MRS MARTIN’S COMPANY.
[Illustration: IRIS·SERIES· “RAIN, RAIN, & SVN! A RAINBOW ON THE LEA!
AND TRUTH IS THIS TO ME, & THAT TO THEE; AND TRUTH OR CLOTHED OR NAKED
LET IT BE.”]
_All Rights Reserved._
MRS. MARTIN’S COMPANY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY JANE BARLOW
AUTHOR OF “IRISH
IDYLLS”
[Illustration: MRS. MARTIN’S COMPANY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY JANE BARLOW
AUTHOR OF “IRISH
IDYLLS”}
[Illustration: IRIS SERIES
THAT
GRACIOUS THING MADE UP
OF
TEARS & LIGHT
COLERIDGE]
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY BERTHA NEWCOMBE
New York
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1896
“_Ein Kleiner Ring_
_Begrenzt unser Leben._”
GOETHE.
NOTE
“Mrs Martin’s Company” and “A Very Light Railway” appeared in _The
National Review_, “A Lost Recruit” and “A Case of Conscience,” in _The
Pall Mall Magazine_. I am indebted to the Editors of these periodicals
for permission to reprint the stories here.
CONTENTS
MRS MARTIN’S COMPANY (_Illustrated_--p. 21) PAGE 1
A LOST RECRUIT (_Illustrated_) “ 27
AFTER SEVEN YEARS (_Illustrated_--_Frontispiece_) “ 59
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE (_Illustrated_) “ 103
A PROVIDENT PERSON (_Illustrated_) “ 132
A VERY LIGHT RAILWAY (_Illustrated_) “ 171
ROSANNE “ 195
MRS MARTIN’S COMPANY
Mrs Martin lived down a high-banked lane, which, as it led no whither in
particular, was subject to little traffic, and which she occupied all by
herself, though her cabin stood the middle one in a row of three. You
could see at a glance that the left-hand dwelling was vacant, for the
browned thatch had fallen in helplessly, and the rafters stuck up
through it like the ribs of a stranded wreck. The other was less
obviously deserted; still its plight could be easily perceived in weedy
threshold and cobweb-curtained window. It testified strongly to the
lonesomeness of the neighbourhood that no child had yet enjoyed the
bliss of sending a stone crash through the flawed greenish pane. Both of
them had, in fact, been empty for many months. From the ruined one the
Egan family had gone piecemeal, following each other westward in
detachments, until even the wrinkled parents were settled in California,
where they blinked by day at the strange fierce sunshine, and dreamed
by night back again under the soft-shadowed skies of the ould counthry.
Soon after that, the O’Keefes had made a more abrupt flitting from next
door, departing on the same day, all together, except little Kate and
Joe, whose death of the fever was what had “given their poor mother, the
crathur, a turn like agin the place.” Since then no new tenants had
succeeded them in the row, which was, to be sure, out of the way, and
out of repair, and not in any respect a desirable residence.
The loss of her neighbours was a very serious misfortune to Mrs Martin,
as she had long depended upon them for a variety of things, which she
would have herself summed up in the term “company.” She had been early
widowed and left quite alone in the world, so that through most of the
inexorable years which turned an eager-eyed girl into a
regretful-looking little old woman, she had found herself obliged to
seek much of her interest in life outside her own small domestic
circle--all forlorn centre. This was practicable enough while she lived
under one thatch with two large families, who were friendlily content
that their solitary neighbour should take cognisance of their goings out
and comings in. Upon occasion, indeed, she had unforebodingly grumbled
that the young Egans and O’Keefes “had her moidhered wid the
whillaballoo they would be risin’ continyal.” But when they were gone a
terrible blank and silence filled up their place, as well might be,
since her kind had thus suddenly receded far beyond her daily ken. A
weary Irish mile intervened between her and the nearest cottages of
Clonmacreevagh, and it was only “of a very odd while” her rheumatics had
allowed her to hobble that far, even to Mass. Seldom or never now did
she make her way at all down the windings of the lane, where the grass
from its tall banks encroached monthly more and more upon the ancient
ruts; and other passengers were hardly less infrequent. The lands about
lay waste, or in sheep-walks, so that there was nothing to bring
farm-carts and horses and men lumbering and plodding along it, and to
attract anybody else what was there but a mournful little old woman in a
dark cavernous kitchen, where the only bright objects were the
fire-blink and the few bits of shining crockery on the dresser, which
she had not often the heart these times to polish up? So week out and
week in, never a foot went past her door, as a rule with just one
exception.
Michael O’Toole, a farmer on the townland, did her the kindness of
letting his cart drive out of its way every Saturday and leave at her
house the “loaves and male and grains of tay,” which her lameness would
have otherwise made it difficult for her to come by. This was, of
course, a great convenience, and ensured her one weekly caller. But,
unluckily for her, Tim Doran the carter was a man quite singularly
devoid of conversational gifts, and so grimly unsociable besides, that
her provisions might almost as well have been washed up by the sea, or
conveyed to her by inarticulate ravens. If he possibly could, he would
always dump down the parcels on the road before her door, and jog along
hurriedly unaccosted; and though Mrs Martin could generally prevent that
by keeping a lookout for him, she never succeeded in attaining to the
leisurely gossip after which she hungered. Beyond monosyllables Tim
would not go, and the poor little wiles by which she sought to inveigle
him into discourse failed of detaining him as signally as if they had
been gossamer threads stretched across his road. She had so often tried,
for instance, to lengthen his halt by telling him she thought “the
horse was after pickin’ up a stone,” that at last he ceased even to
glance at the beast’s feet for verification, but merely grunted and
said: “Oh, git along out of that, mare.” Then the mud-splashed blue
cart, and sorrel horse, and whity-brown jacket, would pass out of sight
round the turn of the lane, and the chances were that she would not
again set eyes on a human face, until they reappeared jogging from the
opposite direction that day week.
In the long afternoons, which sometimes began for her before twelve
o’clock if she got expeditiously through her “readyin’ up,” the lag-foot
hours seemed dismally empty, and during them she was especially prone to
crown her sorrow with memories of her happier things: of the time when
she need only slip out at her own door, and in at Mrs Egan’s or Mrs
O’Keefe’s, if she wanted plenty of company, and when “themselves or the
childer would be runnin’ in to her every minute of the day. If there was
nothin’ else,” she mused, “the crathurs of hins and chuckens foostherin’
about the place looked a thrifle gay like.” Mrs Martin herself kept no
fowl, for “how would she get hobblin’ after them, if they tuk to
strayin’ on her?” And she had attempted vainly to adopt the O’Keefe’s
cat, which became unsettled in its mind upon the departure of its late
owners, and at length roamed desperately away into unknown regions.
Thus, nowadays, when the little old woman gazed listlessly over her
half-door, all she could see was the quiet green bank across the road,
with perhaps a dingy white sheep inanely nibbling atop. Then she would
sometimes feel at first as if it were only a dreary Sunday or holiday,
when the silence and solitude being caused by her neighbours’ absence at
Mass would end on their return; but presently she would be stricken with
the recollection that they were irrevocably gone, and that, watch as
long as she might, she would never more hear their voices grow louder
and clearer coming up the lane, preluding their appearance anon, a
cheerful company, round the turn fast by.
One afternoon, however, her hopeless lookout did result in something
pleasant. It was a Christmas Eve, and dull, chilly weather, overclouded
with fleecy grey, thinned here and there into silvery dimness, a sheath
from which a fiery rose might flush at sun-setting. She was just turning
away with a shiver from the draughty door when she caught a glimpse of
Father Gilmore’s long coat flapping between the banks. It was a welcome
sight, which she had missed through six tedious months and more, for his
Reverence, after a severe illness in the spring, had been somehow
provided with funds to go seek lost health abroad, and had fared
southward upon that quest. His travels, indeed, seemed to have been
inconceivably extended. When to Mrs Martin’s question: “And was your
Riverence, now, anythin’ as far as Paris?” he replied, with a touch of
triumph, “A long step _further_,” her imagination recoiled from so wild
a track, and she could only stare at him as if astonished to see no
visible traces of such wanderings, except maybe a slight tawny tinge
like the rust-wraith of many hot sunbeams, superimposed on the normal
greenish hue of his well-worn cloth.
Father Gilmore spared her half-an-hour of delightful discourse, to which
his own foreign adventures and the home news from Clonmacreevagh gave an
animated flow. But when Mrs Martin’s turn came to give an account of
herself the conversation fell into a minor key. And the theme that ran
through all her despondence was the plaint that she did be terrible
short of company. “She had middlin’ good health, barrin’ the rheumatiz,
thanks be to God, but sure she did be cruel lonesome. It’s lost she was
there, wid niver sight nor sound of man or mortal from mornin’ till
night; she might as well be an ould wether left fallen in a gripe for
all she seen or heard of anythin’. ’Deed now ’twas just the one way wid
her as wid the waft of smoke there up her ould chimney that went
fluttherin’ out on the width of the air, and sorra another breath
anywheres nigh it, since ever the crathurs quit. Many a mornin’ she’d
scarce the heart to be puttin’ a light to her fire at all, she was that
fretted, ay bedad, she was so.”
To these laments Father Gilmore listened with a patience made more
difficult by his consciousness that he could suggest no remedy of the
practically appropriate sort which is to general consolatory
propositions as a close and cordial hearth-glow to the remote and
mocking sunshine of a wintry sky. If you want to warm your cold hands
those league-long flames some millions of miles away are so much less
immediately to the purpose than your neighbouring screed of ruddy coals.
This drifted mistily through his mind, as for lack of a more
satisfactory remark he said: “You wouldn’t think of moving into the
town?” But he was well aware that he had spoken foolishly, even before
Mrs Martin answered: “Ah, your Riverence, how would I, so to spake, be
runnin’ me head out from under me penny of rint?” For her husband, a
gamekeeper up at the Big House of the parish, had lost his life by
accident at a shooting party, and the family had pensioned off his widow
with five weekly shillings and her cabin rent free.
“True for you, Mrs Martin,” said Father Gilmore, standing up. “But sure,
lonely or no, we’re all under the protection of God Almighty, and I’ve
brought you a little ornament for your room.” Mrs Martin’s eyes sparkled
at the last clause of his sentence, while he took out of his pocket a
small parcel, and began to strip off its wrappages, which were many
folds of bluish tissue-paper, with layers of grey-green dried grass
between. “The man I got it from at Marseilles,” he said, “told me a lot
of them came from Smyrna, and I never stirred these papers that were on
it, thinkin’ I mightn’t be able to do it up so well again. I only hope
it’s not broke on us.” As the thin sheets and light grass-wisps fell
off, the blast whistling under the door-sill whisked them about the
uneven floor, and Mrs Martin drew in her breath expectantly. At last the
treasure was discovered in perfect preservation, an alabaster statuette
of the Virgin, some two fingers high.
I do not know that it was a very fine work of art, but at worst you
cannot easily make anything ugly out of alabaster. The Child lay
placidly asleep, and the Mother looked young and happy and benignant.
For a few moments Mrs Martin’s admiration was quite incoherent, and when
she found words Father Gilmore sought to stem the tide of ecstatic
gratitude by saying, “And where will you put it? Why, here’s a niche
looks as if it might have been made for it.” The place he pointed to was
a little recess beneath a tiny window-slit, formed partly by design, but
enlarged by the chance falling out of a fragment from the stone-and-mud
wall. A long ray, slanted from the clearing west, reached through the
half-door, quivered across the dark room, and just touched the white
figure as he set it down. Against the background of grimy wall it shone
as if wrought of rosed snow.
“Bedad, then, it’s there I’ll keep her, and nowhere else,” said the
little old woman, and he left her in rapt contemplation. As he trudged
home he felt sure that his few francs had been well bestowed, and his
conviction strengthened with each tedious twist of the deserted ways
which lay between Mrs Martin and her company. By the time he had gained
his own house his uppermost thought was a regret that such a trifle had
been all he could do for the poor ould dacint body--the Lord might pity
her.
It was, however, by no means a trifle to the poor old body herself. For
the first few days after her acquisition of the image it took up a
wonderful deal of her time and thoughts. Even when she was not standing
at gaze in front of it she but seldom lost it from her sight. Her eyes
were continually turning towards the niche, whence it seemed strangely
to dominate the room. Its clear whiteness made a mark for the feeblest
gleam of ebbing daylight or fading embers; it was the last object to be
muffled under bat’s-wing gloom, and the first to creep back when morning
glimmered in again. She dusted it superfluously many times a day, with a
proud pleasure always somewhat dashed by the remembrance that she could
exhibit it to no neighbours, who would say, with variations, “Ah! glory
be among us, Mrs Martin, ma’am, but that’s rael iligant entirely. Och
woman, dear, did you ever see the like of that now at all, at all?”
Still, the most marvellous piece of sculpture ever chiselled would
probably betray deficiencies if adopted as one’s sole companion in life;
and Mrs Martin’s little statuette had obvious shortcomings when so
regarded. As the winter wore on the weight of her solitude pressed more
and more heavily. The bad weather increased her isolation. Some days
there were of bitter frost and snow, and some of streaming rain, and
many of wild wind. Once or twice Tim Doran brought her a double supply
of provisions, and did not return for a fortnight, and then she felt
indeed cut adrift. By-and-bye her vague disconsolateness began to take
shape in more definite terrors. She was beset with surmises of
ill-disposed vagrants tramping that way to practise unforbidden on her
wretched life, and she crept trembling to and from the pool where she
filled her water-can. Or ghostly fears overcame her, and she thought at
night that she heard the little dead children keening in the deserted
room next door, and that mysterious shadows went past the windows, and
unseen hands rattled the latch. But through all her shifting mist of
trouble the alabaster Virgin shone on her steadily with just a ray of
consolation. Every night she said her Rosary before the niche, and
almost always her devotions ended in a prayer of her own especial
wishing and wording.
“Ah, Lady dear,” she would say, “wouldn’t you think now to be sendin’ me
a bit of company? me that’s left as disolit as the ould top of Slieve
Moyneran this great while back. Ah, wouldn’t you then, me Lady? Sure if
that’s a thrue likeness of you at all, there’s the look on you that it’s
plased you’d be to do a poor body e’er a good turn, ay, is there, bedad.
And I couldn’t tell you the comfort ’twould be to me, not if I was all
night tellin’. Just a neighbour droppin’ in now and agin’, acushla, I
wouldn’t make bold to ax you for them to be livin’ convenient alongside
of me the way they was. Sure I know the roof’s quare and bad, and ’twas
small blame to them they quit; but to see an odd sight of one, Lady
jewel, if it wouldn’t go agin you to conthrive that much. Ah, darlint,
supposin’ it was only a little ould poor ould wisp of a lone woman the
same as meself, it’s proud I’d be to behould her; or if it was Crazy
Christy, that does be talkin’ foolish, the crathur, troth, all’s one,
the sound of the voice spakin’ ’ud be plisant to hear, no matter what
ould blathers he tuk the notion to be gabbin’. For it’s unnathural still
and quiet here these times, Lady dear, wid sorra a livin’ sowl comin’
next or nigh me ever. But sure ’tis the lonesome house you kep’
yourself, Lady dear, one while, and belike you’ll remimber it yet, for
all you’ve got back your company agin, ay have you, glory be to God. And
wid the help of the Lord it’s slippin’ over I’ll be meself one of these
days to them that’s gone from me, and no fear but I’ll have the grand
company then. Only it’s the time between whiles does be woeful long and
dhrary-like. So if you wouldn’t think too bad, Lady honey, to send me
the sight of a crathur----.” Thus she rambled on piteously, but in
answer seemed to come nothing more companionable than the wide-winged
gusts of the night wind roving the great grass lands at the back of her
cabin where the tiny window-slit peered out. And day followed day with
not a step or voice.
It was on a mild-aired morning midway in February that Mrs Martin, when
dusting her precious image, noticed a vivid green speck dotted on the
grey wall near its foot. Looking closer, she saw two atoms of leaves
pricked up through the cracked mud, belonging no doubt to some seedling
weed, she thought, and she would have brushed them away had not some
other trifle just then diverted her attention. A few days afterwards,
when she happened again to take heed of them, they were crowning a
slender shoot, fledged with other delicate leaflets, film-frail, and
semi-transparent. She thought the little spray looked pretty and “off
the common,” and next morning she was pleased to see that it had crept a
bit further on the dark wall. Thenceforward she watched its growth with
a deep interest. It throve apace. Every day showed a fresh unfolding of
leaf-buds and lengthening of stalks, which seemed to climb with a
purpose, as if moved by a living will. Their goal was indeed the narrow
chink which let a wedge of light slant in just above the Virgin’s
glistering head, and in making for it they caught boldly at anything
that offered tendril-hold. One morning the little old woman untwisted a
coil of fairy cordage that was enringing the Virgin’s feet, and often
after this she had to disengage the figure from the first beginnings of
wreathings and windings amongst which it would speedily have
disappeared. As it was, they soon filled up the niche with a tangled
greenery, and overflowed in long trails and festoons drooping to the
floor. Never was there a carven shrine wrought with such intricate
traceries. When the early-rising sun struck in through them, the floor
was flecked with the wavering shadows of the small fine leaves, whilst
they themselves took a translucent vividness of hue that might have been
drawn from wells of liquid chrysoprase and beryl; and amid the bower of
golden-green steadily glimmered the white-stoled Virgin.
All this was the work of but a few weeks, scarcely stepping over the
threshold of Spring. The little old woman watched its progress with
pleasure and astonishment. She had never, she said, seen the like of any
such a thing before. As the wonder grew, she felt more and more keenly
the lack of someone to whom she might impart it. She did try to tell Tim
Doran, but the opposite turf-bank would not have received the
intelligence much more blankly, and could not have grunted with such
discouraging indifference in reply. The man, she thought bitterly, was
“as stupid as an ould blind cow. If you tould him you had the Queen of
Agypt and the Lord Lieutenant sittin’ in there colloguin’ be the fire,
he wouldn’t throuble himself to take a look in at the door.” However, no
less stolid listeners were forthcoming. Father Gilmore was paying the
penalty for his ill-timed return to northern climes in a series of bad
colds, and the other neighbours never set foot up the lane.
At last she bethought her of communicating with Father Gilmore by a
letter, which Tim Doran might carry, and she laboriously composed one in
time for his next weekly call. Whether he would deliver it or not was a
point which his manner left doubtful; but he actually did so. Mrs
Martin’s letter was “scrawmed” on a bit of coarse brown paper, which,
when I saw it some time ago, still smelt so pungently of tea, that I
think it must have wrapped one of her parcels. The writing on it ran as
follows:--
“YOUR REVERENCE,--Hopin’ this finds you in good health, thanks be
to God. Plase your Reverence, the Quarest that ever you witnessed
has got clamberin’ inside on the wall. I dunno what at all to say
to it; never the like of it I seen. But the creelin’ of it and the
crawlin’ of it would terrify you. Makin’ offers now and agin it
does be to smoother the Houly Virgin, but sure I’d be long sorry to
let it do that bad thrick, after all the goodness of your
Reverence. And I was thinkin’ this long while your Reverence might
be maybe steppin’ our way yourself some day, for creepin’ over all
before it it is every minute of time. Such a terrible quare thing I
never heard tell of, and the sorra another sowl except meself have
I about the place.
“Your obedient,
“MARY MARTIN.”
This letter caused Father Gilmore considerable uneasiness, for it filled
him with misgivings about the mental condition of the writer. Her
account of “the Quarest that ever you witnessed,” sounded, he feared,
painfully like the hallucinations of a mind distempered by over long
solitude. “Indeed it’s no way for the poor ould body to be left, if one
could help it,” he mused. Even in his meditations I am sure that Father
Gilmore must have used his soft southern brogue--“I’ve thought many a
time it was enough to drive her demented--and now there’s some quare
sort of delusion she’s taken into her head, that’s plain, goodness pity
her. I’d have done right to go see after her before this, as I was
intendin’, only somethin’ always happened to hinder me.”
He was determined now against any further delay, and he set out that
very afternoon to visit his afflicted parishioner. The expedition was
rather formidable to him, as he had a natural shrinking from stormy
scenes, and he fully expected that he would find poor little Mrs Martin
if not downright “raving in no small madness,” at least labouring under
some frightful delusion, in the shape, apparently, of a hideous monster
infesting her abode. This prospect made him so nervously apprehensive
that he was glad to fall in with a small youth, one Paddy Greer, who
seemed inclined to accompany him upon his walk. All the way along,
between the greening hedges of the lane, he remonstrated with himself
for letting the gossoon share unwittingly in such an errand, yet he
could not make up his mind to dismiss Paddy, or to feel otherwise than
relieved by the continued bare-foot patter at his side.
But his relief was far greater when on reaching the cabin he saw its
mistress in her little green plaid shawl and black skirt and white cap,
standing at her door among the long westering sunbeams, without any
signs of excitement or aberration in her demeanour; and his mind grew
quite easy when he ascertained that the creeping thing indoors was no
horrible phantasmal reptile, but only a twining tapestry of bright
leaves and sprays, which trailed a fold of Spring’s garment into the
dark-cornered room. Still, satisfactorily as the matter had been cleared
up from his former point of view, he could suggest nothing to lessen Mrs
Martin’s wonder at the mysterious appearance of the creeper on her wall.
His acquaintance with such things was slight, and he merely had an
impression that the fashion of the delicately luxuriant foliage seemed
unfamiliar to him. So he promised to return on the morrow with the
national school-teacher, who was reputed a knowledgeable man about
plants. Before that came to pass, however, Mrs Martin had another
visitor. For little Paddy ran home to his mother with the news that “the
Widdy Martin was after showin’ his Reverence a green affair she had
stuck up on her wall, and that he said it was rale super-exthrornary
altogether, and he’d get Mr Colclough to it.” At that hearing the
curiosity of Paddy’s mother incited her to call without losing a moment
at Mrs Martin’s house, where she inspected the marvellous growth as well
as the falling twilight permitted, and admired the gracious-looking
little image quite to its owner’s content. Thus Mrs Martin enjoyed a
sociable cup of tea, and an enthralling
[Illustration]
gossip, which sent her to bed that evening in much better spirits than
usual.
Next morning arrived Father Gilmore with the schoolmaster, who was
unable to identify the strange creeper, but called its appearance a
phenomenon, which seemed somehow to take the edge off the admission of
ignorance. His failure only served to heighten a sense of awe and
wonderment among several of the neighbours, who also looked in on her
during the day. For the village rapidly filled with reports of “the big
wrathe of green laves that was windin’ itself round the Widdy Martin’s
grand image of the Blessed Virgin, and it inside on her wall, mind you,
where ’twould be a surprisin’ thing to see e’er a plant settlin’ to grow
at all.” And about the same time they discovered that the Widdy’s house
was “no such great way to spake of onst you turned down the lane; you
could tramp it aisy in a little betther than ten minutes or so from the
corner, if you had a mind.” In the days which followed numbers of them
were so minded, vastly to the comfort of the little old woman, who
welcomed them with unbounded joy, and as many cups of tea as she could
by any means compass. She harboured no resentment on the score of their
long and dreary defection. That was all ended at last. For as the spring
weather mellowed into April, and the imprisoned creeper daily flung out
profuser sprays and tendril-spirals, the fame of it spread far and wide
over the townlands, until its habitation became quite a place of resort.
So many people now turned down the lane that they soon wore a track,
which you could see distinctly if you looked along a stretch of its
grass-grown surface. The Doctor came, and the District-Inspector, and
the Protestant clergyman. Even “higher-up Quality” arrived, and
satin-coated steeds have been seen tossing their silver-crested blinkers
at the little old woman’s door under the supervision of grooms
resplendently polished. Seldom or never in these times had she to weary
through a long, lonely afternoon; more often she held a crowded
reception, when the clack of tongues and clatter of thick-rimmed delft
cups sounded cheerily in her kitchen. They scared away all her fears of
tramps and ghosts; and she no longer ended her Rosary with mournful
petitions for company. Her company had duly assembled.
Towards the beginning of June a fresh development of the marvel
occurred, for then the creeper blossomed. Thickly clustered bunches of
pale green buds broke swiftly into fantastic curven-throated bugles of a
clear-glowing apricot colour, which made gleams as of beaded light in
the dark places where they unsheathed themselves. Mrs Martin said it
looked “like as if somebody was after tyin’ knots in a ray of the
sunshine.” Just at this crisis a Professor from one of the Queen’s
Colleges, chancing to be in the neighbourhood, was brought to pronounce
upon the case. As behoved a learned man, he gave it an ugly name, which
we may ignorantly forget, and he said that it belonged to a species of
plants, rare even in its far off oriental habitat, but totally
unexampled beneath these northern skies.
However, soon after he had gone, leaving no luminous wake behind him,
the little old woman made a brilliant discovery. It was on that same
evening, while she was drinking tea with a few of her good gossips, for
whom she entertained as strong a regard as did Madam Noah in the ancient
Morality. Naturally enough, the “quareness” and general inscrutability
of the strange creeper had been under discussion, when Mrs Martin
suddenly said: “Ah! women, dear, what talk have we then at all, at all?
Sure now it’s come clear in me own mind this instaint minute that
whatever it may be, ’twas the Virgin herself, Heaven bless her, set it
growin’ there wid itself, just of a purpose to be fetchin’ me in me
company. For, signs on it, ne’er a day there is since folk heard tell of
it, that there doesn’t be some comin’ and goin’ about the place, and
makin’ it plisant and gay-like. And sorra a thing else is it brought
them, except to be seein’ the quare new plant; aye, bedad, ’twas them
twistin’ boughs on it streeled the whole lot along in here to me, same
as if they were a manner of landin’-net. And sure wasn’t I moidherin’
her every night of me life to be sendin’ me some company? ’Deed was I
so, and be the same token ne’er a word of thanks have I thought of
sayin’ to her, after her takin’ the throuble to conthrive it that-away,
more shame for me, but I was that tuk up wid it all.”
“Thrue for you, Mrs Martin, ma’am,” said Mrs Brennan; “aiten bread’s
soon forgotten, as the sayin’ is. Howane’er there’s nothin’ liker than
that that was the way of it as you say. What else ’ud be apt to make it
go clamber all round the image of her, as if ’twas her belongin’? And
didn’t the gintleman tell you ’twas nothin’ that grows be rights next
or nigh this counthry? Ah, for sure ’tis from far enough it’s come, if
’twas the likes of Them sent it. And a kind thought it was too, glory be
to God.”
Mrs Martin’s theory gained almost unanimous approval, and was generally
accepted by her neighbours, Father Gilmore sanctioning it with a half
wistful assent. It had the effect of enhancing the interest taken in the
flourishing creeper and the little withered dame, the pledge and
recipient of so signal a favour from those who are still the recognised
powers that be in such places as Clonmacreevagh. The idea gave a tinge
of religious sentiment to the soon established custom of visiting Mrs
Martin, and on the weekly market days you often might have supposed some
kind of miniature _pattern_ in progress at her cabin, so great was the
resort thither of shawled and cloaked and big-basketed country-wives.
These guests seldom came empty handed--a couple of fresh eggs, or a roll
of butter, or a cake of griddle-bread would be reserved for her at the
bottom of the roomy creel. Other visitors were fain to carry off slips
of the many trailing sprays, and would leave payment for them in silver
coin, which sometimes had the comfortable portliness of half-crowns.
But I do not believe that the little old woman valued these very highly,
and I think most of them went in providing the strong black tea with
which she loved to refresh her friends. And there was never an evening
that she did not add to her Rosary: “And the Lord bless the kind heart
of you then, Lady jewel, for sendin’ me the bit of company.”
[Illustration]
A LOST RECRUIT
When Mick Doherty heard that there was to be route-marching next day in
the neighbourhood of Kilmacrone, he determined upon going off for a long
“stravade” coastwards over the bog, where there were no roads worth
mentioning, and no risks of an encounter with the military. In this he
acted differently from all his neighbours, most of whom, upon learning
the news, began to speculate and plan how they might see and hear as
much as possible of their unwonted visitors. Opinions were chiefly
divided as to whether the Murghadeen cross-roads would be the best
station to take up, or the fork of the lane at Berrisbawn House. People
who, for one reason or another, could not go so far afield, consoled
themselves by reflecting that the band, at any rate, would be likely to
come through the village, and would no doubt strike up a tune while
passing, as it had done a couple of years ago, the last time the
red-coats had appeared in Kilmacrone. And, och, but that was the grand
playin’ intirely! It done your heart good just to be hearin’ the sound
of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of
thunderstorms they might be apt to have in Heaven above, than aught else
she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin’ such a thing;
and Molly Joyce said she’d as lief as not have sat down and cried when
was passed beyond her listenin’, it went that delightful,
thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin’ up over it.
The military authorities at Fortbrack were not ignorant of this popular
sentiment, and had considered it in the order of that day. For
experience had shown that a progress of troops through the surrounding
country districts generally conduced to the appearance before the
recruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose-jointed Pats, Micks, and
Joes; and a recent scarcity of this raw material made it seem expedient
to bring such an influence to bear upon the new ground of remote
Kilmacrone. Certain brigades and squadrons were accordingly directed to
move thitherward, under the general idea that an invading force from the
south-east had occupied Ballybeg Allan, while in pursuance of another
general idea, really more to the purpose, though not officially
announced, the accompanying band received instructions to be liberal and
lively in its performances by the way.
All along their route through the wide brown land the soldiers might be
sure of drawing as much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west
country could concentrate on any given line. Probably there would be no
one disposed like Mick Doherty to get out of the way, unless some very
small child roared and ran, if of a size to have acquired the latter
accomplishment, at the sound of the booming drums. To the great majority
of these on-lookers the spectacle would be a rare and gorgeous pageant,
a memory resplendent across twilight-hued time-tracts as a vision of
scarlet and golden gleams, and proudly-pacing horses, and music that
made you feel you had never known how much life there was in you all the
while. Some toll, it is true, had to be paid for this enjoyment. When it
had passed by things suddenly grew very flat and colourless, and there
was a tendency to feel more or less vaguely aggrieved because you could
not go asoldiering yourself. In cases, however, where circumstances
rendered that obviously impossible, as when people were too old or
infirm, or were women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom very
acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self-preserving instinct which
forbids us to persist in knocking our heads hard against our stone
walls. But it was different where the beholder was so situated that he
could imagine himself riding or striding after the rapturous march-music
to fields of peril and valour and glory, without diminishing the
vividness of the picture by simultaneously supposing himself some quite
other person. The gleam in young Felix M’Guinness’s eyes, as he watched
the red files dwindle and twinkle out of sight, was to the brightening
up beneath his grandfather’s shaggy brows as the forked flash is to the
shimmering sheet lightnings, that are but a harmless reflection from
far-off storms. And there indeed pleasure paid a ruinous duty. If those
who were liable to it did not imitate Mick Doherty’s prudence and hold
aloof, the reason may have been that they had not fortitude enough to
turn away from excitement offered on any terms, or that their position
was less desperately tantalising than his; and the latter explanation is
the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have
had their martial aspirations baulked by an impediment so flimsy and yet
so effectual.
There was nothing in the world to hinder Mick from enlisting except just
the unreasonableness of his mother, and that was an unreasonableness so
unreasonable as to verge upon what her neighbours would have called
“quare ould conthrariness.” For though a widow woman, and therefore
entitled to occupy a pathetic position, its privileges were defined by
the opinion that “she was not so badly off intirely as she might ha’
been.” Mick’s departure need not have left her desolate, since she had
another son and daughter at home, besides Essie married in the village,
and Brian settled down at Murghadeen, where he was doing well, and times
and again asking her to come and live with him. Then Mick would have
been able to help her out of his pay much more efficaciously than he
could do by his earnings at Kilmacrone, where work was slack and its
wage low, so that the result of a lad’s daily labour sometimes seemed
mainly the putting of a fine edge on a superfluous appetite. All these
points were most clearly seen by Mick in the light of a fiercely-burning
desire; but that availed him nothing unless he could set them as plainly
before some one else who was not thus illuminated. And not far from two
years back he had resolved that he would attempt to do so no more.
The soldiers had been about in the district on the day before, scattered
like poppy beds over the bog, and signalling and firing till the misty
October air tingled with excitement. When you have lived your life among
wide-bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest broken by the
plover’s pipe, or the croak of some heavily flapping bird, you will know
the meaning of a bugle call. Mick and his contemporaries had acted as
camp-followers from early till late with ever intensifying ardour; one
outcome whereof was that he heard his especial crony, Paddy Joyce,
definitely decide to go and enlist at Fortbrack next Monday, which gave
a turn more to the pinching screw of his own banned wish. It was with a
concerted scheme for ascertaining whether there were any chance of
bringing his mother round to a rational view of the matter that he and
his friend dropped into her cabin next morning, on the way to carry up a
load of turf. Mrs Doherty was washing her couple of blue-checked aprons
in an old brown butter-crock, and Mick thought he had introduced the
subject rather happily when he told her “she had a right to be takin’
her hands out of the suds, and dippin’ the finest curtsey she could
conthrive, and she wid the Commander-in-Gineral of the Army Forces
steppin’ in to pay her a visit.” Of course this statement required, as
it was intended to require, elucidation, so Mick proceeded to announce:
“It’s himself’s off to Fortbrack a Monday, ’listin’ he’ll be in the
Edenderry Light Infantry; so the next time we set eyes on him it’s
blazin’ along the street we’ll see him, like the boys we had here
yisterday.”
“Ah! sure now, that’ll be grand,” said Mrs Doherty, unwarily
complaisant; “we’ll all be proud to behold him that way. ’Tis a fine
thing for any young man who’s got a fancy to take up wid it.”
“Och, then, bedad it is so!” said Mick with emphasis, promptly making
for the opening given to him.
“Bedad it is,” said Paddy.
“There’s nothin’ like it,” said Mick.
“Ah, nothin’ at all,” said Paddy.
Mrs Doherty made no remark as she twisted a dripping apron into a
sausage-shaped roll to wring the water out.
“How much was it you were sayin’ you’d have in the week, Paddy, just to
put in your pocket for your divarsion like?” inquired Mick, with a
convenient lapse of memory.
“Och, seven or eight shillin’s anyway,” said Paddy, in the tone of one
to whom shillings had already become trivial coins, “and that, mind you,
after you’ve ped for the best of aitin’ and dhrinkin’, and your kit
free, and no call to be spendin’ another penny unless you plase. Sure,
Long Murphy was tellin’ me he was up in the town a while ago, on a day
when they were just after gettin’ their pay, and he said the Post Office
was that thick wid the soldier-lads sendin’ home the money to their
friends, he couldn’t get speech of a clerk to buy his stamp be no manner
of manes, not if he’d wrecked the place. ’Twas the Sidmouth Fusiliers
was in it that time; they’re off to Limerick now.”
“But that’s a grand regulation they have,” said Mick, “wid the short
service nowadays. Where’s the hardship in it when a man can quit at the
ind of three year, if he’s so plased? Three year’s no time to speak of.”
“Sure, not at all; you’d scarce notice it passin’ by. Like Barney
Bralligan’s song that finished before it begun--isn’t that the way of
it, ma’am?”
“It’s a goodish len’th of a while,” said Mrs Doherty.
“But thin there’s the lave: don’t be forgettin’ the lave, Paddy man.
Supposin’ we----”
“Tub-be sure, there’s the lave. Why, it’s skytin’ home on lave they do
be most continial. And the Edenderrys is movin’ no further than just to
Athlone; that’s as handy a place as you could get.”
“You’d not thravel from this to Athlone in the inside of a week, if it
was iver so handy,” said Mrs Doherty.
“Is it a week? Och! blathershins, Mrs Doherty ma’am, you’re mistook
intirely. Sure, onst you’ve stepped into the town yonder, the train’ll
take you there in a flash. And the trains do be oncommon convenient.”
“Free passes!” prompted Mick.
“Ay, bedad, and free passes they’ll give to any souldier takin’ his
furlough; so sorra the expense ’twould be supposin’ Mick here had a
notion to slip home of an odd day and see you.”
“_Mick!_” said Mrs Doherty.
“Och well, I was just supposin’. But I’m tould”--the many remarkable
facts which Paddy had been tould lost nothing in repetition--“that
they’ll sometimes have out a special train for a man in the army, if he
wants to go anywhere partic’lar in a hurry--there’s iligance for you.
And as for promotion, it’s that plinty you’ll scarce git time to
remimber your rank from one day to the next, whether it’s a full private
you are, or a lance-corporal, or maybe somethin’ greater. Troth, there’s
nothin’ a man mayn’t rise to. And then, Mrs Doherty, it’s the proud
woman you’d be--_anybody’d_ be--that they hadn’t stood in the way of it.
And pensions--he might be pensioned off wid as much as a couple of
shillin’s a day.”
“Not this long while yet, plase the pigs,” broke out Mick, squaring his
shoulders, as if Time were a visible antagonist, and momentarily
forgetting the matter immediately in hand. “But there’s chances in
it--splendid--och, it’s somethin’ you may call livin’.”
“And,” said his friend, “the rations I’m tould is surprisin’ these
times. The top of everythin’ that’s to be got, uncooked, widout bone.”
Paddy and Mick discoursed for a good while in this strain about the
dignities and amenities of a military life, and Mrs Doherty had not
much to say on the subject. During the conversation, however, she
continued to rinse one of her aprons, and wring it dry very carefully,
and drop it back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear,
which goes on repeating some process ineffectually. The two friends read
in her silence an omen of acquiescent conviction, and congratulated one
another upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in
high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, and
that his mother was, as Paddy put it, “comin’ round to the notion
gradual, like an ould goat grazin’ round its tetherin’ stump.” His
hopes, indeed, were so completely in the ascendant that he summed up his
most serious uneasiness when he said to himself: “She’ll do right
enough, no fear, or I’d niver think of it, if Thady was just somethin’
steadier. But sure he might happen to git a thrifle more wit yet; he’s
no great age to spake of.”
But when he came home about sunsetting, his mother was feeding her few
hens outside their cabin, the end one of a mossy-roofed row, with its
door turned at right angles to the others, looking out across the
purple-brown of the bogland to the far-off hills, faint, like a blue
mist with a waved pattern in it, against the horizon. Mick, brought up
short by the group, woke out of his walking dream, in which he had been
performing acts of valour to the tune of the “Soldier’s Chorus” in
Gounod’s _Faust_, the last thing the band had played yesterday; and he
noticed a diminution in the select circle of fowls, who crooned and
crawked and pecked round the broken dish of scraps.
“I see the specklety pullet’s after strayin’ on you agin,” he said:
“herself’s the conthrary little bein’; I must take a look about for her
prisintly.”
“Ah, sure she’s sold,” said his mother; “it’s too many I had altogether.
I was torminted thryin’ to get feedin’ for them. So I sold her this
mornin’ to Mrs Dunne at Loughmore, that gave me a fine price for her.
’Deed she’d have took her off of me this while back, on’y I’d just a
sort of notion agin partin’ from the crathur. But be comin’ in to your
supper, child alive; it’s ready waitin’ this good while. Molly’s below
at her sister’s, and I dunno where Thady’s off to, so there’s on’y you
and me in it to-night.”
In the room the more familiar odour of turf-smoke was overborne by a
crisp smell of baking, and Mrs Doherty picked up a steaming plate which
had been keeping warm on the hearth. “Isn’t that somethin’ like now?”
she said, setting it on the table triumphantly. “Rale grand they turned
out this time, niver a scorch on the whole of them. I was afeard me hand
might maybe ha’ got out o’ mixin’ them, ’tis so long since I had e’er a
one for you, but sure I bought a half-stone of seconds wid the price of
the little hin, and that’ll make a good few, so it will, jewel avic, and
then we must see after some more. Take one of the thick bits, honey.”
Probably most of us have had experience of the unceremonious methods
which Fate often chooses when communicating to us important
arrangements. We have seen by what a little-seeming triviality of an
incident she may intimate that our cherished hope has been struck dead,
or that the execution of some other decree has turned the current of our
life away. It is sometimes as if she contemptuously sent us a grotesque
and dwarfish messenger, who makes grimaces at us while telling us the
bad news, which is ungenerous and scarcely dignified. So we need not
wonder if Mick Doherty had to read the death-warrant of his darling
ambition in a pile of three-cornered griddle-cakes. At any rate, he did
read it there swiftly as clearly. Most likely he knew it all before the
plate was set on the table, and his heart had already gone down with a
run when he replied to his mother’s commendations that they looked
first-rate. As he endorsed this praise with what appetite he could,
being, indeed, mechanically hungry, the uppermost thought in his mind
was how he should at once let his mother understand that she had got the
price she hoped for her pet hen; and after considering for a while, he
said: “Did you ever notice the quare sort of lane-over the turf-stack
out there’s takin’ on it? I question hadn’t we done righter to have took
a leveler bit of ground for under it. But I was thinkin’ this
mornin’”--of what a different subject he had been thinking--“that next
year I’d thry buildin’ it agin the back o’ th’ ould shed, where there
does be ne’er a slant at all.”
“Ay, sure that ’ud be grand,” said Mrs Doherty, much more elated than if
she had heard of a large fortune; “you couldn’t find an iliganter place
for it in the width of this world.” She felt quite satisfied that her
craftily-timed treat had dispelled the dreaded danger, which actually
was the case in a way. But if Mick would stay at home with her, she was
perfectly content to suppose that she came after a griddle-cake in his
estimation. Her relief made her unusually talkative; but Mick was
reflecting between his answers how he must now tell Paddy Joyce that
they were never to be comrades after all.