived to have overlooked and left behind, when Mad Bell drove away
with her newly acquired property.
On through the gloaming she drove, till the white dust flakes gathered
up by the wheels grew damp and fragrant with dew, and till the moonlight
was glimmering among the golden sheaves silverly, and till live embers
were fanned out of the ashes low in the east. The small hours had a
frosty chill, and old Ned's short steps were leisurely, and his halts
for refreshment frequent; still Mad Bell continued to sit with serene
patience. She was retracing her route of the day before, but at so much
slower a rate of progress that the sun had been up for more than an hour
when she stopped in front of Big Anne and the Dummy's little house. They
were disturbed at their breakfast by the sound of the arrival, and when
they came to the door, saw their visitor in the act of depositing a
second chair upon the ground beside the cart.
"Whethen now and is it yourself back agin?" said Big Anne. "And what at
all have you got there?"
"Inside they're goin'," said Mad Bell, pointing to the cart-load with an
elated air. "It's a dale handier to have some chairs and tables."
This was a fact which Big Anne might well have admitted, considering
that she had just been squatting on her heels to eat her plate of
stirabout. However, she only continued her perplexed catechism: "Where
at all was you after bringin' them things from, and who might be ownin'
them?"
"Out of a house burnin' down," said Mad Bell.
"Och between us and harm. What house is it then? And how did it get
burnin'?"
"Sure it's aisy enough settin' a house on fire," said Mad Bell with a
grin, which to Big Anne who at this time was not familiar with her
manners, looked rather sinisterly significant. "Flarin' up rael strong,"
she said, pushing towards her, as if in confirmation of the statement,
the little wooden clothes-horse, whose rails were blackened and charred.
"Aisy it may be," Big Anne said, looking aghast at it, "but dreadful
divilment it is to do such a thing, wid the misfort'nit people very apt
to lose their lives, let alone everythin' else."
"There was nobody in it on'y the couple of fat little childer," said Mad
Bell.
"The saints be among us all, woman," said Big Anne, "what sort of talk
have you? It's not streelin' about the counthry you are, wid them ould
sticks of furnitur', and lavin' the little childer in the house blazin'
up? The Lord pity the crathurs, what 'ud become of them if they was left
thataway? Burnt to cinders be now very belike."
"Stufficated," said Mad Bell, with a complacent nod.
Big Anne and the Dummy stared at one another in great horror. The Dummy
could express her feelings only by crossing herself and gasping; but
Big Anne spoke volubly: "May God forgive me for openin' me lips to the
likes of you. Och but you're the unnatural wicked woman to go do such a
thing, if you was twyste as cracked and crazy itself. Git along out of
this, yourself and your ould cart, afore the pólis comes after you. Och
the misfort'nit little crathurs. And don't be offerin' to darken our
doors agin wid the ojis sight of you."
"Gimme a hand wid liftin' in them two tables," said Mad Bell. Whereupon
Big Anne whisked away from her, and banged the door in her face.
Mad Bell, however, did not appear to be discouraged by this reception.
She finished unloading the cart of all except the tables, which she
found unwieldy single-handed. Then she unharnessed old Neddy, and went
and seated herself on the low wall beside the house. She was seemingly
quite content with the situation. But to the two women indoors it was a
dreadful experience. Their minds were firmly persuaded that the daft
little woman had designedly set fire to some dwelling, and made off with
what household gear she could lay hands on, leaving the hapless children
to perish amid the flames. It shocked and enraged them that their
premises should be infested by the presence of such a criminal, and that
her ill-gotten goods and chattels should be brought to their very
threshold, not to speak of her outrageous proposal to harbour them under
their roof. Big Anne declared that wid the legs of them chairs and
tables glimpsing through the door, as if they were on'y turned out to be
airin' a bit, she and the Dummy seemed as good as a pair of murderers.
Every now and then they went to the door and peered out, and the
incendiary always greeted them with cheerful nods. On these occasions
Big Anne sometimes said: "Oh, very well, me good woman. Just you sit
brazenin' there till the patrol comes round this way, and then if I
don't give you in charge as sure as the sun's shinin' crooked over our
heads.--Begone out of that, and take them things out of litterin' about
our place." Or she would remark loudly to her companion: "Just stop a
minyit, Winnie, till I sling me ould shawl over me head, and run down to
the barracks. It's not very long they'll be puttin' her out of it, and
bundlin' her into jail, instead of to be sittin' there, wid ne'er a
spark of shame in her, annoyin' dacint people." But neither mode of
address produced any effect. The morning sunbeams still slanted down on
the small pile of furniture, and old Neddy went on munching the blades
off which they were drying the dew, and Mad Bell continued to sit upon
the wall, as if placidly waiting for events.
Such was the posture of affairs until towards noon, when an outside-car
came trotting quickly down the lane. On one side of it sat a
black-whiskered man in his best clothes, with each hand tightly grasping
a small, fat, wrigglesome child. And the three were Matthew, Tom, and
Minnie Wogan. On catching sight of Mad Bell, he made the driver pull up.
"Well, ma'am," he called to her, "so you're after gettin' home. Bedad
it's the fine long step you've took th'ould donkey; one while he'd be
doin' it. And you're about gettin' in the few things? Very welcome she
is to the whole of them," he continued to Big Anne, who had now emerged.
"And begorrah nobody else had a better right to any trifle might be
saved out of it. She'll ha' tould you, ma'am, the way the place was set
on fire on me last night--some little divil of a spalpeen playin' wid
matches it seems. But anyhow, there it was in blazes, and me galloppin'
home like a deminted cow, consaitin' these two imps of the mischief here
would be smotherin' inside it. And, troth, if herself over there hadn't
them fetched out safe into the yard, when it was as much as your life
was worth to put your head in at the door, for the stiflin' of the
smoke. I dunno how she conthrived it. Maybe the crathur isn't altogether
over sinsible," he said in a confidential tone; "but if she'd had all
the wit ever was thought of, she couldn't ha' done better be the
childer. So it's kindly welcome she is to the bits of furniture, and the
ould baste. And dhrivin' on we must be. Good mornin' to yous all."
Mad Bell listened to this praise with the same equanimity as to Big
Anne's threats and reproaches. But when the car had trotted on, she came
up to her, saying just as before, "Gimme a hand wid liftin' in thim
tables;" and Matthew Wogan, jogging down the long lane, may have caught
the last glimpse of one of them as it vanished in at the doorway.
Thus it was that Mad Bell came to be domiciled with Big Anne and the
Dummy in the pauses between her wanderings. The arrangement seemed
equitable in view of her substantial contribution to the plenishing of
the house. The donkey-cart, likewise, was found very serviceable,
enabling them to turn a penny occasionally by fetching and carrying. And
the coalition worked well upon the whole. But after a few years of such
prosperity that they were seldom without a bit of food in the house, and
sometimes had bacon on Sunday, things took a turn for the worse. Old Ned
died under the burden of his many years, and a sort of murrain among the
fowl cut off several promising pullets in the heyday of their youth.
Then arose difficulties about "rint," while their landlord, who was new
to the property, had a natural zeal for sweeping it clear of encumbering
tenants. And the end of it was that the three women transferred
themselves to Lisconnel, where they became not the least respected of
its inhabitants.
But these particulars about their antecedents were never learned by the
neighbours there; and the joint ownership of the furniture still
presents itself as one of our unsolved problems. Another of them was
propounded somewhat later, when Mad Bell returned from an unusually long
ramble, during which she had crossed the Liffey by the spacious
O'Connell Bridge, and had heard the boom of the big College bell, and
with her wizened-lemon face had half-scared the smallest-sized children
in villages round about Dublin. For she was wearing an elaborately
fantastic piece of headgear, which moved everybody's curiosity so
strongly that it cannot have been for want of wondering if we failed to
find out how she had come thereby. Strangely incongruous it did
undoubtedly look; yet the stages by which it had descended from its
stand in the milliner's show-room and alighted upon the head of the
little wandering-witted tramp, were much fewer than might have been
supposed probable.
One blustery March morning when Mrs. M'Bean was on her way along by the
low sea-wall to buy a bit of bacon at Donnelly's shop in Kilclone, the
east wind did her the shrewd turn of whisking off her hat and dropping
it into the water. It was a most shabby old black straw, rusty and
battered, and torn, yet Mrs. M'Bean, a labourer's wife, who had nothing
at all handsome about her, seemed to think it worth a serious risk. For
she mounted on the broad wall-top, and thence made so unwary a snatch
that she overbalanced herself and splashed headlong into the heaving
high-tide, where she would very soon have perished beneath the cold
olive-gray swell, had not the brothers Denny, fishing for bass hard by,
noticed the perilous accident, and pulled timely to the rescue.
When they disembarked her, gasping and dripping, at the nearest
landing-place, she was understood to say, "Sure me heart's broke," a
remark which Police-sergeant Young, who formed one of the group gathered
by the disaster, considered sufficient grounds for marching her off to
the handiest J. P. on a charge of attempted suicide. Mrs. M'Bean
vehemently repelled the accusation. She explained that she had said her
heart was broke only "because she had lost her ould hat, and every
thread of a rag on her had been dhrenched and ruinated with the salt
water. How could she go for to do such a sin as destroy herself, she
urged, and she wid a houseful of little childer waitin' for her at home,
the crathurs?" Her arguments proved convincing, and the charge was
summarily dismissed, not without strictures upon Sergeant Young's
excessive zeal, by which he, recking nothing of Talleyrand's maxim, felt
himself puzzled and aggrieved.
The incident, however, brought some more agreeable consequences to Mrs.
M'Bean, as the J. P.'s ladies, commiserating her half-drowned plight,
sent her that same evening a goodly bundle of cast-off clothes, over
which her eyes grew gleefully bright in her careworn face. At one of the
articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat
made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue
velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and
substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily
found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave her a headache and a
crick in her neck. Mrs. M'Bean, for her part, could not entertain the
idea of carrying anything so sumptuous upon her grizzled head; and when
she tried it on her eldest daughter, it totally extinguished and nearly
smothered the child. So she stowed it away in a corner, where it
remained unseen for several weeks.
But next month, on the afternoon of Easter Day, Mrs. M'Bean had two
visitors over from Ballyhoy: Annie Cassidy, elderly and rather grim,
with her young friend Nelly Walsh.
"Nelly's bound to be havin' bad luck this year of her life," Annie
observed in the course of conversation, "for not a new stitch has she
put on her to-day, and it Easter. That's an unlucky thing, accordin' to
the sayin'."
"Ne'er a bit am I afraid of me luck," averred Nelly, cheerful and
threadbare, not to say ragged. But Mrs. M'Bean was pricked by a sudden
thought up the ladder to the little attic aloft, whence she creaked down
again, bringing with her the great white hat. "There, Nelly," she said,
"just clap that on your head, and then nobody can pass the remark that
you didn't get the wear of somethin' new, any way."
Nelly took the hat, which struck her nearly dumb with admiration, but as
she tried to catch a glimpse of it in the shred of looking-glass on the
wall, her delighted expression waxed so eloquent that Mrs. M'Bean was
impelled to say: "You're to keep it, girl alive, if you've e'er a fancy
for it. Sure it's fitter for you than the likes of me, that 'ud look a
quare old scarecrow if I offered to go about in such a thing." She had
not at first intended this generosity, her worldly goods being so few
that she could not lightly part with even a very unpromising possession.
Nelly, on her side, could hardly believe in her high fortune, when,
after some polite demur, she found herself carrying off the splendid
hat. To wear it on an ordinary walk would have seemed profane, so she
held it under her old shawl all the way home to her cabin on the shore
at the foot of the Black Banks, a good step beyond Ballyhoy. But when
she reached the door, she could not forbear the pleasure of making her
entrance in the glory of her new adornment. Her reception was altogether
disappointing. For her mother's and grandmother's voices rose up shrill
and shriller, demanding what at all hijjis gazabo she'd got on her.
Billy, her eldest brother, said: "Musha, she's put a pair of blinkers on
her like an ould horse;" and Larry, his junior, remarked with terse
candour, "Och, the fright." More mortifying still, Joe Tierney, her
sweetheart, who had called to conclude arrangements about the morrow's
holiday, said in a disgusted tone: "Tare and ages! I hope to goodness,
Nelly, you're not intindin' to make that show of yourself at the circus
to-morra. Bedad, I niver seen such a conthrivance; you might as well be
walkin' alongside some sort of deminted musharoon." This rather aptly
described the effect of the huge white brim upon Nelly, who was small
and short of stature; but it hurt her feelings badly.
The only upholder of the hat was Annie Cassidy, who is fond of
controverting the opinions of other people, and who despises men. She
said: "Don't be lettin' them put you out of consait with it, Nelly; it
suits you lovely. Sure if anyone doesn't think your app'arance is good
enough for them, you needn't throuble them wid your company. Circuses,
to my mind, is thrash--to be watchin' folks figurandyin' on a pack of
ould horses' backs. There's a lot of us goin' over to-morra to Rathbeg,
where they've merry-go-rounds you can ride in yourself, and all manner,
if you'd just step down to the Junction station and come along wid us on
the early train."
"'Deed then I might," said Nelly; not that she had the least intention
of doing any such thing, but because, being somewhat of a belle, she was
unaccustomed to uncomplimentary criticisms and much affronted by them.
Furthermore, for the same reason, she escorted Annie home, and stayed so
long talking, that Joe before she returned had to go off about his
milking, which annoyed him a good deal.
However, he had quite forgotten his vexation next morning, as he hurried
through his early tasks with a day's pleasuring before him. He worked at
the Kellys', whose land is bounded north and south by the Junction lane
and the sea; and as he walked about the fresh April fields he was in
view of Howth, dark pansy-purple against the eastern amber, confronting
the sweep of the Dublin mountains, outlined in wild hyacinth-coloured
mist, across the dancing silver of the bay. The calves had been fed so
expeditiously that Joe found he could spare time to stop at the starred
bank under the hedge and pick a bunch of primroses, some of which
Nelly's mother would proudly keep in a jam-pot on the window-stool,
while Nelly herself might like to wear a few at the circus, brightening
up her brown-striped shawl.
But when he was compressing a thick sheaf of the cool soft stalks in one
hard hand, he chanced to look up, and saw what thrilled him with dismay.
Bobbing along over the jagged edge of the wall, a short way down the
lane went a gleaming white object, which he at once recognised as
Nelly's new hat. He ran aghast to look through the gate, and despite
intercepting road-curves and obstructive hedges, the hat it unmistakably
was, making for the Junction station. So Nelly, intending a serious
quarrel, had thrown him over and joined the Rathbeg party. A pleasure,
hoarded in anticipation for many a month, shrivelled into dead leaves
suddenly like fairy gold, as he perceived how certainly this must be the
case.
His first angry impulse was a resort to Haskin's Public at Portbrendan,
where he might spend his spoilt holiday taking drinks and making bets in
the society of some cronies. What hindered him from immediately acting
upon it was a compunctious forecast of the concern which would prevail
in his family, if he absented himself contrary to expectation. "There's
me mother's never aisy," he reflected, "unless she's persuadin' herself
some of us are kilt on her." This made him resolve to postpone
Portbrendan till after breakfast, and he turned lothfully homewards. As
he passed along the Kellys' yard-wall, he relieved his feelings by
tossing his nosegay over it at the place where he heard the grunting of
their pigs, who on that occasion fared almost as delicately as Marvel's
rose-lined fawn.
It was early still when he reached his cabin, one in the Walshes' row;
and he sat down listlessly on a bank, to wait for nothing in particular.
Presently Mrs. Walsh, senior, came by with a twinkling can of water.
"Och, there you are, Joe," she said: "Nelly's been lookin' out for you
this good while."
"Whethen it's quare lookin' out she had," said Joe, "and she took off
wid herself to ould Annie Cassidy--bad manners to her for her
interfarin'."
"What's the lad talkin' about at all?" said Mrs. Walsh, standing amazed;
"Nelly's widin there this instiant of time, readyin' herself up."
"Maybe you'll tell me," said Joe, "that I didn't see her streelin' down
the Junction lane afore I was lavin' Kellys'."
"And maybe _you_'ll tell _me_," said Nelly's grandmother, "that she
wasn't just now callin' to me they were wantin' wather. It's a fine bawl
she'd ha' had to let out of her, if I was to be hearin' her, and she up
beyond Kellys'."
"There she was anyway," Joe said, doggedly. "Wouldn't I know that dad
fetched-lookin' ould new caubeen she's stuck on her a mile o' ground?"
"You great gomeral," said Mrs. Walsh. "If that's all you might aisy
enough ha' seen the big hat goin' the road--but have you the notion it's
growin' on Nelly's head? Why, you omadhawn, you hadn't quit ten minyits
last night, and Nelly was just after gettin' back, when who should come
by but poor Mad Bell. Och now the raggedy objick the crathur was, wid
nothin' over her misfort'nit head but an ould wisp as full of houles as
a fishin'-net. So little Larry sez, jokin' like, 'Look here, Nelly,'
sez he, 'you'd a right to be lettin' Mad Bell have a loan of your grand
nappy hat to keep the sun out of her eyes.' But belike Nelly'd took a
turn agin the thing wid the way they'd all been makin' fun of it; for
sez she, 'Will you have it, Bell?' sez she, houldin' it out to her. And
if she did, Mad Bell grabbed it in her two hands--it's not often she'll
have a word for anybody--and no more talk about it, but cocked it on,
and tied it firm under her chin wid the sthramers, as tasty as you
plase. Musha good gracious, to see the len'th she drew the bow out on
aich side of her bit of a yeller face, and the nod she gave her ould
head when she'd got it done. So that's what's gone wid the hat. Goodness
guide us, if she wasn't the poor crazy-witted body she is, 'twould be a
sin to let her go makin' such a show of herself; but sure no one 'ud
think to mind anythin' the likes of the crathur might have on her, the
saints may pity her. Ay, bedad, them kind of quare consthructions do be
fit for nothin' unless Quality and mad people," old Mrs. Walsh
continued, without malice, soliloquising, as Joe had caught up the can,
and was hurrying it with prodigal splashes towards his sweetheart's
door.
The circus, with its flaring lights and whirl of tinselled prancing
marvels, was so rapturous an experience to Nelly that she had not a
regret for her discarded hat, which at this time was moving on beneath a
soft dappled sky, between greening hedges, westward along quiet roads
and lanes. It found shelter for the night under the ley of a tall
hayrick near Santry, thus ending the first stage of Mad Bell's tramp
home to the wide brown bogland of Lisconnel.