THE END OF THE SEASON
I
In a week’s time the squad was to break up: Gourock Ellen, Annie and the
two men who joined at Greenock, were leaving for Glasgow; Dermod Flynn
who, despite the initial success, had lost all his money at the
card-table, was going to remain in Scotland and earn his living at the
first job that came to hand. Such a little boy! Norah felt sorry for
him, but now he hardly deigned to look at her. When at work the far-away
look was always in his eyes and at night he played for hours on end at
the gaming-table. Most of the players said that he was awfully plucky
and that he would stake his last penny on a card and lose the coin
without turning a hair.
For the whole week prior to departure Norah, who was now very restless,
laughed nervously when a joke was passed, but seemingly took no heed of
the joke. She was not unhappy, but in a dim, subconscious way felt that
she had done something very wrong. Before knowing Dermod intimately he
frightened her; it was only after knowing Morrison so well that she
became frightened of him. Dermod had never kissed her; she and the boy
were only friends, she said to herself time and again. Dermod was only a
friend of hers, nothing more. Sometimes when alone she said so aloud, as
if trying to drown the inner voice that told her it was not true. If
Dermod only ceased playing cards things might right themselves, she
thought, but deep down in her heart she wished everything to go on just
as at present.
Morrison went to town on the day following the episode in the lane, but,
before leaving, told Norah that he would come back to see her prior to
her departure for Ireland.
“Don’t tell anybody that I am coming back,” he said, and, while
wondering at his words, she promised not to tell.
The squad was going on Friday; on Thursday night Morrison returned, a
rose in his buttonhole and a silver-handled stick in his hand. She saw
him enter the farmhouse as she returned from the field, her knees sore,
her clothes wet, and straggling locks of hair falling over her brow. At
supper she ate little but took great care over her toilet; scrubbed her
hands, which were very sore, until they bled, and spent nearly half an
hour before the little looking-glass which she had brought from Ireland.
She sorted her tresses, and put in its place an erring lock that
persisted in falling over her little pink ear.
She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist,
laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit
up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went
out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled.
Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of
an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of
the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a
game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was
losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the
wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What
would he do when all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident
that he would not return to Ireland that winter.
Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together
and a look of hesitation on her face.
“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said
Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between
his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn
ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the
girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back
almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah
thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort.
“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the
girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he
should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you
glad?”
“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.”
Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him
on Sunday evening surged through him again.
“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table.
Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He
approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a
splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his
money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a
piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes.
“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside
Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently
buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on
his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on a jagged
stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day;
his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his
boots had risen from the soles.
Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees
showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn
uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was
the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking.
“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again.
Such a long time!”
“It’s not much comfort we have in this country anyway,” said Maire a
Glan, who was turning the heel of a stocking, stopping for a moment to
run one of the needles through her hair.
“I have got to go into the house now,” said Morrison, rising to his feet
and holding out a hand to the fire. “I hope you’ll all have a good
voyage across to-morrow night.”
“The Lord will be with us,” said Biddy Wor, who had just come in from
the byre carrying a small frying-pan in one hand and a pot of porridge
in the other.
“How long does it take to cross from Greenock to Londonderry?” Morrison
asked Biddy Wor, meanwhile fixing his eyes on Norah Ryan.
“Derry, ye mean,” said the old woman. “We always say ‘Derry,’ but it’s
the foreigner, bad luck be with him! that put London on to it. From
Greenock it takes ten hours, more or less.”
Morrison drew a cigarette from a leather case which he took from his
pocket. As he was lighting the cigarette he dropped the case and it fell
beside Norah’s feet. He bent down hurriedly.
“Come out into the open, for I have something to say to you,” he
whispered in a low voice to Norah as he stooped; then he went out,
taking leave of the party in one “Good-night,” and five minutes later
Norah rose from her seat and followed him.
“Where are ye goin’, girsha?” asked Maire a Glan.
“Down to the byre,” said the girl without turning round.
Morrison was standing in the shadow which fringed the fan-like stretch
of light thrown from the shade.
“Is that you, Norah?” he asked, knowing well that it was she, and as he
spoke he took her into his arms and kissed her. To Norah there was
something dreadful in this kiss, and while not knowing that it gave
expression to the pent-up passion of the man, she felt nervous and
afraid. She looked back to the shed, saw the faces round the
gaming-table, old Maire knitting in the corner, her needles showing
brightly as the firelight played on them. A disused cart-wheel hung from
the wall; she had never noticed it before.... Here in the dark beyond
the circle of light something terrible threatened her, something that
she could not comprehend but which her beating heart told her was wrong,
and should be avoided. Why should she be afraid? Norah had all the
boldness of innocence: her virtue was not armed with that knowledge
which makes it weigh its every action carefully. Morrison was speaking,
asking her to come further out into the darkness, but she still kept her
eyes fixed on the shed. Safety lay there; freedom from what she could
not comprehend. The man had hold of her hands, pressing them tightly,
entreating her to do something. She freed herself from his grasp and ran
back to the shed, half glad that the whole incident had taken place, and
more than a little desirous to go out again. Her love for the
well-dressed youth imparted a recklessness to her timid nature. When she
went to her sleeping quarters two hours later old Maire a Glan
accompanied her. The gamblers were still playing, the fire blazed
merrily, and Ginger Dubbin held the bank and was winning heavily.
“What’s that, that’s shinin’ in front of us?” asked Maire a Glan as she
came out. “Maybe it’s only seein’ things that I am, for me old eyes play
tricks in the darkness.”
“It looks like a live spark lyin’ on the ground,” said Norah.
“That’s not on the cold ground,” answered the woman. “See, it’s movin’!
It’ll be the farmer’s son with the gold ring on his finger. Now what
will he be after waitin’ for there?”
“How am I to know?” said Norah, but in such a low voice that the old
woman had to draw near to catch the words. “I’m sleepy,” she said after
a pause; “it’s time we were in bed.”
II
On the morning of the day following, the squad prepared for their
departure, and gathered up all their spare clothes, their pans and
porringers, and packed them in woollen handkerchiefs and tin boxes. The
blankets, eighteen in all, were tied up in a parcel, ready to be sent
off to the merchant in town.
“God knows who’ll sleep in them next year!” said Willie the Duck in a
pathetic voice, and everybody laughed, some because they enjoyed the
remark and others because it was the correct thing to laugh at every
word uttered by Willie the Duck.
Dermod Flynn watched the preparations with impassive face. He was not
going home; in fact, he had not as much money in his possession as would
pay the railway fare to the nearest town. All his wages had been lost on
the gaming-table; he had nothing now to rely on but the labour of his
own hands and the chance of getting a job.
“What will ye do, Dermod?” Maire a Glan asked.
“I’ll try and.... But what does it matter to you what I do? One would
think to hear you talk that I was a child.”
“I suppose there’ll be a lot of drunk people on the boat this night,”
said Micky’s Jim as he tied a tin porringer in a rag and placed it in
his box. “There’ll be some fightin’ too, I’ll go bail.”
“The Derry boat is the place for fightin’, as the man said.”
“Aye, sure, and the Irish are very fond of fightin’ when they’re drunk.”
“It’s more in the blood than in the bottle, all the same,” said Eamon
Doherty.
“I mind one fight on the Derrier,” said Micky’s Jim, biting a mouthful
from the end of his plug. “I was in the fight meself. (If the cork comes
out of that bottle of milk, Owen Kelly, it’ll make a hell of a mess on
yer clothes.) It started below. ‘There’s no man here,’ said I, ‘that
could----’ (Them trousers are not worth taking with ye, Eamon Doherty.
No man would wear clothes like that; a person would better be painted
and go out bare naked)--‘that could put up his fives to me.’ (If ye
dress yer hair like that, Brigit Doherty, I’ll not be seen goin’ into
Greenanore with ye.) Then a man drove full but for my face and I took
the dunt like an ox. (Willie the Duck, are ye goin’ to take that famine
fiddle home again? Change it for a Jew’s harp or a pair of laces!)
‘That’s how a Glenmornan man takes it,’ says I, and came in with a clowt
to the jowl----”
“Stop yer palaver about fightin’, Micky’s Jim, and let us get away to
the station,” said Maire a Glan. “We’ll not auction time while we’re
waitin’, as the man said.”
“If we go off now we’ll only have three hours to wait for the train,”
remarked Jim sarcastically.
“And poor Dermod Flynn,” said Maire a Glan, tying her bundle over her
shoulders with a string. “Not a penny at all left him. Where’s Norah
Ryan? She’s the girl to save her money.”
At that moment Norah was outside with Morrison and the young man was
asking a question. The wish to find an answer to it had kept him awake
for nearly half the previous night.
“Why did you run away from me yesterday evening, Norah?”
“I was frightened.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I certainly don’t know what caused you to run away.”
Morrison knew that, innocent though Norah was, some subtle instinct
warned her the night before to hurry off to the safety of the shed.
“I would like to know why you did it, why you ran away, I mean?” he
asked, knowing in his own heart that, if she understood, she had good
reason to be afraid. “Does the girl understand?” he pondered. He had
heard them talk of most things in Micky’s Jim’s squad, but perhaps the
girl paid no heed to the talk.
“Are you coming back next year?” he enquired.
“It’s more nor likely.”
“Do you care for the life in the squad?”
“It could be worse.”
“That’s no recommendation,” said Morrison with a laugh, but seeing that
Norah failed to understand him, he went on: “I don’t think you could
have a life much harder than this.”
“I did not even kiss you last night,” he said after a short silence,
“and now you are going away and maybe never coming back again. I would
kiss you now, only some of the squad might see us, and you wouldn’t like
that.”
But for the squad Morrison cared nothing. He was just on the point of
kissing Norah when he noticed his father looking at him through a window
of the farmhouse. Although not respecting his father overmuch, for old
Morrison was a hard-drinking and short-tempered man, the son did not
want the little love affair to be spoken of in the house.
“If you stay to-night in Greenock, Norah, I’ll go down with you,” said
the young fellow. “Will you stay?”
“Why should I stay?” asked Norah, who did not understand what Morrison’s
words meant.
“Because--well, you see--” stammered the youth. “Oh! I think you’d
better go with the rest. I’ll see you next year.”
He held out his hand, clasped hers almost fiercely and without another
word turned and went towards the house. On the way he lit a cigarette,
rubbed a speck of dirt from the knee of his well-creased trousers, and
wondered why he wanted to take possession of the innocent girl. Despite
his high-flown views on the equality of man, Morrison never thought of
marrying Norah. Besides, there was Ellen Keenans, the advanced woman and
author of _Songs of the Day_, and it was Ellen who taught him what man’s
conception of duty towards the race should be. At the present moment
Morrison did not see how he could fit in with Ellen’s teachings.
That night most of the squad sailed for Ireland; Gourock Ellen and Annie
took their way to Glasgow, and Dermod Flynn set out on the open road,
ragged, penniless, and alone.