fervour, “for the load ’twould take off of me ould conscience couldn’t
be tould in speech.”
As she watched him splash down the glistering roadway with the note in
his pocket, the anxious pucker into which an obliquely dazzling ray
gathered her countenance, really belied a sense of relief such as
follows the transference of some hopelessly bungled-over business to a
person who you feel indefinitely confident will somehow make a good job
of it for you. That sense would no doubt have strengthened in her, had
she known how promptly and energetically Dick acted under his new
responsibility. As a matter-of-fact, he that evening posted a long
letter to Galway, and followed to the same address at an early hour on
the next morning.
About a fortnight afterwards, Mrs Duffy called on Mrs Quinn. The Widdy
was glad of it, for the neighbours had all been more or less stiff with
her since the affair of the stolen shirt. Hence the effusiveness of her
welcome was such that Mrs Duffy’s manners broke down so far as to ignore
more than one “And what way’s the childer?” and “What news do you be
gettin’ from Moyglish this long while back?” in her impatience to arrive
at her own “Did you hear tell who’s comin’ home to the Castle?”
“Niver a tell I heard of comin’ or goin’, forby I know Mr O’Neill’s took
off wid him to Galway the week afore last.”
“Sure Brian M’Clusky, that went wid him, come home this mornin’, and
brought word there’s a match made between his Honour himself and Miss
Una, and the weddin’-day fixed and all. Quite as quite ’tis to be,
because th’ ould Gineral’s had a stroke, and is broke entirely to what
he was. Brian would scarce ha’ known him, he’s that failed, on’y some
one let the door slam, and then ’twas all the ‘blamed blunderin’
brutes,’ and ‘confounded mischievous ijjits’ wid him, just the same as
iver. But two it takes to help him across the room.”
“Well, now, that’s a pity,” said Widdy Quinn sympathetically; “and
himself that was always a fine--” she cast about for an appropriate
adjective--“a fine free-spoken gentleman.”
“It’s quare altogether he’s got, Brian sez. Took up wid the idee, he
has, that it’s he owns the Castle and all, and the others do be
humourin’ him, and lettin’ on ’tis the way he thinks. And he’s comin’
here to live when Miss Una’s married, that’s to be in next to no time.
None too well, Brian sez, she looked. Sure, she’ll ha’ fretted about the
Gineral. But Mr O’Neill was in great spirits whatever. Some message
there was he called after Brian to be givin’ you--that you were to be
mindin’ the cat till Miss Una’d come for it--sure, he’ll tell you
himself. Belike she’ll be takin’ it back.”
“Belike will she,” said Mrs Quinn evasively.
But when she was alone, she stood for a while at her door in rueful
contemplation of the pseudo-Triptolemus, who sat enjoying the March
sunshine under the writhen black boughs and crimped green buds of the
thorn-bush.
“’Twill be a sort of judgment on me,” she mused, “if Miss Una takes her
away in the misbelief ’tis raelly himself; for ’tis lonesome I’d be
widout the little ould crathur. But I scarce know whether I’d liefer she
done that, or heard tell of the villainy I’m after conthrivin’ on her.
Sure, anyway, she’ll be apt now to set less store be cats. To think of
her takin’ up wid his Honour here; but, bedad, I might ha’ made a guess
after seein’ the caper he cut when he misconsthrued me to say somethin’
had happint Miss Una. Troth, be the lep he gave in his chair, I thought
a could dhrip off the roof must ha’ caught him in the back of his neck.
Och, but I’m the schemin’ ould sinner! Howsome’er, sorra a penny of the
last money of hers have I touched; and don’t intind. But all the while I
wouldn’t wondher if that’s on’y just because I’m after hearin’ she’s
comin’ back, and she so charitable to a body, I’m apt to not be so hard
set. Bedad, now, there’s no gittin’ to the end of the divilment does be
in one’s mind; and it’s maybe no use thryin’. ’Tis the same way as when
there’s a sidiment of turf-mould at the bottom of your bucket of wather.
If you keep stirrin’ it up, ’twill bide ugly and black on you; but if
you let it stand aisy and settle itself for a while, you’ll be able to
prisently pour it off as clane as you plase.”
This piece of natural philosophy may have been suggested to the Widdy by
a tin pan of water, which was flashing in the sun a few paces from her
door. Just then a water-wagtail lit daintily on the rim, a most
unsubstantial-looking “smal fowle,” hardly worth the attention, one
would have supposed, of any pot-hunter. Minnie, however, was of a
different opinion, and uncoiled herself from her compact fur roll for a
trailing crawl and a darting pounce, by which she gained nothing but two
wet paws, as the wagtail took unscathed flight in airy undulations, with
a derisive chirrup at every dip.
“Bad manners to you, Minnie,” said the Widdy: “can’t you let grabbin’
after the little birds alone? Musha, good gracious! I’m thinkin’ the two
of us is scarce anythin’ better than a pair of ould rapscallions. And,
bedad, we put our fut in it now and agin. But sure, if we niver done
worse, we might be right enough yit.”
A sentiment which, under the circumstances, leads us to infer that the
fable rather than its moral was the Widdy Quinn’s forte.
A PROVIDENT PERSON
Mac Barry said that he wished he had a steam-yacht, a hunter, a rifle,
and a pound; if he had those, he wouldn’t want anything else. A pound
was the largest sum that the financial experiences of nearly six years
enabled him to imagine himself as owning, and he considered that it
would be quite adequate to the maintenance of the rifle, the hunter, and
the steam-yacht. His cousin Ethel, who was two years older, and inclined
to be consequential, said that some people had _more_ than a pound; she
believed her papa had a hundred a year, and she hoped she would too,
when she was grown up. Whereupon her sister Frances, Mac’s contemporary,
solemnly said: “But when we’re growed up, perhaps we’ll all be old
beggar-men and beggar-women.” A tramp, lately seen passing the window,
had no doubt suggested the mention of this possibility, which was to Mac
a new and startling idea.
[Illustration]
Ethel said confidently: “What nonsense; it’s only poor people who are
beggars, not people like us.” But Frances replied, “Maybe they were like
us when they were little; and then they growed and growed and growed
into old beggars. I wonder if we will. It won’t be very nice.” Frances’s
grey eyes were so large and cloudily dark that they would have looked
melancholy, even if she had been taking a cheerful view of things, which
she seldom did. “I hope I won’t be the sort that is lame, and has big
bags,” she said; “they’re the nastiest of all.”
These speculations were taking place towards the end of luncheon at
Rathbawn Castle, where Mac Barry and his cousins, and their respective
parents, were spending part of the summer on a visit to his grandfather,
Lord Ballyduff. The subject was changed at this point by Frances’s
mother asking Mac whether he would like to drive with her that
afternoon, when she went to see Mrs Fletcher at Manor Vaughan. He said,
“The knees of me knickerbockers is too dirty to go anywhere in the
carriage, thank God!”
“My dear Mac,” said his Aunt Marjory, “you really should not use such
expressions.”
“_Well_,” said Mac, “I’m sure I’m a great deal thankfuller for being too
dirty to go visiting people, than for having me dinner--luncheon, I
mean. I went with Lil sometimes, and they squawked like hens, and gave
one bad little biscuits with caraway seeds in them, at tea. I didn’t
want anything, but they can’t ever let a person alone, and I’d rather
stay at home, thanks.”
So Mac, having successfully resisted this distasteful entertainment, it
was settled that the little girls should go, and he resumed his
meditations upon the future and its possibilities. The particular one
spoken of by Frances had taken rather a hold on his mind, being both
novel and unpleasant. He had never formed any theory about the origin of
old beggar men, and he now could think of no facts that struck him as
satisfactorily inconsistent with their evolution out of a person like
himself. Ethel’s argument did not reassure him in the least, because he
thought very poorly of her sense. Just at that moment she was teasing
her mother to let her put on a new frock, which seemed to him
exceedingly despicable folly. But he was not disposed to agree with
Frances in accepting the possibility as an inevitable fate; he would
rather look upon it as a peril to be guarded against. And for this
reason he thought he would, in the first place, consult any people upon
whose judgment he at all relied, as to whether they believed it to be
really impending. The number of these persons was small, the more so
because his father and mother had both gone away for a few days;
however, he presently found his Uncle Herbert writing in the library,
and jogged his elbow as a preliminary to a conversation. This caused a
blot on Colonel Barry’s letter, and perhaps on the record of his
language for the day, but Mac said with a sort of bland surprise, “By
Jove, that’s a big black one. But you must have had a great deal too
much ink in your pen, you know. You needn’t prod it down to the bottom
of the bottle every time, as if you were fishing with it.”
“Well, what do you want?” inquired the ungrateful recipient of this good
advice.
“Look here,” said Mac, “would you think that a person like me would be
an old beggar-man when he growed quite up?”
Colonel Barry had just been looking over a highly unsatisfactory
account, and what with that and the blot, felt pessimistic about things
in general. “Upon my word,” he said, “as far as I can see, it’s
beginning to look as if we were all uncommonly likely to come to that
one of these fine days. But run off, young man, for I’m busy.”
“I should have thought,” said Mac, moving towards the door, elaborately
at his leisure, “that _you_ were too old to grow into anything else
ever. And I _am_ going out, as it happens, to speak to young
O’Sullivan.”
Mac found young O’Sullivan, who was rather a crony of his, raking gravel
not far from the house. It did not accord with his sense of the fitness
of things to consult this friend point-blank about his own future
prospects, and he therefore said, after a while, with a view to leading
up: “Do you think, Dan, that you’ll ever grow into an old beggar? I
s’pose you’d rather not--a raggety old beggar-man, you know.”
But young O’Sullivan replied curtly: “’Deed then, sir, I never heard
tell of any of me name but was very dacint, respectable people. I dunno
what talk you have about beggars.” And collecting his rake, hoe, and
brush into a bunch, he dumped them down across his wheelbarrow, and
trundled it huffily into a shrubbery walk.
This source of information being thus prematurely stopped, Mac had begun
to wonder why young O’Sullivan went off in such a hurry, when he saw
coming along the avenue the same old man who had passed by the window at
luncheon, and who since then had been visiting the regions of the
kitchen. He seemed to be a very typical beggar-man, with a
mysterious-looking leathern wallet, a long beard, and garments that
flapped in large square tatters; and it struck Mac that here was a
favourable opportunity for obtaining knowledge from the fountain-head.
Consequently he said in reply to the new-comer’s salutation: “I can’t
assist anybody, because I’ve left all my money upstairs in a drawer that
locks. What used you to do before you began to walk about?” This
appeared to him the most delicate way of describing the other’s
profession. “Hadn’t you ever any money of your own? Or had you as much
as a florin and a sixpence, and a silver mug belonging to you any time,
only then you growed up different?”
Old Joe Gafney had never been endowed with great conversational gifts,
and was not now capable of much beyond his professional litanies, but
Mac’s question chanced to touch a theme upon which he still always
waxed eloquent, and he said: “Is it money? Och, begor, sir, it’s the
grand little bagful I had saved up, that I kep’ unbeknownst under the
hearthstone at home, till one day me rogue of a wife she ups and robs me
of it, and I away at Dunardmore Fair. On’y for her doin’ that on me, the
divil a fut ’ud I ever ha’ took to thrampin’ the road. Plenty I had
saved. Ah now, sir, wasn’t she the quare thief of the world to go rob me
that way?”
The appeal somewhat embarrassed Mac, to whom it seemed unmannerly either
to controvert or endorse this opinion of Mrs Old-Beggarman. As for the
bag, it had never indeed existed save in Joe’s imagination; but he
believed quite as firmly in it as in the hot sun shining on his
bewildered old head, and he maundered on volubly, until at last he
abruptly broke off, and began to shuffle along with a whining request
that a poor man might be relieved for the love of God.
“Oh, it’s the grand-governor,” said Mac, rather glad to see his
grandfather approaching. Lord Ballyduff relieved all the parties
concerned by means of a penny, and Mac joined him on his stroll. The
prospect of growing into an old beggar-man had somehow become gloomier
in Mac’s eyes during this interview, and now looked so ugly that he did
not like to speak of it to anybody. He was meditating deeply upon plans
of precaution--a hoard of savings might, apparently, be efficacious, if
inaccessible to one’s wife--and when Lord Ballyduff said: “What were you
talking to that old fellow about?” he waved the question away with a
preoccupied, “Oh, business--business, that you couldn’t possibubly
understand.”
His grandfather was accustomed to such rebuffs, and they continued their
walk without any more interruptions. They were going to the haggard,
where a new rick was being built up in fragrant bundles under its shiny
zinc hood. Outside the broad-leaved doors Lord Ballyduff threw away the
end of his cigar, and carefully stamped out the red spark with his heel.
“It wouldn’t do to have a flare-up in there,” he said.
“What would you do if you burnt it all up?” said Mac.
“Well, for one thing,” said Lord Ballyduff, “the Insurance Company would
have to pay me five hundred pounds.”
“For burning up all that hay?” said Mac with interest. “Then why on
earth don’t you? Would they pay all the same if it was me burnt it up?
Yes, did you say? When you speak so indistinctually, you make a person
quite deaf.” It seemed to Mac that here was a very easy and enjoyable
mode of securing a provision against an indigent old age, and the idea
charmed him so much that his blue eyes gleamed in his small sun-browned
face. “How many is five hundred?” he said.
“Oh--more than you’d know what to do with, at anyrate,” said his
grandfather.
“Wouldn’t I just?” said Mac. “Well enough I’d know. I’d keep it in the
same place with me cartridges. I should think one’s wife would be afraid
to go meddling with it then. When ladies and girls see a person looking
at a gun or anything, they all say: ‘_Oh yawpy, yawpy--don’t touch
it--it’s very dangerous_’--great idiots. But I declare there’s Mrs Knox
at the gate. If she’s going to John Loughlin’s, I’m going with her to
see the new calf,” and he ran off with his mind for the time being
diverted from provident cares.
Mrs Knox, housekeeper at the Castle, was a sister of John Loughlin, who
held a goodish little bit of land over towards Alanmore, and had long
been wondered at by neighbouring farmers for his persistence in keeping
it under meadow year after year, till some of the fields, they said,
were got that thick with moss, you might think he was after laying it
down like a carpet at so much a yard. He had a right to plough them all
up, and not have e’er a haycock sitting in a one of them for the next
half dozen years. But John Loughlin continued to disregard their advice,
and with the exception of a field or so of oats--which he was suspected
of growing only for the sake of the thatching straw--had every rood of
his holding waving with the long grass as sure as June came round. His
haggard was a sight to be seen. It contained the accumulations of many a
season, for grudgingly and of necessity did he consume or sell any part
of his garnered crop. In the sheltered corner, against a screen of tall
elms, rose up the long-ridged ricks “with wedge sublime,” flanked by
sharp-peaked pikes like gigantic peg-tops, all in capes of golden straw
surmounting their soft umbers and greys. One small rick of very old
clover hay which had been cut in smooth slices, looked as close and dark
in grain as a brown loaf. To pace up and down at the end of the
paddock, whence he had a good view of their array, was his favourite
recreation, and he indulged in it for some time on that brilliant July
afternoon, while his sister and Mac were making their way towards him
over the sunny fields. The view was even more than usually interesting
to him just then, because the joy of building a new rick would so soon
begin. All his meadows were down, and some of them up again in large
cock, ready to be drawn in: the others were turning themselves into hay
under the hot sunshine, with the least possible demand for labour. There
would be, he calculated, barely room for one more big rick at the
north-west angle of the walls. That would fill the haggard chock-full,
not another ton would it hold. However, when Grace married Ned
Lawlor--and the wedding might take place before next Shrove-tide--two
ricks must go for her dowry, which would, alas, make some room. It said
a very great deal for the sincerity of John’s feelings towards his
granddaughter that he could endure to anticipate such a woeful gap. He
had for a long while past been reconciling himself to the prospect, and
commonly wound up his self-conflict with the reflection: “Ah well, sure
it’s the best thing I can do for the crathur, and that’s one good
comfort anyway. _She’ll_ be as plased and content as anything at all
events.”
Therefore the contrariness of things, and the differences in people’s
points of view, are clearly exemplified by the fact that all the while
Grace was looking askance upon his beloved haggard, and could not bear
the thoughts of Edward Lawlor. This Grace was the eldest child of his
favourite daughter, who had been afflicted by matrimony with a
struggling husband and a long family. To diminish those burdens he had
some years before adopted Grace, and taken her to live at the farm, on
the understanding that in due time her marriage portion should be
provided. She found favour in his eyes, and it became rumoured in the
parish that the portion would be, at least, “a very tidy little bit of
money.” So much so that Robert Lawlor, who was a warm man, when in quest
of a suitable alliance for his son Ned, thought it worth while to
consult John Loughlin on the subject. The result of the negotiations had
been satisfactory, though not decisive. There was no need for hurry, as
the little farm old Robert had in his eye for Ned would not fall vacant
yet a while, and the fortune of another not impossible daughter-in-law
required cautious and deliberate investigation ere a final choice could
be made. Neither was John unwilling, for his part, to indefinitely
postpone the removal of his granddaughter and his two stately ricks. But
that the affair was being talked of everybody knew, Grace herself among
the rest, and she had unhappily taken a strong dislike to Ned Lawlor
from the first moment that she beheld him sitting with the sun shining
through his red whiskers in his pew near the pulpit at ten o’clock Mass.
She now said to herself that she would never marry him, whatever anybody
might do or say. Yet she was so used to seeing matches made up as a
matter of course that she felt almost as if she were resolving vainly
against a sort of fate which would overtake her whatever she might say
or do. The project had not reached a stage at which her grandfather
would mention it to her; and being a shy and silent girl, she had never
expressed any sentiment that could give him a clue to the state of her
mind. He never guessed at the steady growth of her abhorrence for Ned
Lawlor and everything connected with him, even the touch of his hand on
the gate-latch, which she was wont to rub up with an old duster after he
had gone through. But she knew right well that no such proposal would
ever have troubled her had it not been for her bit of fortune, and she
was also quite aware that this lay stored up among the tall ricks, and
nowhere else. Often enough she had heard it said that every penny her
grandfather was worth was in his hay. Consequently it was natural that
she should look upon the haggard as a grievance and a bane. “Bad luck to
them,” she would say, “I wish the whole of them was burnt to dust and
ashes out of that.” (Grace may be excused, since there are few of us who
have not at some time or other been ready to follow the example of the
swineherd Ho-ti and his lubberly son.) And on days when she had happened
to fall in with Ned Lawlor, it must be owned that she frequently added:
“and himself in the middle of them.”
This did occur on the morning of the day in question, when he stepped
over to see about the loan of a hay-shaker, and had rather a long
interview with her, at which he considered himself to have behaved with
an agreeable mingling of gallantry and facetiousness. He would have been
much surprised, poor man, to learn that fright and detestation were the
sentiments which he had inspired; but so it was. In fact, Grace’s
spirits did not soon recover from the dejection caused by his jokes, and
when the shadows were beginning to lengthen she was glad to see the
portly figure of her good-natured great-aunt Lizzie coming along under
the hedge of Killenbeg’s Corner. A little company might help her to
shake off the odious recollection.
Mrs Knox and Mac had had a somewhat perplexing walk. Hitherto, Mac’s
experience of nature had been gathered exclusively at the sea-side. He
had not yet quite unlearned the instinct to seek in the gravel for
shells, and he still felt disappointed at its unproductiveness of any
desirable varieties. Lanes and yards and fields abounded for him in
extraordinary objects, concerning which his curiosity was only
restrained by his constant wish to pose as one of those who know. But
to-day his ignorance was complicated by a theory which he had based upon
his grandfather’s remark about the fire insurance. He had understood
the grand-governor--a mode of address adapted from his father’s--to
announce a reward of great magnitude offered for the destruction of hay
in large quantities; whence he inferred that hay was esteemed a
worthless substance, to be got rid of summarily like weeds and other
rubbish. Now therefore, as they took their way through the scented
meadows among the silvery-green swathes and encampments of peaked cocks,
he puzzled Mrs Knox by suggestions which seemed to argue rash and
destructive propensities in Master Mac, whom she had heretofore regarded
as an unusually reasonable and peaceable child. “Why, it ’ud be a sinful
pity to go do such a thing, Master Mac,” she replied to a plan which he
had propounded for clearing a newly-mown field by sweeping it all into
the big horsepond at one end, “It ’ud be no good for man or baste, after
soakin’ that way in the water. But maybe the child’s thinkin’ of flax,
that has to be steeped, sure enough. Is that it, honey? Ah, dear now,
it’s the quare botch you’d make of your hay crop if you gave it the same
thratement as flax. ’Deed and I remember the stink of it, when they
would be steepin’ it in the bog-holes up at me poor father’s place. But
hay’s another pair of shoes. I must tell John the notion you had. But
sure it’s the fine little farmer you’ll be one of these days.”