as exactly as if the gauge had been made to suit them. This discovery
excited him a little; yet in a moment his eyes wandered towards the
neighbouring thorn-clump behind which the hen had temporarily
disappeared, to emerge presently at closer quarters. But before that
happened, a much more imposing object arrived on the scene. Round the
corner came the great mustard-coloured van, in which he had laid his
victim to find a vast and wandering grave. He watched it lumber up, and
speculated as to whether the little white heap were still lying in the
dark angle by the door. Then a more alarming surmise occurred to him.
What if the vanmen, enraged at the liberty taken with their vehicle,
should have traced the deed to him, and would now stop and denounce it?
The danger of this seemed to have passed harmlessly by, but it suddenly
returned with a rush, for the man who had been sitting on the board at
the door, slid hastily off his low seat, and came running back to the
group at the bank. His first words, too, were ominous. “Might you happen
to be missin’ e’er a little white chicken?” he said.
“Not to my knowledge, we didn’t,” Maggie Ryan began, but Pat interrupted
her, as he caught sight of the hen and chickens, which by this time were
close at hand.
“Bedad, yis; itself’s the livin’ moral of one of them,” he said, “it
must ha’ hopped into us the time we was stoppin’ here this mornin’. I’d
a notion to bring it home wid me to the childher, but like enough
’twould only die on them, or else they might have it tore in pieces
contendin’ over it, and besides that, it has the heart of me broke
conthrollin’ it from fluttherin’ out of me ould pocket every minute of
time.” As he spoke, he extracted the chicken, and set it down on the
ground, where it promptly rejoined its brethren, after which they all
ran “through other” with such bewildering liveliness, that in a moment
or two no one could have confidently singled out the travelled member of
the family.
“Why, thrue for you,” said Maggie Ryan, “one and one is two, and two is
four--sure enough there’d be but nine widout it. Glory be to goodness
now, to think of it settin’ up to take off wid itself that way! I’d ha’
been as sorry as anythin’ to lose it, after me brother, poor man,
disthressin’ himself sendin’ herself there up to me from his bit of a
place in the county Wicklow, along wid the clutch of eggs, to make a
beginnin’ like of a few fowls for me to be keepin’. And only a couple
bad out of the whole dozen, and not a coloured feather but white on a
one of them.”
The end of this statement was lost upon Pat Magennis, who had run off
after the receding van.
“I dunno how they got strayin’ out,” Maggie continued, “but I’ll put
them up safe now at all events, before I wet me cup of tay. So
good-night to you kindly, ma’am, and, Johnny, don’t thravel away too far
from us entirely on that grand line of rails.” She went her way, driving
in front of her the white hen and chickens, and Johnny, who had
witnessed this resurrection with almost incredulous eyes, was left to
gloat over his latest acquisition, no longer now poisoned for him by
remorseful memories. It was not until the last glimmer of clearness had
died out of the dusk that he shunted the new carriage into a siding by
his truck, and withdrew lingeringly indoors.
At this point Johnny’s light railway had reached the highest pitch of
perfection to which it ever attained, and I wish I could append a report
of continued prosperity. But that was not to be. An hour or so later,
anybody who had happened to be abroad in the lane might have noticed a
dimness steal over the stars to the south-eastward, until they turned
from twinkling rosettes of light into the semblance of tarnished silver
nails, and anon were vanished altogether as if they had dropped out of
their holes. The drifts of vapour blowing in from the sea spread and
thickened fast; the hedgerows began to rustle, and large rain-drops made
dark wafers dispersedly in the shimmering white dust on the road.
Presently the night was all filled with the sound and scent of rain,
driving and splashing and dripping. When the May morning broke this
downpour was over, and the clouds were lifting to widen a chink of
glowing amber. But along the bank where Johnny’s railway had run, a
brisk little stream went rippling, and the only trace of craftmanship
remaining there was the tin carriage, overset and lying on its side in
the water.
Perhaps the ruin thus wrought sounds more deplorable than it in reality
was. Of one thing we may feel certain; that an inventive child with
ample puddles at his command, and no authorities present to enforce
decrees against dabbling, would never, in the longest day, find himself
stinted of congenial occupation--our most unalloyed boon. The white hen,
too, and her family had again escaped, and were thoroughly enjoying
themselves on the track of many small black and fawn-coloured slugs,
whom the wet grass had tempted forth. And if these latter were not quite
happy under the turn affairs were taking, it is clearly impossible to
satisfy all parties, and when discontent is confined to things which
slimily creep and crawl, we may at any rate hope that it has been
reduced to its very lowest power.
ROSANNE
Towards seven o’clock on a summer evening in July, Rosanne should have
been helping her mistress in the dairy, instead of which she was sitting
under the shadow of the big water-barrel at the kitchen-door and writing
to her sweetheart. She wrote to tell him how she had been given leave to
go home next Sunday, and she did not stop to consider that she was at
this very moment risking the loss of her holiday, by getting into
disgrace for neglect of duty. But it was not Rosanne’s way to think of
more than one thing at a time, so when it occurred to her that John
Gahan, who had called about the loan of a hay-shaker, might post a
letter for her as he went home, she acted upon the idea without further
reflection. She had her paper spread out on the barrel stand, and craned
her curly head over it at unlikely angles as she enjoined Dan McClean to
meet her at Hunt’s in Kilbracken, where the gig would drop her next
Saturday evening.
Meanwhile the dairy work had been going on well enough without her. Mrs
Conroy had a pleased smile as she saw the ripe yellow cream curl
smoothly up under her skimmer, and added it to the rich contents of her
great wide-mouthed gathering-crock. She thought they would have a grand
churning to-morrow, and at least a dozen pounds of butter for Saturday’s
fair. But when she had finished, she recollected that Rosanne should
have been there to carry the pigs their supper of sour skim milk; and
after calling her in vain several times, she sent little Ned to find
her, and bid her come along out of that this instant. Ned delivered this
message, with the pithy addition: “She’s ragin’”; and so in frightened
haste Rosanne finished addressing her envelope with wild blots, and
overset the ink bottle, and rushed away to fetch the bucket. When she
reached the dairy she was relieved at finding nobody there to scold her,
and, still hurry-driven, she filled her bucket and ran off with it
across the yard. Rosanne rather liked seeing the pigs at their supper,
they wriggled so all over with enjoyment, and she now leaned against the
stye-door to watch them. She began to sing _Norah Creina_, but in the
middle of the first verse she stopped abruptly. A frightful misgiving
had suddenly seized her, come she knew not whence. She leaned forward
and looked into the trough; she snatched up her bucket and examined it
carefully; and then she perceived that she had indeed done a dreadful
thing. In her haste she had emptied the wrong crock, and had thrown a
week’s gathering of cream to the pigs!
_How_ dreadful it was, she could estimate by the pride her mistress took
in the row of rich yellow-topped milk-pans, the precautions with which
she surrounded them, her wrath if any clumsiness imperilled them. What
would that wrath be now? Rosanne made her mind up all in a minute not to
face it. She would run away home. It was no such great distance across
the fields; she might get there, she supposed, before it was quite dark.
She thought her father would be glad to see her, and if so, her
stepmother must perforce acquiesce. But at all events there was Dan
McClean, who would be certainly “as plased as anythin’,” and make much
of her, and take her part whatever happened--Dan’s stalwart frame held
up the whole fabric of Rosanne’s future. Beyond a doubt she had lost her
chance of getting a holiday in any other way, she thought, as she raced
at full speed back to the house. For she had no time to hesitate, as the
discovery might at any moment prevent her flight. Luckily almost
everybody was out in the hayfield, and she got up to her attic
unperceived. There she collected her few most cherished little
possessions--the rest might be fetched afterwards--threw on her shawl,
and once more dared the creaking clattering stairs, and the passage that
led by the awful dairy door. Fortune still favoured her; she escaped all
their perils, and was presently scrambling through the gap in the briery
hedge into the meadows at the back of the haggard. She ran all the way
through the first field, because she had such a vivid picture in her
mind of what might be at that very minute happening within doors. She
could almost see Mrs Conroy’s face as she stared into the empty cream
crock, and hear her terrible call, loud and peremptory, “Rosanne,
Rosanne.” The mere thought of it made her scud along like a rabbit.
But at the end of the field she heard real voices, for the haymakers
were returning to the house, so she slipped out of their way, behind a
smooth-sided haycock. When they passed, she stole back to the foot-path,
and on again. About Rathcrumlyn Farm the land was all down in meadow,
and the fields were bordered by thick bosky hedges. Tall cocks threw
shadows nearly across some of them, and the interspaces were very
goldenly green with fresh-springing after-grass, under westering
sunbeams. On others the newly mown swathes still lay in soft waves, and
the shorn sward underneath was paler hued, not having had time to thrust
up any young blades since the sweep of the scythe went by. Along under
the hedge the remnant of the meadow made a fringe with feathery crests
drooping and creamy plumes, tall stalks that unfurled white sunshades,
and here and there a scarlet poppy. The drops of an earlier shower still
twinkled beneath them, and Rosanne’s crisp pink calico skirt grew limp
and bedraggled as she brushed by. But she did not heed this; for the one
article of dress that she much regarded--her new hat with its wreaths of
curious buff and crimson roses--rested safely on her head, and her head
was full of pre-occupying speculations. She began to think that perhaps,
after all, no such great harm was done. That is to say, it was, of
course, a woful pity about the beautiful cream; but for the matter of
losing her place thereby, she wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t as lief as
not quit being in service. And she thought it as like as not that when
she came home this way, Dan McClean would again take up the notion of
their getting married after the harvest. That was what he had wanted to
do in the spring, if her stepmother had not put it into everybody’s head
that it would be better for them to get together a few pounds before
they set up housekeeping. Rosanne now said to herself that she did not
see any occasion for it. She wondered, too, what sort of girl Maggie
Walsh, her stepsister, who had just come to live at home, was apt to be.
She had a presentiment that there would be little love lost between
them. However, that didn’t much signify--by reason of Dan.
Through three or four fields Rosanne passed without meeting anything to
interrupt these cogitations. Now and then the voices of home-going
hay-makers were wafted over a hedge, and a belated corncrake was heard
from a long way off faintly “creak-creaking.” The shadows lengthened
silently all about, and the sun-lit interspaces seemed as they shrank to
grow more jewel-like in their shimmering emerald. From a sheltering
corner a large olive-mottled frog started up out of the tangled grass,
and went flinging himself on before her in a long series of expanding
leaps; but at last she almost trod on him as he stopped and sat suddenly
squatting. At the same moment somebody called her name loudly, close
by--“Rosanne, Rosanne.”
A flappy white sun-bonnet was looking at her over a gate in a hedge, a
little way to the right; and in it she recognised her cousin, Martha
Reilly, who lived near them at home. “And where might you be off to?”
Martha said, as Rosanne came up to the gate, “and wid fine grandeur on
you,” she added, referring to the rose-wreathed hat.
“Sure I’m just streelin’ about a bit,” Rosanne said with rather confused
unconcern. She regretted the encounter, and was not at all disposed to
confide in Martha, who had the name of being “the greatest ould gossip
you’d meet in a long day’s walk.” “It’s a fine warm evenin’,” she
continued, to account for her stroll.
“Warm enough, bedad,” said Martha, “you might say so if it was in the
hay you’d been. I come up yisterday to work above at Hilfirthy’s, and I
was manin’ to run over this evenin’ and see you, on’y somethin’ delayed
me. And what’s the best good news wid you this long while?”
“I dunno is there any news in partic’lar, bad or good,” said Rosanne,
with a guilty “I could an’ I would” in her mind as she thought of the
pigs’ supper.
“Then you _haven’t_ heard tell about Dan McClean?” said Martha, suddenly
craning her neck over the topmost bar.
“What about him at all?” said Rosanne with a great start.
“You haven’t heard?” Martha repeated in a half incredulous tone.
“Can’t you tell me?” said Rosanne.
“I’ll come over to you--just wait?” said Martha. She launched her
pitchfork across the gate, and began to scale its many bars with
remarkable agility. She had scarcely flopped to the ground, on Rosanne’s
side of it, before she said: “He’s took up wid Maggie Walsh, that’s what
it is.”
“Took up wid her?” said Rosanne, staring up stupidly at her cousin.
“Ay, bedad and so he has,” said Martha, “but it come to my knowledge
on’y last Sunday. About gettin’ married they are after the harvest--he
and your stepmother’s daughter. And he be all account as good as
promised to you, Rosanne!”
“Who was telling you so? He never set eyes on her till she came home
after Easter. Dan’s no affair of mine. I don’t believe any such thing,”
said Rosanne, rattling the rusty bolt of the padlocked gate.
“Sure they was all talkin’ about it after Mass,” said Martha, “and that
evenin’ I taxed the young feller’s mother wid it, and she didn’t deny
it. Och, Rosanne, but you was a fine fool to let your stepmother pack
you off to service that-a-way, wid Maggie just comin’ home. Earnin’
money for yourself, bedad! ’Deed now what notion she had in her mind’s
as plain to see as the seeds in a ripe gooseberry. Puttin’ you out of it
she was the way she’d have the chance of gettin’ young Dan for her own
girl--and that’s what she’s after doin’ on you.”
“She’s welcome,” said Rosanne, desperately.
“Och, that’s just talkin’, Rosanne,” said Martha, “I was spakin’ about
it to your father on Tuesday. I’d ha’ thought he’d be none too well
plased, but he said nothin’ agin it. I suppose she had him persuaded,
poor man. And Dan’s mother was axin’ me had I heard tell anythin’ about
a young chap was coortin’ you up here. Mark my words, that’s the story
your stepmother’s been puttin’ into their heads. But I tould Mrs McClean
there wasn’t a _iotum_ of truth in it as far as I knew. And there isn’t,
in coorse?” Martha said, glancing again rather suspiciously at the grand
hat.
“Maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” said Rosanne defiantly. “It’s
no affair of anybody’s. Let other people mind their own business, and
I’ll mind mine. And let them plase themselves--the pack of them--and
they’ll plase me. I dunno which of them’s the greatest liar; but it’s
little I trouble meself about them. And it’s time for me to be runnin’
back, or else I’ll be too late. So good-night to you kindly--och don’t
be delayin’ me, you ould tormint!” Rosanne whisked the corner of her
shawl out of Martha’s detaining grasp, and ran away down the field. As
she went she struck up _Norah Creina_, and sang it lustily as long as
she thought herself within hearing; but her mind was not at all occupied
with that gentle bashful heroine. The sun had disappeared behind the
rounded tops of Drumaree Wood while she talked to Martha, and the vivid
lights had gone out among the haycocks and hedges. Everything had grown
dimly green, soft and cool, and when she left off singing, not a sound
was to be heard. But her thoughts were travelling through the scorching,
hissing, whirling chaos into which this thunderbolt of tidings had
shattered the world before her. Dan, and the little house of her own,
and love and trust, and a fine wedding and the Aylesbury ducks Mrs
Conroy had promised her, and her pride in old Tim Donagh’s remark that
she had got the best lad on six townlands--all were swept away from her,
and in their places seethed a flood of jealousy, rage, and despair. As
its first rush subsided, she recollected several things that seemed like
disregarded warnings of Martha’s news. She had wondered now and again
that Dan had never managed to get over and see her between this and
Easter; and then the last time old Biddy Doran from his place was up at
the Farm he hadn’t sent e’er a message by her at all. The reason was
plain enough now. And with that, Rosanne bethought her of the letter
which _she_ had sent by John Gahan, and which might be delivered by this
time. Perhaps Dan was at that minute of time laughing with Maggie Walsh
over the suggestion that he should be wasting his evening streeling off
to meet Rosanne Tierney at Kilbracken. Cock her up. This possibility
was the cruel little barb of mortification by which the crushing bulk of
her misfortune caught hold of her mind, and she raged at herself for
having ignorantly wrought it.
But circumstances seldom allow us to rage long uninterrupted, and while
Rosanne walked on, the fields grew dimmer, and the green greyer, and the
breeze chillier, and the grass wetter, until at last she found that the
thorny briers which twitched her by the shawl as she passed them, were
beginning to ask her where she was going. It was a puzzling question. To
go home among those false, scheming, triumphant creatures, could not for
a moment be thought of. It would be more tolerable to return and face
the storm in the dairy at Rathcrumlyn Farm, and even that was quite
impossible. On such consideration as she could give, only one answer
occurred to her. She would go to her aunt Lizzie Mahony, her mother’s
sister, who had always been good-natured and friendly. The Mahonys, it
was true, lived rather a long step off, somewhere beyond Hewitstown;
still she thought she could certainly contrive to get there in the
course of the next day, and she knew they would be glad to see her.
After that, her future was all drearily vague. She supposed that she
could get field work to do, and sometimes she even thought wildly of
turning ballad-singer. Dan used to say that she had a voice fit to make
her fortune; but of course that might only have been one of his lies,
for it was evident you could not believe a word that came out of his
head. The further her feet and her reflections travelled, the more
attractive grew the picture of the Mahonys’ little white cottage, with
her aunt looking out at the door, and saying: “Glory be to goodness, if
it isn’t little Rosanne.” For the fields around her spread lonelier, and
stranger, and the moonlight began to fill them cruelly with ghostly
gleams and shades. At last in a great fright she crept under a haystack,
and shivered and dozed in unequal alternations till the dawn.
It found her bewilderingly miserable, but delivered from the panic fears
that had beset her, while the world was black and white, and she stole
out of the yellow-mounded haggard on to the high road close by. She
hardly noticed that she was hungry and cold, and damp with dew, as she
resumed her journey, upon which the July sun soon began to glare strong
and fierce. The way was much longer than she thought, and she lengthened
it by missing it several times, finding intricate directions all the
more puzzling because she was dazed for the want of food and sleep. Two
women of whom she had made inquiries, and who told her of terribly many
miles, gave her a drink of milk, but that was all she had the whole day.
With her gaudy hat and her carelessly wisped on shawl, and bedraggled
pink gown, her curly hair tossed and ruffled, and her eyes wild and
woebegone, she had become a forlorn, strange-looking figure, which
passers-by eyed curiously, and on which they sometimes made remarks.
This alarmed her greatly, for solitary wanderings were a new experience
to her. She made up her mind never to be a ballad-singer, and her aunt’s
house grew a more and more desired refuge. At last when the shadows
stretched very long, and the sunbeams had relaxed their scorching grip,
she came to a bit of road that seemed familiar to her. Round the next
turn, if she was not mistaken, stood the little white cottage at the
foot of a steep field, in the angle where two lonings met--she
remembered the place very well.
And sure enough, round the corner, just as she had hoped, the little
white cottage came into view, a sight which for a few moments she beheld
with much comfort of heart. But she had not taken many quick steps
towards it, before she perceived that something was amiss. On the brown
slope of the thatch a thick cloud of smoke was brooding, dull and pale,
and as she looked, thicker black clouds came rolling up through it in
great heavy puffs, pierced here and there by sharp thrusts of flame,
which even under the sunset flush of the sky gleamed strong and red.
Very clearly the house was on fire, which was a dreadful thing; but what
struck Rosanne with still more dismay, was that there seemed to be
nobody about to mind it. Three small stranger boys were sitting on the
triangular grass-plot between the two lanes just in front of the
cottage, but they were busily playing some game with bits of broken
crockery, and taking no interest in the fire. Nobody else was to be
seen. Rosanne ran up to the children in a breathless scare. “Where’s all
the Mahonys?” she said, “sure they can’t be in it, wid the roof blazin’
over their heads?” One of the boys glanced at her indifferently. “Och,
the Mahonys was put out of it yisterday for the rint,” he said, “and the
Colonel’s burnin’ the ould bad houses to hinder the people of comin’
back to them, and squatters, and tramps, and all manner. Give me the
blue-edged bit, Billy.”
“And where’s me uncle gone to?” said Rosanne.
“I dunno,” said the boy, “unless it was to the Union below at
Hewitstown.”
“Sure not at all,” said Billy, “I heard them sayin’ Pat Mahony was gone
to his brother’s place away at Tullylough.”
The first boy, who was freckled, and blue-eyed, and red-haired, put out
his tongue in acknowledgment of this correction, and the third, who was
like him, said: “No, he isn’t. They’ve all took off to the States.”
Rosanne thought they looked quite fiendishly hideous. She was turning
towards the house when Billy said: “There’s nobody in it;” but his
brother said: “Yis, there is, after that agin. I seen Alec Anderson and
another of the bailiff’s men goin’ round wid a pitchfork a while ago.”