ST. JOHN VIII, I-II
I
In the morning Norah was in a raging fever. She spoke in her delirium of
many things, prattling like a child about the sea and curraghs of
Frosses going out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey dusk of the harvest
evening. She held conversation with people visible to none but herself:
with Fergus, with Dermod Flynn, with her mother, with the dead child.
The girl’s whole history for the last three years was thus disclosed to
Gourock Ellen. Days came and went; the patient became no better. A
doctor was called in; he applied his stethoscope to Norah’s chest and
shook his head gravely.
“Well?” asked Ellen eagerly.
“I’ll come again to-morrow,” said the doctor, and his tones implied that
this was a very important announcement. “Meanwhile----” and he gave
Ellen instructions as to how she should treat the patient.
Money was scarce; Norah had lost every penny of hers on the night that
the hooligans attacked her. The other woman had only twenty-five
shillings in her possession, and this went very quickly. Then Ellen
called on the Jew, Isaac Levison, who had the pawnbroking business on
the stair.
“D’ye ken the lass Norah Ryan?” Ellen enquired of the man, an
undersized, genial-looking fellow with sharp eyes and a dark moustache.
“I know her,” said the Jew. He knew Ellen by sight and reputation; the
kind way in which she was treating the girl was common talk on the
stairs.
“I want the len’ o’ three pounds,” said Ellen. “I can only gie my
promise to pay it back when I get work. Is that enough of a security?”
“I’ll take your word,” said the Jew, who was to some extent a judge of
character, and who was kindly disposed towards the woman, having heard
much that was good about her. “Five per cent.,” he added. “That’s extra
good terms.”
When the doctor came the next day Ellen spoke to him.
“Cash is gey scarce here,” she said, “but do yer best for the girl and
I’ll meet the bill some day. I’ll meet it, doctor, so help me God!”
The doctor smiled slightly; such protestations were not new to him.
Besides, he was a kindly man.
“I’ll do my best for her,” he said. “And as to payment--well, we’ll
see.”
“Ye’ll get paid,” said Ellen fiercely. “Ye must wait, but it doesn’t
matter what happens, ye’ll get paid, mind that! Though the lass is no
blood relation of mine, I dinna want ye to work for charity. And I’ll
pay ye yer siller; aye, if I’ve to work my fingers to the bone to do
it.”
The doctor looked at the woman and knew that she was speaking from the
depths of her heart.
II
Another fortnight, and the tang of spring was in the air. Ellen had
procured work as a charwoman in a large school, and being a good,
reliable worker, several smaller jobs came her way. Her wages now
amounted to nine shillings a week. Norah had recovered a little; the
cough was not as hard as formerly; the pain under her left
shoulder-blade had lost its sting, but, though hardly noticeable, it was
always there. At first Ellen found it difficult to induce Norah to stop
in bed; the girl wanted to get about and do some work. Only when she got
to her feet did Norah become fully conscious of the weakness in her legs
and spine.
As she lay there in her narrow bed she could discern through the cracked
window the sky, always sombre grey and covered with low, sagging clouds.
Now and again she could see a homing crow fly past on lazy wings or
perhaps a white sea-gull turning sharply far up in the sky with a glint
of sunshine resting on its distended wings. And often on a clear night,
when the moonbeams filtered through the ragged blind, Norah would dream
of Frosses, and the sea, the old home, with the moon rising over the
hills of Glenmornan and lighting up the coast of Donegal.
“I have been a great trouble to ye, Ellen,” Norah said one evening,
turning round in the bed and looking earnestly at her friend. “I seem to
be only a trouble to everyone that I meet, and now to yerself most of
all. Ye have been the great friend to me, Ellen.”
“Haud yer tongue, ye muckle simple hussy,” said Ellen with a smile,
sorting the blankets on the bed. “Now gang to sleep and dinna let me
hear ye fash any longer. Are ye happy?”
“I’m very happy, Ellen, waitin’ for the minit.”
“What are ye haverin’ aboot, silly lassie?”
“I used to build castles on Dooey Strand, that’s home in Donegal, when I
was wee,” said Norah. “And then when they were big and high the tide
would come in and sweep them away in one little minit. Them castles were
like people’s lives. Used ye to make castles in the sand when ye were
wee, Ellen?”
“Not in the sand, but in the air, Norah,” said Ellen reminiscently. “I
began the bad life gey early. My mither--she wasna what some people
might cry vera guid; but she was my mither, Norah. Maybe I wasna wanted
when I came, but she had the pain o’ bringin’ me forth. Well, I kent
most things before I was sixteen years auld. Sixteen is an age when a
girl dinna weigh her actions, and sixteen likes pretty dresses, and
sixteen disna like to starve. Though we were poor and often hungry I
kept pure for a long while. But to tell the truth I didna think it worth
it in the end, Norah.”
She paused for a moment and sorted a piece of cloth to fit on the dress
she was patching.
“At eighteen--that’s a gey guid wheen of years ago now--I took it in my
heid that I wisna goin’ to sin ony mair,” Ellen went on. “I got very
religious and bowed myself in the dust before God. ‘He’ll ne’er forgie
me my trespasses,’ I said, ‘for I’m a poor miserable sinner.’ I got a
Bible then and read in it mony things that were a consolation and an
upliftin’ to me. And last night I bought one on the streets, Norah. A
man with a barrow was sellin’ them, and I got one for a penny. I thought
that maybe we would read pieces from it together.”
“The Catholic Church doesn’t allow us to read the Bible,” said Norah.
“I’ll only read one little bit,” said Ellen, taking a dilapidated volume
from her pocket. “Ye’ll listen to it, Norah, won’t ye?”
“Anything that pleases yerself, Ellen, will please me.”
III
Ellen laid down her scissors, trimmed the wick of the lamp, resumed her
seat, wetted her thumb and began to turn over the pages of the volume.
“Here it is,” she said, and commenced to read in a low voice.
“‘And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the
people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them. And the Scribes
and Pharisees’--they were a kind of people that lived in them days,
Norah--‘brought unto Him a woman taken in’--who committed a bad sin;
‘and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto Him: Master, this
woman was taken’--when she was sinnin’--‘in the very act. Now Moses in
the Law commanded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest Thou?
This they said, temptin’ Him, that they might have to accuse Him. But
Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He
heard them not. So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself
and said unto them: HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONGST YOU LET HIM FIRST
CAST A STONE AT HER. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went
out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus
was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had
lifted up Himself and saw none but the woman, He said unto her: Woman,
where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No
man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her: Neither do I condemn thee; go, and
sin no more.’”
Tears showed in Ellen’s eyes when she finished reading; then without
giving Norah time to speak, she went on with her own story.
“I gave up the life on the streets for twa and twa--for nearly four
months, Norah. Then my mither took ill and was like to dee. I nursed her
for a long while, then the siller gaed awa’ and hunger came in its
place. I had never learnt ony trade; there was only one thing to be
done, Norah. I went oot tae the streets again, oot to sin knowingly, and
what was before an ignorant lassie’s mistake was then and after a fault,
black in the eyes of heaven.”
Ellen paused and looked up at the roof. Perhaps she was again seeing
herself as she was on that evening long ago, a wistful and pretty girl,
a child almost, going out into the streets to earn the money that would
buy food and clothing for her ailing mother.
“I came back the next morn, greetin’ a wee, if I remember right, and twa
pieces of gold in my pocket. When I came into our room I found my mither
lyin’ on her chair by the fire, and she was dead!”
“Poor Ellen,” said Norah in a low voice. “Ye had a hard time of it from
the beginnin’.”
“Hard’s not the word,” cried Ellen, and a fierce look came into her
eyes. “It was damnable!”
There was silence for a moment, when the two women felt rather than
thought. As in a dream, they could hear crowds passing like tides along
the narrow lane outside.
“Will God ever forgive us for our sins?” asked Norah.
“Ye have never ceased to be pure in the sight of God, lass,” said Ellen;
“and if baith of us are judged accordin’ to our sufferin’s we needna hae
muckle fear. That’s the way I look at things, Norah!”
And Ellen, taking up her scissors, restarted her work, a smile almost
angelic in its sadness playing in odd little waves over her face. And in
the poor woman’s soul, glowing brighter even in misfortune, burned that
divine and primary spark which evil and accident could never
extinguish.