RESTLESS YOUTH
I
James Ryan’s cabin lay within half a mile of the sea, and his croft, a
long strip of rock-bespattered, sapless land, ran down to the very
shore. But this strip of land was so narrow that the house, small though
it was, could not be built across, and instead of the cabin-front, an
end gable faced the water. In Frosses most of the land is divided into
thin strips, for it is the unwritten law that they who have no land
touching the sea may not lift any sea-weed to manure their potato
patches. In Frosses some of the crofts, measuring two miles in length,
are seldom more than eight paces in width at any point.
All over the district gigantic boulders are strewn, huge rocks that
might have been flung about in play by monstrous Giants who forgot, when
their humour was at an end, to gather them up again. Between these rocks
the people till for crops, plots of land which seldom measure more than
four yards square, and every rock conceals either a potato patch or
cornfield. It was said years ago that Frosses had twenty-one blades of
grass to the square foot, but this was contradicted by a sarcastic
peasant, who said that if grass grew so plentifully with them they would
all be wealthy.
Fishing was indulged in, but very little fish was ever landed: Scottish
and English trawlers netted the fish off-shore, and few were picked up
by the peasantry, whose boats and nets were of the most primitive
pattern. The nets were bad, the boats, mere curraghs, were
untrustworthy, and a great deal of the fishermen’s time was usually
spent in baling out water. At best fishing was for them an almost
profitless trade. They had no markets and no carts to send their fish to
town. For the most part the fishers used the fish themselves or traded
them in kind with their neighbours.
On the morning following the women’s visit to Greenanore two men came up
from the sea towards the door of James Ryan’s cabin. One was an old man,
bearded and wrinkled, whose brows were continually contracting as is the
habit with those who live by the sea and look on the wrath of many
winds. He was dressed in a white wrapper, a woollen shirt, open at the
neck, trousers folded up to the knees, and mairteens. The other was a
youth of nineteen, dark-haired, supple of limb and barefooted. In the
two men a family likeness might be detected; they were father and son,
James Ryan and his only boy, Fergus. There were now only four in the
family; death had taken away most of the children before they were a
year old.
Fergus opened the door of the cabin, to be met with the warm and
penetrating breath of the cattle inside. The cows, always curious to see
a new-comer, turned round in their beds of fresh heather and fixed their
big, soft eyes on the youth. Beside the cow nearest the door, a young
calf, spotted black and white, turned round on long, lank, awkward legs
and sniffed suspiciously; then, finding that no danger was going to
befall him, snuggled up against his mother, who commenced to lick her
offspring with a big rough tongue. Suddenly a pig ran in from the
outside, rushed between the youth’s legs and disappeared under the bed.
Its back was bleeding as if a dog had bitten it.
“Is not the pig’s flesh like a human’s?” said Fergus, turning to his
father. “White; almost without hair and it bleeds just like a man’s. I
hate pigs; I wish we could live without keeping them.... Oh! here is
Norah at the fire. Have you just got up?”
The child, shivering from cold, was sitting on the hassock, her hands
spread out to the peat blaze.
“She has only just come in from the other side of the water,” said the
mother, who was sitting up in bed, knitting stockings. “She lay out all
night, poor creature! Twenty-seven women in all were lying out on the
snow. And she got no yarn! Thanks be to God! but it’s a bad time.”
“A bad time, a hard time, a very hard time!” said the old man, sitting
down on an upturned creel and taking off his mairteens. “No yarn! and
there was not a fish in all the seas last night.”
“None but the ones we didn’t catch,” said Fergus. “It is that dirty
potato-basket of a boat that is to blame.... Are you cold, Norah?”
“I am only shivering; but the fire will do me good.”
“She didn’t ate one bit of her breakfast yesterday,” said the mother.
“Left it all for you when you came in from the sea, she did!”
Norah blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong; then
drank from the bowl of milk which was placed on the floor beside her.
The father looked greedily at the bowl; the mother spoke.
“It is nice and warm, that milk,” said the old woman. “I wish we had
more of it, but at this time of the year the milk runs thin in the cow’s
elldurs. But even if we had got enough bread, never mind milk, it would
not be so bad.... And there is not one bit for you this morning.... Do
you know what the soggarth says, Shemus?”
II
The husband looked at his wife, and an expression of dread appeared on
his face. “What does he say, Mary?”
“He is offering up no prayers for your soul.”
“Mother of God, be good to me!”
“You must pay him that pound at once, he says.”
“But barring what we are saving up for the landlord’s rent, bad scran to
him! we have not one white shilling in the house.”
“That does not matter to the priest, the damned old pig!” exclaimed
Fergus, who had been looking gloomily at the roof since he had spoken to
Norah.
“Fergus!” the three occupants of the house exclaimed in one breath.
“What’s coming over the boy at all?” the mother went on. “It must be the
books that Micky’s Jim takes over from Scotland that are bringing ruin
to the gasair.”
“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with
the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice
pickle!”
“The priest, Fergus!”
“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s
trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the
pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate
the place; I hate it and everything about it.”
“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat
and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?”
“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward
hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run
away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to
make you a nun, they say.”
There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his
mother as he spoke.
“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother.
“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.”
“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night,
too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.”
“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of
his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the
country altogether.”
“Fergus, what are you saying?” asked his mother.
“I am going away from here and I am going to push my fortune.” He looked
out of the window and his eyes followed the twist of the road that ran
like a ribbon away past the door of the house.
“But, Fergus dear--!”
“It does not matter, maghair (mother), what you say,” remarked the
youth, interrupting his mother. “I am going away this very day. I have
had it in my head for a long while. I’ll make you rich in the years to
come. I’ll earn plenty of money.”
“That’s what they all say, child,” the mother interposed, and tears came
into her eyes. “It’s more often a grave than a fortune they find in the
black foreign country.”
“Could any place under the roof-tree of heaven be as black as this,”
asked the youth excitedly. “There is nothing here but rags, poverty, and
dirt; pigs under the bed, cows in the house, the rain coming through the
thatch instead of seeping from the eaves, and the winds of night raving
and roaring through wall and window. Then if by chance you make one gold
guinea, half of it goes to Farley McKeown and the priest, and the other
half of it goes to the landlord.”
“But Farley McKeown doesn’t get any money from us at all,” said the
mother in a tone of reproof. “It is him that gives us money for the
knitting.”
“Knitting!” exclaimed Fergus, rising to his feet and striding up and
down the cabin. “God look sideways on the knitting! How much are you
paid for your work? One shilling and threepence for a dozen pairs of
stockings that takes the two of you more than a whole week to make. You
might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of
your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the
big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing.
You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of
the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer
Farley McKeown for long.”
“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her
knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take
home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns
the books.”
“The priest!” said the youth in a tone of contempt. “But what is the
good of talking to the likes of you? How much money have you in the
house?”
“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large
troubled eyes at her brother.
“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the
road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other
place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah!
I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’ll earn big piles of money
and send it home at the end of every month.”
James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them
at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on
well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his
own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare
feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames.
“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of
boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the
teapot, Mary?”
“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is
only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the
town yesterday.”
“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from
her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread
yesterday because I was not very hungry.”
“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old
woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards
her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to
push your fortune.”
III
In the evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan
tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen
handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not
when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a
much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and
stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light merged
into the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could
be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in
the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the
water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars.
“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,”
Fergus said in English.
“It’s the way with everyone when they’re going away,” answered his
sister. “And I’m sick at heart that ye are goin’, Fergus. Is Derry far
away?”
“A longish way--”
“Out beyont the moon, is it?” asked the child, pointing at the hills and
the moon above them.
“Maybe,” said the youth; then in a low voice: “D’ye know what they do in
other countries when they are saying ‘Good-bye’?”
“Then I don’t,” answered Norah.
“They do this,” said the young man, and he pressed his lips against his
sister’s cheek.
“But they never do that here,” said the girl, and both blushed as if
they had been discovered doing something very wrong. “I’ll say a long
prayer for you every night, when you are away, Fergus.”
The boy looked at her, rubbed one bare foot on the ground and seemed on
the point of saying something further; then without a word he turned and
walked off along the wet road. Norah kept looking after him till he was
out of sight, then, with her eyes full of tears, she went back to her
home.