DESPAIR
I
The light on the mantelpiece grew faint, flickered and was going out;
the wick, short and draggled, no longer reached the oil. The fire died
down and only one red spark could be seen glowing in the white ashes.
Twelve of the clock struck out slowly and wearily, as if the chimes were
tired of their endless toil. On the floor beside the door a pile of
sovereigns, scattered broadcast, glowed bright even under the dying
light; the figure on the black crucifix showed very white, save where
the daub of red paint told of the Saviour’s wounded side.
Norah sat on the bare floor, one leg stretching out, her hands clasped
tightly round the knee of the other, which was almost drawn up to her
chin. Action was clogged within her, a terrible black monotony was piled
around and above her; a silence, not even broken by sighs, had taken
possession of the girl.
Old Meg rapped at the door many times before Norah heard her; then she
rose, poured some oil into the lamp and turned up the light. Afterwards,
not because she wanted to, but because she was desirous of hiding from
everybody that which had taken place within the room during the last few
hours, she lifted the gold pieces and stuffed them into the pocket of
her dress.
“Norah Ryan! Norah Ryan!” the old woman was crying outside the door. A
dim, hazy thought of all the good things which the gold would buy for
her child crossed Norah’s mind as she opened the door.
“The little fellow has taken a turn,” the old woman said as she stepped
inside and looked curiously round. Of late Norah’s compartment had had a
curious interest for her: how many times each night between the hours of
six and twelve did she come to the door and listen to all that was going
on inside. “I thought that ye’d never hear,” she said. “I was knockin’
and knockin’.”
“He’ll soon be better now,” Norah said in a voice so tensely strained
that it caused the listener to look at her with surprise. “I can now pay
for doctors, dresses, everything. D’ye hear that, Meg Morraws?” The last
sentence sounded like a threat.
The child was doubled up on Meg’s bed, and perspiring freely. The old
woman had put on a fire that was now blazing merrily.
“I had twa stanes of coal, and I put them all on because of the kid,”
said the woman. “Have ye a penny and I’ll get some oil. There’s not a
drop in the house and I’m clean broke.”
Norah handed the woman a sovereign and told her to keep it. Meg
ejaculated a grunt of surprise, made a remark about the shops being
closed, promptly discovered that she really had some oil, and put the
coin in her pocket.
The night wore on; the child, breathing heavily and coughing, lay in
Meg’s bed, one little hand showing over the blue lettered sentence on
the blanket. The light burned fretfully, the old woman remarked that the
oil was mixed with water and that she had got poor value for her money.
Norah talked of removing the child into the other room; Meg said it
would be madness, and scraping up more coal, heaped it on the fire. In
the morning the old woman intended to get very drunk in the pub outside.
A clatter was heard on the stairs; then the sound of a falling body
throbbed through the building. Meg went out and found a man--the
one-armed soldier--asleep on the landing. She bent down, fumbled with
the man’s coat, discovered a bottle of whisky, drank and returned the
bottle to the sleeper’s pocket. She entered the room again, smacking her
lips, threw herself down by the fire and started to weep. In a little
while she fell asleep.
She woke instinctively at eight o’clock, the hour when the taverns were
opening, and rising to her feet, she rubbed her eyes vigorously with her
fingers. She found Norah sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand
pressed tightly against her knee, one resting lightly on the head of the
child.
“Are the pubs open yet?” asked Meg, then in a lower voice: “I mean, is
the child better, the dear little thing?”
“He’s dead,” said Norah quietly. “He died over an hour ago.”
“An hour ago!” exclaimed the woman. “And why didn’t ye waken me?... I’m
a bad yin, Norah Ryan, a gey bad yin!” Saying these words the woman
approached the bed and for a moment stared fixedly at the child. Then
she paced backwards across the room, sobbing loudly and muttering
meaningless words under her breath. Through the dirty window she could
see the beer-shop opposite; the doors were open and a young man in
shirt-sleeves was taking off the shutters.
“My heart is wae for ye, Norah,” said the old woman. “Death is a hard
thing to bear. But I suppose it’ll come to all of us yin day. Oh! oh!
and all of us maun gang some day.... I’m goin’ oot the noo,” she
suddenly exclaimed, stopping in her walk and looking very serious, as
if she had remembered something very important. “I’ll be back again in a
meenit or twa.”
Meg tied her shawl over her head and without washing her face went out
and became speedily drunk. The young man with the white shirt, who took
down the shutters, made some sarcastic remarks about Meg’s dirty face,
and Meg, being short-tempered, lifted an empty bottle and flung it in
the man’s face, wounding him terribly. A policeman was called in and the
woman was hurried off to the police-station.
Noon saw Norah Ryan still sitting on the bedside, her brother’s gold
jingling in her pocket whenever she moved, and her dead child lying cold
and silent beside her.
II
A month of black sorrow passed by. There was a great void in Norah’s
heart, a void which could never be filled up. Every morning she rose
from bed, knowing that the day would have no joy, no consolation for
her. Life was almost unendurable; never was despair so overpowering, so
terrible. Nothing but the all-encompassing loneliness of the future
existed for her now--that terrible future from which she recoiled as a
timid animal recoils from the brink of a precipice.
She had suffered so much, was healed a little; now the healing salve of
motherhood was wrenched from her by the hand of death. Nothing now
remained to the girl but regrets, terrible, torturing, lingering regrets
that tore at her mind like birds of prey.
“No matter what I do now, nobody will think me no worse than I am,” she
cried, but the thought left her unmoved; even life did not interest her
enough to have any desire to end it. Shame had once covered her,
enveloped her as in a garment, but now shame was gone; she had thrust
it away and even the blind trust in some unshapen chance which had once
been hers was now hers no longer.
She worked no more; only once was she roused to action, and that was
when she looked at the gold coins in her pocket. This was Fergus’ money,
and she had often wondered where he had gone to on that night of nights.
She went to a neighbouring post-office and sent ten pounds home to her
mother. Not a line, not a word went with the money order.
“I’m dead, dead to everyone,” she said. “To me own mother, to Fergus, to
all the good people in the wide world.”
III
She was coming back from the post-office and the loneliness weighed
heavily upon her. She thought of the letter on its way to her own
country. Soon the little slip of paper would be in the old home, would
be pressed by her mother’s fingers; and she, poor little suffering
Norah, would still be hemmed up in her narrow room, for all the world
just like a bird prisoned in its cage; hearing nothing but the vacant
laughter and sound of scurry and scuffle on the stairs and streets, and
seeing nothing but the filthy lanes, the smoky sky, and the misery and
squalor of the fetid Cowcaddens.
She went into a public-house and purchased a bottle of whisky. That
night she got drunk and even happy; but the happiness was one of
forgetfulness. She awoke from a heavy sleep in the middle of the night
and lit her lamp. Then her eyes fell on the picture of the Virgin, the
holy water stoup, the little black crucifix and the white Christ with
extended arms and bleeding breast nailed upon it.
“I’ve prayed to ye for years,” she cried, clutching the picture of the
Virgin in her hand. “And look at me to-night! It’s little good me
prayers has done me; me a drunkard and everything that’s worse nor
another!” So speaking, she flung the picture into the dead fire. A
spiral of ashes rose slowly, fluttered round and settled on the floor.
She brought down the holy water stoup, and resisting with a shudder the
desire, bred of long custom, to cross herself, emptied the contents into
the fireplace. Then she looked at the confidant of her innumerable vague
longings--the crucifix.
“Sorrow!” she laughed. “Did ye ever know what a mother’s sorrow for her
dead child was? That’s the sorrow, the sorrow that would make me commit
the sins, the most awful in the whole world. But what am I saying? It’s
me that doesn’t know all the meanin’ of many things. If the people at
home, the master at school, the priest, any one at all had learned me
all the things that every girl should know I wouldn’t be here now like
something lost on a moor on a black night.”
She went back to her bed, leaving the light burning and the crucifix
standing on the little shelf. She wondered why she had not thrown it
into the fire as she intended to do, and wondering thus she fell into a
deep and drunken slumber.
IV
She awoke early, dressed, and went down the stairs into the street. It
was Sunday, solitary and silent, with a slight shower of snow falling.
Glasgow looked drearier than usual with its grimy houses and the wet
roofs, its dirty, miry streets where the snow dissolved as soon as it
fell. Norah’s spirits were in sympathy with the sombre surroundings,
and she felt glad that the oppressive noise of the week-days had abated.
Heedless of direction, she walked along and was passing a Catholic
chapel when the worshippers who had been to early Mass showered upon
her. It was too late to turn back; she walked hurriedly through the
crowd, feeling that every eye was turned in her direction.
“Potato-diggers,” someone said. “They’re goin’ back to Ireland
to-morrow.”
Norah looked at the speaker, then to the crowd at which he pointed. It
was a party of Irish workers, now numbering about thirty in all, and a
few stragglers were still coming out to swell the ranks. A young girl
with very clear skin and beautiful eyes was putting her rosary, one with
a shiny cross at the end of it, into her pocket. An old woman with a
black shawl over her head was brushing the snow from her hair. Her face
was brown and very wrinkled; the few hairs that fell over her brow were
almost as white as the snow that covered her shawl.
A young priest in cassock and gown came out, smiling broadly. “It’s
early in the year for snow,” he said, looking at the potato-diggers.
“One may expect anything at this season of the year, yer reverence,”
said the old woman with the white hair. The young girl looked closely at
the priest, hanging on every word that he uttered.
“Are you all goin’ across home, this winter?” asked the priest.
“All of us,” said a man.
“You like the old country?” enquired the priest.
“Well may we,” answered the old woman. “It’s our own country.”
Norah was moving away; the last words came to her like an echo.
“Our own country!” Norah repeated half aloud, every word coming slowly
through her lips. “But I have no country at all, no country! He’s a
nice, kind priest, indeed he is. Speakin’ to them just as if they were
his own people! I would like to go and confess me sins to that priest!”
The snow fell faster, and presently Norah felt cold. A fit of coughing
seized her and the sharp pain which seldom went away from her left
shoulder-blade began to trouble her acutely. She turned and went back to
her room.
All that evening two pictures kept rising in her mind. One was of the
priest with the smiling face talking to the potato-diggers; the other
was the picture of the young girl with the clear skin and the beautiful
eyes putting the rosary, with the shiny cross at the end of it, into her
pocket.