AN UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNEY
I
The hour was half-past ten in the forenoon. In the village (“town” the
peasantry called it) of Greenanore two rows of houses ran parallel along
a miry street which measured east to west some two hundred yards. At one
end of the street were the police barracks and at the other end the
workhouse. Behind the latter rose the Catholic chapel, and further back
the brown moors stretched to the hills which looked down upon the bay
where the women crossed in the early morning.
The houses in the village were dull, dirty and dilapidated. There were
eight public-houses, a few grocers’ shops, a smithy where the
blacksmith, who mended scythes or shod donkeys, got paid in kind for his
services. The policemen, one to every fifty souls in the village,
paraded idly up and down the street, their heavy batons clanking against
their trousers, and their boots, spotlessly clean, rasping eternally on
the pavement. Their sole occupation seemed to be the kicking of
unoffending dogs that spent their days and nights in a vain search for
some eatable garbage in the gutter. The dogs were skeletons; and when
kicked they would slink quietly out of the way, lacking courage either
to snap or snarl. Even a kick brought no yelp from them, they were
almost insensible to every feeling but that of the heavy hunger which
dulled their natural activity. At night they were silent ghosts
prowling about looking for a morsel to eat. Now and again they howled
mournfully, sitting on their haunches in a circle; and when the people
heard the lonely sound they would say: “There, the dogs are crying
because they have got no souls.”
A little pot-bellied man stepped briskly along the street of the
village, one gloved hand grasping a stout stick, the other, also gloved,
sunk in the capacious pocket of a heavy overcoat. He walked as if he
lacked knee-joints, throwing the legs out from his hips, but, save for
this, there was nothing remarkable about the man except perhaps his
stoutness. The people of Greenanore, battling daily against the terrible
spectre of hunger, had no time to grow fat, yet this man measured forty
inches round the waist. In the midst of extreme poverty he, strange to
say, had grown corpulent and rich. His name was Farley McKeown, now
possessor of £200,000, part of it invested in South American Railways
and part of it in the Donegal Knitting Industry, and nearly all of it
earned in the latter.
Farley McKeown was now seventy years of age and unmarried. At one time,
years before, he had his desires as most young men have, and the sight
of a comely girl going barefooted to Greenanore imparted a fiery and not
unpleasant vigour to his body and caused strange but not unnatural
thoughts to enter into his mind. He was then a young man of twenty,
thoughtful and ambitious. Although his father was poor, the boy,
educated by some hedge schoolmaster, showed promise and evinced a desire
to become a priest. “It is an easy job,” he said to himself, “and a
priest can make plenty of money.” Farley McKeown desired to make money
anyway and anyhow.
When the black potato blight, with the fever and famine that followed
it, spread over Donegal, Farley McKeown saw his chance. By dint of
plausible arguments he persuaded a firm of Londonderry grain merchants
to ship a cargo of Indian meal to Greenanore and promised to pay for the
consignment within two years from the date of its arrival. When the
cargo was landed on Dooey Head the people hailed it as a gift from God
and the priest blessed Farley McKeown from the altar steps. The peasants
built a large warehouse for McKeown, and in return for the work they
were allowed a whole year in which to pay for their meal. Meanwhile the
younger generation went off to America, and money flowed in to Donegal
and Farley McKeown’s pocket. At the end of two years he had paid the
grain merchants, but the peasants found to their astonishment that
_they_ had only paid interest on the cost of their food. They were in
the man’s clutches, always paying for goods received and in some strange
way never clear of debt. This went on for years, and Farley McKeown, a
pillar of the Church and the friend of the holy priest, waxed wealthy on
the proceeds of his business.
Then he started a knitting industry and again was hailed by the priest
as the saviour of the people. From far and near, from the most southerly
to the most northerly point of Donegal the peasant women came to
Greenanore for yarn, crossing arms of the sea, mountains and moors on
their journey, and carrying back bundles of yarn to their homes. The
journey was in many cases thirty miles each way, and these miles were
tramped by women between a sleep and a sleep, often with only one meal
in their stomachs.
The daughters of Donegal are splendid knitters. But how difficult to
make are those wonderful stockings when there is nothing but the peat
fire or the rushlight to show the women the dreary and countless
stitches that go to make the whole marvellous work. How quick those
irons flash in the firelight, how they tinkle, tinkle one against
another as the nimble fingers wind the threads around them, but alas!
how wearying the toil! And the time usually taken to make a pair of
socks was sixteen hours, and the wages paid for sixteen hours’ work was
a penny farthing.
II
Farley McKeown strutted along the street, inflating his stomach with
dignity as he walked and casting careless looks around him. All those
whom he met saluted him, the men raised their hands to their caps, the
women bowed gravely, and the children, when they saw him coming, ran
away. An old sow, black and dirty from her wallow in some near midden,
rushed violently into the street and grunted as she mouthed at the grime
in the gutter. A peasant boy, dressed in trousers and shirt, got hold of
one of the young pigs and the animal squealed loudly. This startled the
mother and she peered round, her little stupid eyes blinking angrily. On
seeing that one of her young was possibly in danger she charged full at
the youth, who, hurriedly dropping the sucker, sought the safety of a
near doorway. A few hens rushed off with long, remarkable strides that
made one wonder how the spider-shanked, ungainly birds saved themselves
from toppling over. A rooster--a defiant Sultan--who did not share in
the trepidacious exit of his wives, crowed loudly and looked valiantly
at the sow, as much as to say: “I, for one, am not the least afraid of
you.” The boy finding himself safe ventured out again into the street,
but coming face to face with Farley McKeown hurried off even more
rapidly than when pursued by the sow. The man noticed the doubtful mark
of respect which the youth showed him, purred approvingly and smiled,
the smile giving him the appearance of an over-fed, serious frog.
McKeown walked along the street towards a spacious three-storied
building containing many large windows and heavy, painted doors. This
was the warehouse in which he stored his yarn. One door was open, and in
front of this a crowd of barefooted women and children were standing,
most of them holding large bundles of stockings which they frequently
changed from one hand to another. They did not dare to rest their
bundles on the street, which was wet with the slabbery sleet of
mid-November.
Farley McKeown came to the door and from there surveyed the women with a
fixed stare. They shuffled uneasily, a few crossed themselves, and one,
a young girl, ventured to say: “It’s a cold morning this, Farley
McKeown, thanks be to God!”
The merchant made no answer. To see those creatures, shrinking before
his gaze, filled him with a comfortable sense of importance. They were
afraid of him, just as he was afraid of God, and he thought that he must
be like God in their eyes. He fixed another withering glance on the
crowd, then turned and hurried upstairs to the top floor, there to enter
a room where two young men were seated over a desk struggling with long
rows of figures in dirty ledgers. A peat fire blazed brightly in one
corner of the room, and the cheerful flame was a red rag to the eyes of
the proprietor. He looked sternly at the fire, then at the clerks, then
at the fire, then back to the clerks again.
“Warm here, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “Yes, it’s warm, very warm; very
comfortable indeed, isn’t it? It’s nice to have a fire on a cold
morning, very nice indeed. If you were working in your fathers’ fields
you’d have a fire out by your sides, you’d carry a fire about in your
pockets all day, you would indeed. Is it not enough for you to have a
roof over you?” he cried in an angry tone, his voice rising shrilly; “a
roof over your head and four good walls to keep the winds of heaven away
from your bodies? No, it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t atall, atall! I gave
you orders not to put a fire on till I came into the office myself, and
what do I see here now? One would think that it’s not me that owns this
business. Who does own it, I’d like to know! Is it me or is it you?”
Gasping for breath, he flopped down suddenly into a chair, and drawing
off his gloves he stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. Then taking
an account book he stroked out several figures with his pen, while
between every pen stroke he turned round and shouted: “Is it me that
owns this business or is it you? Eh?”
After a while he ceased to speak, probably forgetting his rage in the
midst of the work, and for two hours there was almost total silence save
for the low scratchings of pen on paper and the occasional grunt which
emanated from the throat of Farley McKeown. Suddenly, however, he
stopped in the middle of his work and looked at the skylight above,
through which snow was falling, and some of it skiting off the
window-ledge dropped on the top of his head, which being bald was
extremely sensitive to climatic changes. Then he gave an order slowly
and emphatically:
“Dony McNelis, close the window.”
One of the clerks, a tall lank youth, rose like a rubber ball, bounded
on top of his seat and closed the window with a bang. On stepping down
to resume his work, he noticed the crowd of women, now greatly increased
by the party which had crossed the bay in the morning, standing huddled
together in the street. The sleet was falling thickly--it was now more
snow than sleet--and the clothes of the women were covered with a fleecy
whiteness. The clerk paused in his descent and looked at the women, then
he spoke to the yarn-seller.
“Would it not be better to attend to these women now?” he asked. “Some
of them have been out on the cold street since the dawn.”
Farley McKeown turned round sharply. “Is this my business or is it
yours?” he cried, rising from the chair and stamping his feet on the
floor. “Mine or yours, eh? Have I to run like a dog and attend to these
people, have I? I’ve kept them from death and the workhouse for the last
forty years, have I not? And now you want me to run out and attend on
them, do you? I’ve taken you, Dony McNelis, into my office out of pure
charity, and how much money is it that your mother owes me? Couldn’t I
turn her out of house and home at a moment’s notice? And in face of that
you come here and tell me how to run my own business. Isn’t that what
you’re trying to do? Eh?”
The boy sat down without a word, and catching a piece of waste paper off
the table, he crumpled it angrily in his hand; then rising again he
confronted his master.
“There are women out there from Tweedore and Frosses,” he said. “They
have travelled upwards of thirty miles, hungry, all of them, I’ll go
bail, and maybe not a penny in their pockets. If they don’t catch the
tide when it’s out they’ll have to sleep on the rocks of Dooey all
night, and if they do there’ll be more curses on your head in the
morning than all the masses ever said and all the prayers ever prayed
will be fit to wash away. It’s nearly one of the clock now, and they’ll
have to race and catch the tide afore it’s on the turn, so it would be
the best thing to do to attend to them this minute.”
The youth stood for a moment after he had delivered this speech, the
longest ever made by him in his life, and seemed on the point of saying
something more vehement. All at once, however, he sat down again and
went on with his work as if nothing unusual had happened.
Farley McKeown was a superstitious man. He feared the curse of an angry
woman as much as he feared the curse of a priest of the Catholic Church.
And those women would curse him if they slept all night on Dooey Head.
For a moment he glared angrily at Dony McNelis, then went to the window
facing the street, opened it and looked out on the shivering creatures
assembled in the falling snow.
“Are there many Tweedore and Frosses people here?” he shouted.
“There’s a good lot of us here, and we’re afraid that we’ll be a wee bit
late for the tide if we don’t get away this very minute,” said a voice
from the crowd. Maire a Crick, the fatalist, was speaking.
“Have ye any stockings with ye?”
“Sorrow the one has one that’s not on her feet, save Maire a Glan, and
she doesn’t come from our side of the water,” Maire a Crick answered.
“When we were here the last day we couldn’t get a taste of yarn and we
had to sleep all night on the rocks of Dooey. All night, mind, Farley
McKeown, and the sky glowering like a hangman and the sea rushing like
horses of war up on the strand. God be with us! but it will be a cold
place on a night like this. For the love of Mary, give us some yarn,
Farley McKeown,” said the old woman in a piteous voice. “Twenty-four
hours have passed since I saw bread or that what buys it.”
McKeown turned round to his clerks. “Is there much yarn down below?” he
asked.
“Plenty,” said Dony McNelis, wiping his pen on his coat-sleeve.
“If they had my yarn with them and miss the tide, they’d ruin the
stuff,” thought Farley McKeown; then turning to the women he shouted in
a loud voice: “There’s no yarn for the Tweedore and Frosses women this
day. Maybe if they come to-morrow or the day after they’ll get some.”
Having said these words he shut the window.