GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY
I
Towards the end of the following year a great event took place in
Frosses. It was reported that a registered letter addressed to “James
Ryan, Esquire, Meenalicknalore” was lying in Frosses post-office. Norah
heard the news and spoke of it to her father.
“No one but your own self can get the letter,” she said. “That is what
the people at the post-office say. You have to write your name down on
white paper too, before the letter crosses the counter.”
“And is it me, a man who was never at school, that has to put down my
name?” asked James Ryan in a puzzled voice.
“It will be a letter from the boy himself,” said the old woman, who was
sitting up in bed and knitting. Now and again she placed her bright
irons down and coughed with such violence as to shake her whole body.
“And maybe there is money in the same letter. It is not often that we
have a letter coming to us.”
“We had none since the last process for the rent and that was two years
aback,” said the husband. “Maybe I will be going into Frosses and
getting that letter myself now.”
“Maybe you would,” stammered his wife, still battling with her cough.
James Ryan put on his mairteens and left the house. Norah watched him
depart, and her eyes followed him until he turned the corner of the
road; then she went to the bedside and sitting on a low stool commenced
to turn the heel of a long stocking.
“How many days to a day now is it since Fergus took the road to Derry?”
asked the old woman. “I am sure it is near come nine months this very
minute.”
“It is ten months all but sixteen days.”
“Under God the day and the night, and is it that?”
“That it is and every hour of it.”
“He will be across the whole flat world since he left,” said the mother,
looking fixedly at an awkward, ungainly calf which had just blundered
into the house, but seeing far beyond. “He will maybe send five pounds
in gold in the letter.”
“Maybe. But you are not thinking of that, mother?” said Norah.
“And what would _you_ be thinking of, then?” asked the old woman.
“I am wondering if he is in good health and happy.”
“The young are always happy, Norah. Are you not?”
“Sometimes. I am happy when out in the open, listening to the birds
singing, and the wind running on the heather.”
“Who ever heard of a person listening to things like those? Are you not
happy in God’s house on a Sunday?”
“Oh, I am happy there as well,” answered Norah, but there was a hint of
hesitation in the answer.
“Everyone that is good of heart is happy in God’s house,” said the
mother. “Have you turned the heel of the stocking yet?”
“I am nigh finished with the foot, mother.”
“My own two eyes are getting dim, and I cannot hurry like you these
days,” said the woman in the bed. “Run those hens from the house, and
the young sturk too.... I wonder what he is coming in here for now, the
rascal?”
“Maybe he likes to be near the fire,” said the child, looking at the
spotted calf that was nosing at a dish on the dresser. “When Micky’s Jim
built a new byre it was not easy to keep the cattle in it, for they
always wanted to get back into the warm house again.”
With these words she rose and chased the young animal out of doors,
while a few stray hens fluttered wildly about in making their exit. “The
cows like the blaze,” Norah went on as she came back and took up her
seat by the fire. “Every evening they turn round and look at it, and you
can see their big soft eyes shining through the darkness.”
“It is the strange things that you be noticing, alannah, but what you
say is very true,” said the mother. “It will be a letter from Fergus, I
suppose, with five gold guineas in it,” she went on. “Maybe he will be
at the back of America by now.... If he sends five gold guineas we will
make a holy nun of you, Norah, and then you can pray day and night with
no one at all to ask you to do anything but that alone.”
“I might get tired of it, mother.”
“Son of Mary, listen to her! Tired of saying your prayers, you mean?
There is that sturk at the door again. Isn’t he the rascal of the
world?”
II
Darkness had fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office,
which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily,
the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down his blood-threaded
cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the
letter, the first which he had received for two whole years.
“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down
her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when
eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and
read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?”
“Maybe it is,” answered the man, seating himself as usual on an upturned
creel in the centre of the cabin. “The man at the post-office, Micky
McNelis, first cousin he is to Dony McNelis that works with Farley
McKeown, says that it is from a far part, anyway. ‘You must put down
your own name,’ said Micky to me, in English. ‘I cannot write, for I
never had a pen in my hand,’ said I. ‘You have to make your mark then,’
said he. ‘I don’t know how to do that either,’ said I. ‘I’ll write your
name and you have to put a line down this way and a line down that way
after what I write,’ said he, and, just by way of showing me, he made a
crooked cross with his pen on a piece of paper. Then I made my mark and
a good mark it was too, for Micky himself said as much, and I got the
letter there and then into my own two hands. If it is from the boy there
is not one penny piece in it.”
“Why would you be saying that now?”
“I could not feel anything inside of it,” said the man. “If there were
gold pieces in it I could easily find them through that piece of paper.”
The rushlight was now ready; the father took it in his hand and stood
beside Norah, to whom he gave the letter. The woman leant forward in the
bed; her husband held up the light with a shaky hand; dim shadows danced
on the roof; the young sturk again entered the house and took up his
stand in the corner. Norah having opened the letter proceeded to read:
“DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER AND NORAH,
“I am writing to say that I am well, hoping to find you all at home
in the same state of health. I am far away in the middle of England
now, in a place called Liverpool where I have a job as a dock
labourer--”
“Micky’s Jim had that kind of job the year before last in Glasgow,” said
the mother.
“The work is hard enough, heaven knows, but the pay is good. I came
here from Derry and I have been working for the most part of the
time ever since. I intended to write home sooner but between one
thing and another, time passed by, but now I am sending you home
twelve pounds, and you can get gold in Frosses post-office for the
slip of paper which I enclose----”
“Under God the day and the night!” exclaimed the woman in the bed.
“A pound of this money is for Norah, and she can buy a new dress
for it. See and don’t let her go to Greenanore for yarn any more,
or it will be the death of her, sleeping out at night on the rocks
of Dooey.
“I hope my mother is well and that her cold is getting better. I
spend all my spare time reading books. It is a great, great world
once you are away from Donegal, and here, where I am, as many books
as one would want to carry can be had for a mere song----”
“Getting things for a song!” said the man. “That is like the ballad
singers----”
“It would be nice to hear from you, but as I am going away to
America on the day after to-morrow, I have no fixed address, and it
would be next to useless for you to write to me. I’ll send a letter
soon again, and more money when I can earn it.
“Your loving son
“FERGUS.”
III
“This is the paper which he talks about,” said Norah, handing a money
order to her mother.
“A thing like that worth twelve pounds!” exclaimed the old woman, a look
of perplexity intensifying the wrinkles of her face. “I would hardly
give a white sixpence, no, nor a brown penny for the little thing. Glory
be to God! but maybe it is worth twelve golden sovereigns, for there are
many strange things that come out of foreign parts.”
“Alive and well he is,” said Norah, reading the letter over again.
“Thank God for that, for I was afraid that he might be dead, seeing that
it took him so long to write home. Wouldn’t I like to see him again!”
“It will be worth twelve pounds without a doubt,” said the husband,
referring to the money order, as he threw the rushlight which was
burning his fingers into the fire. “I once heard tell that a man can get
hundreds and hundreds of guineas for a piece of paper no bigger than
that!”
“Mother of God!” exclaimed the old woman, making the sign of the cross
and kissing the money order rapturously.
“Poor Fergus!” said Norah, laying down the letter on the window-sill and
taking up her needles. “It is a pity of him so far away from his own
home!”
“Twelve gold sovereigns!” said the mother. “A big pile that without a
doubt. Hardly a house in Frosses has twelve pounds inside the threshold
of its door. Put out that animal to the fields,” she called to her
husband. “We’ll have to build a new byre and not have the cattle in the
house any longer. A funny thing indeed to have them tied up in a house
along with people who can get twelve pounds in bulk from foreign parts!
No decent body would dream of such a thing as having them tied up here
now! Norah, leave down that stocking. Let me never see you knitting
under this roof again.”
“Why, mother?”
“You are going to be a nun, a holy nun, Norah, and nuns never knit; they
just pray all day long and all night too. You have to set about and go
to school again. You are not to be like other people’s children any
more, knitting stockings in the ashes. You are going to be a nun--and
there never was a nun in Frosses yet!”
“I would like to go to school again,” said the child, clinking her irons
nervously and following with her eyes the blue flames that rose from the
peat fire and disappeared in the chimney. “There is a map of the world
in the school, hanging on the wall, and one can see Liverpool on it and
America as well. I could look at them and think that I am seeing Fergus
away in foreign parts, so far from his own home.”
“And there is a pound due to the priest this minute,” said the old man,
who had just chased the calf out into the darkness. “It would be well to
give the soggarth the money in the morning.”
“And you’ll go to school again to-morrow,” repeated the mother, who was
following up some train of thought, and who, curiously enough, made no
mention of her son since the letter had been read. “You’ll go again
to-morrow and learn well. The master said that you were getting on fine
the last time you were there and that it was a sin to take you away from
the books.”
Having said this, the old woman lay back in her bed with a sigh of
relief, the man closed the door of the house, and drawing near to the
fire he held out his feet to the blaze. Norah, glad to be released from
the labour of the knitting irons, looked into the flames, and many
strange pictures came and went before her eyes. From time to time the
woman in the bed could be heard speaking.
“Twelve pounds for a piece of paper!” she would exclaim. “Mother of God!
But there is strange things in foreign lands!”
Suddenly Norah arose and approached the bed. “Am I a good girl, mother?”
she asked, with a slight catch in her voice.
“What silliness is entering your head?” enquired the old woman. “Who
said that you were not good?”
“You said that good people were happy in God’s house, but I am not
always happy there.”
“Did I say that?” asked the mother, who had forgotten all about the
remark. “Maybe I did say it, maybe indeed. But run away now and don’t
bother me, for I am going to sleep.”
“A little bit of paper to be worth twelve pounds!” she mumbled to
herself, after a short interval of silence. “Mother of God! but there
are many strange things in foreign parts of the world!”