FERRETING.
“I do perceive here a divided duty.”
It was early in December, a showery, blustry afternoon; but I was
sitting out of doors in the hay. The men had been cutting away the great
rick in the haggard; they had taken a slice off it, down almost to the
ground, and I had burrowed myself a comfortable bed among the soft
trusses, with my back against the bristling, newly shorn wall of hay
that towered above me like a gable. The dogs were standing beside me in
different attitudes of intensest attention, their eyes fixed, like
mine, upon a hole in the foundations of the rick, from which at this
moment a pair of legs in corduroys and gaiters were protruding.
“Have you come to them yet?” I called out.
A muffled grunt was all that I could hear in answer; but after a moment
or two, the body belonging to the legs was drawn out of the hole.
“I’ve got one of the brutes,” said Willy, holding up his hand, with a
ferret hanging limply from it. “I don’t know how I’ll get the other;
those rats must be miles back in the rick. I’ll have to go up for one of
the young Sweenys to help me to move some of the stones under the rick.”
“I think in that case I shall go home,” I said. “I suppose you’ll take
hours over it.”
“Oh no! Do wait a bit; we won’t be any time. You can have my coat if
you’re cold,” said Willy, dropping the reclaimed ferret into its bag.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
He climbed the wall of the haggard, and took a short cut across the
field to where the whitewashed walls of Sweeny’s cottage showed through
the red twigs of the leafless fuchsia hedge that incongruously
surrounded it.
I took out my watch as soon as he had started, and saw that it was
half-past three. Willy seemed to have forgotten that this Tuesday
afternoon was the one on which Nugent had said he would come over. I had
taken care to say something about it at breakfast, but had done it so
lamely and inopportunely that I was not sure whether Willy had heard me;
and a kind of awkwardness had prevented me from reminding him of it when
he had asked me after luncheon to come out with him to the haggard,
where a thriving colony of rats had been that morning discovered.
Willy and I were now on terms of the most absolute intimacy. His daily
companionship had become second nature to me--something which I accepted
as a matter of course, which gave me no trouble, and was in all ways
pleasant. But, for all that, I had begun to find out that in some occult
way I was a little afraid of him. He was unexpectedly and minutely
observant, and, where I was concerned, appeared to be able to take in my
doings with the back of his head. It was this gift, combined with his
unostentatious acuteness, that made me sometimes feel foolish when I
least wished it, and lately had made any mention of Nugent’s name a
difficulty to me.
At all events, at this particular moment I did not feel disposed to
explain matters, and I settled myself again in the hay, hoping that the
capture of the ferret would allow me, by the natural course of things,
to get home in time without having to remind Willy of my expected
visitor.
The demesne farm, as it was called, was at some distance from the
house--at least ten minutes’ walk down a stony lane, worn into deep ruts
by the passing of the carts of hay; and now that the ruts had been
turned into pools by heavy showers, it was anything but a pleasant walk.
The boreen passed through the fields in which Willy had schooled Alaska;
it came out into the road near the lodge, and thence led directly to the
house, whose gleaming slate roof and tall chimneys I could see from
where I was sitting, above the trees of the plantation. The short
December day was already beginning to close in; the setting sun was
level with my eyes, and was sending broad rays up the long slope that
lay between the farm and the sea. Everything for the moment was
transfigured; all the wet stones and straw lying about the yard shone
and glistened. The pigs were splashing through pools of liquid gold; and
the geese, who were gabbling in an undertone near the hayrick, looked
blue on the shadow side, and silver-yellow on the side next the sun--one
could believe them capable of laying nothing but golden eggs. The wind
was going down with the sun, and it seemed as if we should have no more
rain; but there was a dangerous-looking black cloud over Croaghkeenen. I
wondered if Nugent had come. That cloud certainly meant rain; perhaps it
would serve as an excuse to get home.
Willy was as good as his word about coming back quickly, and brought
with him not one, but two small sons of the house of Sweeny, with shock
heads of hair, as fluffy as dandelion seed, and almost as white, and big
grey eyes that looked doubtfully at me from under the blackest lashes
and out of the dirtiest faces I had ever seen in my life.
“Come, Timsy,” said Willy to the smaller of the two, “in you go; and if
you get a grip of him at all, hold on to him, no matter if he eats the
nose off your face.”
In no wise discouraged by this injunction, Timsy crawled into the hole,
until nothing but the muddy soles of his bare feet were visible. But the
ferret was evidently beyond human reach. I sat impatiently enough,
looking on, and trying to summon up courage to say that I would go home,
when I felt a drop or two of rain on my hand, and saw that the heavy
cloud now shut Croaghkeenen altogether out of view, and that a thick
shower was coming across the sea and along the slopes of Durrus. In
another instant we were enveloped in a gusty whirl of rain.
“Run to the Sweenys’, Theo!” cried Willy, jumping up from his knees, and
abandoning his attempt to push little Sweeny deeper into the hole; “we
must shelter there.”
“Couldn’t we get home?” I said, standing undecidedly in the downpour,
and thinking with despair that my deserted visitor was possibly arriving
at Durrus now.
“No; you’d be drowned getting there. Come on.”
We ran up the lane as fast as was possible from the nature of it, with
the mud splashing up at every step, the rain trickling down the backs of
our necks, and the dogs racing along with us, getting very much in the
way by ridiculous jumps at the bag in which Willy carried the ferret,
and evidently believing that this unusual rushing through the mud was
only a prelude to something far more thrilling. I picked my way after
Willy through the Sweenys’ yard, along a path which ran precariously
between a manure heap and a pool of dirty water, and saw Mrs. Sweeny
flinging open her door to receive us.
“Oh, ye craytures! ye’re dhrowned! Come in asthore. Get out, ye
divil!”--slapping the bony flanks of a calf which was trying to thrust
itself into the house. “Turn them hins out, Batty! Indeed, ’tis a
disgrace to ask ye into that dirty little house, and me afther plucking
a goose.”
We entered the low, narrow doorway; and the hens, seeing that they were
hemmed in, and disdaining even at this extreme moment to yield to
Batty’s practised pursuit, took to their wings, and flew past our heads
through the doorway with varying notes of consternation.
“Did anny wan iver see the like of thim hins?” demanded Mrs. Sweeny,
dramatically, while she dragged forward a greasy-looking kitchen chair.
“I’m fairly heart-scalded with them--the monkeys of the world! Sit down,
ochudth, sit down why!” she went on, addressing me, her broad red face
beaming with pride and hospitality. “Indeed, me little place isn’t fit
for the likes of ye! Sure, wouldn’t ye sit down, Masther Willy, till I
get ye a dhrink of milk? Run away, Bridgie”--this in an undertone to a
grimy little girl--“and dhrive in the cows.”
She produced another chair for Willy, the discrepancy in the length of
whose legs was corrected by a convenient dip in the mud floor of the
cottage, and Willy sat down, and at once began a diffuse and cheerful
conversation with her.
The fates certainly seemed to be against me. This shower would probably
last for some time, and it would be impossible to say that I wanted to
go home until it was over. I looked at my watch; it was already nearly
four. Nugent would very likely come early--he had said that he would be
over some time before tea--and would hear that I had gone out, and had
left no message or explanation of any kind for him. It was very
exasperating, but, as long as this deluge of rain lasted, all I could do
was to sit still and possess my soul in as much patience as possible.
The cabin had more occupants than, in its doubtful light, I had at first
noticed. In the smoky shadow of the overhanging chimney-place was
huddled, on a three-legged stool, a very small old man in knee-breeches
and a tail-coat, who was smoking a short pipe, and still held in his
hand the battered tall hat which he had taken off on our entrance. He
was our hostess’s father-in-law, one of the oldest tenants on the
estate, and he sat, as I had often seen the old country men in the
cabins sit, smoking and dozing over the fire, and looking hardly more
alive to what was going on than the grey, smouldering lumps of turf on
the hearth. In the dusky recess at the foot of a four-poster bed, which
blocked up one of the small windows, Batty and two other children were
hiding behind each other, and were staring at us as young birds might.
Pat and Jinny were vulgarly snuffing among Mrs. Sweeny’s pots and pans,
with an affectation of starvation which but ill-assorted with what I
knew of their recent luncheon. Now they had come, with stunning
unexpectedness, on a cat, crouched on the dresser, and, when called off
by Willy on the very eve of battle, remained for the rest of their visit
in agonized contemplation of her security. From a hencoop in the corner
by the bed came faint cluckings; the goose which Mrs. Sweeny had been
plucking lay with its legs tied beside the red earthen pan, in which it
might have seen its own breast feathers, and tried to console itself by
pecking feebly at the yellow meal which had been spilt on the ground in
front of the chickens’ coop.
Mrs. Sweeny was sitting on a kind of rough settle, between the
other window and the door of an inner room. She was a stout,
comfortable-looking woman of about forty, with red hair and quick blue
eyes, that roved round the cabin, and silenced with a glance the
occasional whisperings that rose from the children.
“And how’s the one that had the bad cough?” asked Willy, pursuing his
conversation with her with his invariable ease and dexterity. “Honor her
name is, isn’t it?”
“See, now, how well he remembers!” replied Mrs. Sweeny. “Indeed, she’s
there back in the room, lyin’ these three days. Faith, I think ’tis like
the decline she have, Masther Willy.”
“Did you get the doctor to her?” said Willy. “I’ll give you a ticket if
you haven’t one.”
“Oh, indeed, Docthor Kelly’s afther givin’ her a bottle, but shure I
wouldn’t let her put it into her mouth at all. God knows what’d be in
it. Wasn’t I afther throwin’ a taste of it on the fire to thry what’d it
do, and Phitz! says it, and up with it up the chimbley! Faith, I’d be
in dread to give it to the child. Shure, if it done that in the fire,
what’d it do in her inside?”
“Well, you’re a greater fool than I thought you were,” said Willy,
politely.
“Maybe I am, faith,” replied Mrs. Sweeny, with a loud laugh of
enjoyment. “But if she’s for dyin’, the crayture, she’ll die aisier
without thim thrash of medicines; and if she’s for livin’, ’tisn’t
thrusting to them she’ll be. Shure, God is good--God is good----”
“Divil a betther!” interjected old Sweeny, unexpectedly.
It was the first time he had spoken, and having delivered himself of
this trenchant observation, he relapsed into silence and the smackings
at his pipe.
“Don’t mind him at all, your honour, miss,” said his daughter-in-law,
seeing my ill-concealed amusement. “Shure, he’s only a silly owld man.”
“He’s a good deal more sensible than you are,” said Willy, returning to
the subject of Honor.
The rain poured steadily down. I thought of Nugent, and could fancy his
surprise at hearing that I was not at home. It was not, I argued to
myself, so much that I was sorry to miss him, as that I hated being
rude; and it certainly was rude to have gone out on the day he had
settled to come, without even leaving a message. What an amazing gift of
the gab Willy had! Rain or no rain, it was clear that he and Mrs. Sweeny
meant to talk to one another for the rest of the afternoon.
The old man in the chimney-corner had watched me during all this time,
and muttered to himself every now and then--what, I could not
understand. We must have been sitting there for ten minutes at least,
when the two boys whom Willy had left to look for the ferret came
dripping in, with the object of their search safely housed in a bag, and
silently stationed themselves along with their brothers and sisters in
the corner by the bed.
“Is the rain nearly over?” I asked the elder.
“I dunno, miss,” he replied, bashfully rubbing the sole of his foot up
and down the shin of the other leg.
“I can tell you that,” said Willy, getting up and going to the door. “I
don’t think it looks like clearing for another quarter of an hour.”
“Then I don’t know what I can do,” I said, in unguarded consternation.
“Why,” said Willy, turning round and looking at me with his hands in his
pockets, “what’s the hurry?”
“There is no hurry exactly,” I said, feeling very small and cowardly;
“but I thought you knew--at least, I think I told you this morning, that
Mr. O’Neill said he would come over to-day.”
I wondered if this simple sentence gave any indication of the effort it
was to me to say it.
“I can’t say I remember anything about it,” Willy answered, in what I am
sure he thought a crushingly chilly voice.
“Oh yes, indeed I did tell you,” I said, getting up and following him to
the door; “but you sneezed just as I was saying it, and the voice is not
yet created that could be heard through one of your sneezes.”
I knew that he was rather proud than otherwise of his noisy sneezes, and
I laughed servilely, and looked up, hoping that he would laugh too. But
there was nothing approaching to amusement in his face. It was red and
forbidding, as he looked out into the rain that was thrashing down in
the dirty yard. He had still a good deal of hay and hayseed about his
coat and hat, and altogether I thought it was not one of his most
becoming moments.
“I don’t know if you’d like to start in that,” he said; “but if you
would, I’m quite ready to go with you.”
If I had been alone, I should probably have faced a wetting in order to
get back to the house; but now I was both too proud and too shy to
accept Willy’s offer.
“I think I shall wait a little longer,” I said, going back to my chair
by the fire.
“Himself’s afther sayin’,” said Mrs. Sweeny, as I sat down, “that he’d
think ’twas your father he was lookin’ at, an’ you sittin’ there a while
ago.”
Old Sweeny removed his pipe from his lips, and cleared his throat.
“Manny’s the time I seen the young masther sit there,” he said, in a
sort of harsh whisper, turning his bleared and filmy old eyes towards
me--“the way she”--he pointed a crooked forefinger at me--“is now,
afther he bein’ out shootin’ or the like o’ that; ‘Be domned to ye,
Sweeny, ye blagyard,’ he’d say to me, ‘dickens a shnipe is there left on
yer land with your dhraining; I’ll have ye run out of the place,’ he’d
say. That’s the very way he’d talk to me, as civil and pleasant as
yerself. Begob, ye have the very two eyes of him, an’ the grand long
nose of him!”
I acknowledged the compliment as well as I knew how, and old Sweeny went
on again, punctuating his sentences with long and noisy pulls at his
pipe.
“Faith, there was manny a wan of the Durrus tinants would rather ’twas
their own son was goin’ to Ameriky than him when he went; and manny a
wan too that’d have walked to Cork to go to his funeral. That was the
quare comin’ home that he had--to die an’ be berrid in the town o’ Cork.
I’ll niver forget that time. Shure the night he died in Cork--’twas the
night before the owld masther dyin’ too--I wasn’t in me bed, but out in
the shed with a cow that was sick. There was carridges dhriving the
Durrus avenue that night,” he said, his voice getting lower and huskier;
“I heard them goin’ the road, an’ it one o’clock in the morning! And the
big shnow comminced afther that agin.”
“What carriages were they?” I asked, with a little superstitious shiver.
The old man looked furtively round, and took his pipe out of his mouth.
“God knows!” he said mysteriously; “God knows! But they say there do be
them that wait for the Sarsfields agin they’re dyin’. There was wan that
seen the black coach and four horses goin’ wesht the road, over the bog,
the time the owld man--that’s Theodore’s father--died; and wansht,” he
went on impressively, “there was a Sarsfield out, that time the Frinch
landed beyond in Banthry Bay, and the English cot him an’ hung him; but
_those_ people took him and dhragged him through hell and through
det’th, and me mother’s father heard the black coach taking him wesht to
Myross Churchyard.”
Old Sweeny had let his pipe go out during the telling of the story, and
he left me to make what I could of it, while he poked about for a piece
of burning turf wherewith to rekindle his pipe. Willy was still standing
by the door.
“I think it’s cleared up enough for you to start now,” he said coldly,
“and if you want to get back to the house, you’d better start before it
comes on heavy again.”
“Oh, very well, if you like,” I answered, with equal indifference. “Good
afternoon, Mrs. Sweeny.”
Mrs. Sweeny was taking a bowl from the dresser, from which haven of
refuge she had driven her cat with one swing of her brawny arm. It shot
past Willy out of the door, followed by a flying white streak, which
inference rather than eyesight told me was composed of the pursuing Pat
and Jinny.
“Look at that, now!” remarked the cat’s mistress; “that overbearin’ owld
cat’d be sittin’ there, thwarting thim dogs, and she well able to run
for thim; an’ I wouldn’t begridge them to ketch her nayther. She’s a
little wandhering divil that have no call to the place.” She came
forward with the bowl in her hand. “See here, Masther Willy; here’s
eight beautiful pullet’s eggs, the first she iver laid, an’ you’ll carry
them wesht to the house for Miss Sarsfield to ate for her brekfish--mind
that, now!” She gave him a slap on the back. “Och, there’s no fear but
he’ll mind!” she said, winking at me. “He’d do more than that for
yourself, and small blame to him!”
Willy took the bowl from her without taking any notice either of the
innuendo or the slap which accompanied it, and marched out of the house
with sulky dignity.
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