About the still more exposed cabin of the Duranes the storm raged yet
more furiously, and awoke, one after the other, all its inhabitants, no
less than nine of whom were sleeping under its roof that night. It blew
the white turf-ashes out from the chimney in such a shower over Pete
himself, who was sleeping upon the right-hand side of the fireplace, and
whose mouth happened to be wide open at the time, that it became filled
with them, in getting rid of which he uttered a succession of sputtering
sounds which had the undesirable effect of arousing his wife and
exciting her never very distant wrath.
‘_Monnum a Dhea!_ is it waking the children you want to be after
_now_?’ she asked in a tone all the more acrid from its enforced
lowness. Then, with a ‘Whist! whist! whist!’ addressed to the baby, she
began, gently but rapidly, thumping that important personage’s back, so
as to hinder it, if possible, from awaking.
Unfortunately the action brought her elbow into sudden sharp contact
with the head of the youngest little girl who had nestled close up to
her for warmth, and who immediately responded with a loud howl, which in
its turn aroused Juggy Kelly, Pete’s niece and the general servant of
the establishment, who slept with the chickens in a sort of loft
overhead, and who, with a vague idea that something was suddenly being
required of her, began, half awake, to hist and hoost vigorously, as if
she were driving in geese or turkeys to roost.
‘Auch! listen to that creature!’ muttered the mistress of the house in
a tone of yet more acrid displeasure--a displeasure only kept low by the
fear of awakening the rest of the still slumbering flock. ‘_Bedhe husth!
Bedhe husth!_’ she called up in a shrill whisper in the direction of the
offender. ‘Troth, and I might speak to the chickens themselves and
better,’ she added to herself in a mutter of indignation. ‘A fool that
Juggy came into the world, and a fool she’ll stop in it as long as the
head stays on her! What ails me to be letting myself be troubled with
her, I wonder? Isn’t _one_ fool enough for a decent woman to have on her
hands at the same time?--yes, indeed, and more than enough! ’Tis the
right _baulyore_ I am with my easy-going ways, slaving and slaving from
morning till night, and getting no thanks, only feeding them that never
yet did a day’s work--nor couldn’t either, I believe, though you covered
them with gold from head to foot, and promised them all Ireland in
return for doing it. Whist! whist! whist, I tell you! _Will_ you whist,
I say?’ she continued to the baby, who had by this time joined its
plaintive howls to the other confusion of noises within and without the
cabin. ‘Whist this very minute! Arrah, will you hold the tongue of you
then, and stop bawling? What! and will nothing else content ye? There,
then, there, then; _now_ be easy, and let me hear no more of you.’ Then,
as the baby’s voice sank into a chuckle and murmur of content, ‘Weary on
you, one and all, for torments! my life’s destroyed amongst you, late
and early! Never a day’s peace or quiet upon this earth, God knows!’
‘Dada, my foot’s sore! There’s a big thorn sticking out of the top of
it!’ suddenly exclaimed the youngest child but two, a small, red-headed,
lively creature called Norah, its father’s chief favourite, who was
sleeping in an obscure corner of the cabin along with a brother of
about a year older.
‘Arrah, hush, my dotey! Be easy, now, there’s a good child, and don’t be
crossing your mother!’ Pete answered apprehensively, creeping out of his
own bed and feeling his way over in the darkness to where the child’s
voice came from. ‘There, there; go to sleep quick, acushla agus, and
sure dada will look for the ugly devil of a thorn in the morning and
pull it out, never fear,’ he whispered soothingly, whereupon the child,
satisfied by his assurance, put up her little face to be kissed and then
settled down again, curling her little legs under her as a small drowsy
bird curls itself into its own corner of the nest.
‘Man Above! it _is_ the terrible night it is, and no mistake!’ Pete
added to himself in a tone of apprehension, looking round him with a
terrified glance as a wilder gust than ever swept down the chimney,
rattling the ill-fitting woodwork, once more filling the cabin with
white ashes, and threatening to bring the whole crazy construction about
their ears.
‘Wild weather! God save all mariners upon the sea, far and near, this
night, amen!’ muttered old Durane from his own corner behind the door,
the one most out of the draught, and partially protected also by the
_corrag_, or screen of dry branches of furze and alder. He was only half
awake, but the formula was so familiar that it rose unbidden to his lips
even in his sleep.
‘True to you, father, the same, amen!’ dutifully responded his son, as
he skipped back across the cabin and into his own lair, pulling the
great coat which was his chief covering by night as well as by day close
up to his chin.
‘Yerra! you’re the nice pair, the two of you, talking and carrying on
in the black heart of the night as if it was the broad middle of the
day!’ his wife exclaimed angrily. ‘And I that have not had one taste of
sleep yet, and my two arms broke with holding up the child! I take the
holy Mother of God to witness that ’tis enough to make any woman curse
the hour she was born, let alone the day she ever laid her two eyes upon
such a man--not to say he is a man at all, for he isn’t, nor hasn’t the
spirit nor the courage nor the sense of a man, only clever at putting
upon one that’s too soft and easy ever to say a ‘no’ to him! Yerra! give
him his bit and his sup and his bed, and his easy life, and ’tis all he
wants. _Wurrah deelish! Wurrah deelish!_ ’tis the queer husband _I_
have, anyhow! God, He knows that, so He does!’
To all this, Pete the submissive made no reply, only rolled himself up
into a ball, trying to get his feet out of the piercing draught, a
performance which, despite the shortness of his legs, he utterly failed
to accomplish. By degrees the scolding voice died away for mere lack of
anything to feed upon; the baby, too, slept; little red-headed Norah
crept closer and closer to her brother, pushing him against another
sister who lay just beyond, till the three became an indistinguishable
mass of small mottled arms and legs. The old man had relapsed into the
placid dreamless slumbers of old age. Up in the chicken-loft poor,
much-abused Juggy Kelly lay, her troubles and stupidities alike
forgotten, one fat arm, utterly bare of covering, hanging outside the
thin coverlet, her mouth wide open, and deep snores heaving her
capacious chest.
Thus, despite the blasts which unceasingly shook it, all the inmates of
the cabin little by little fell asleep. In other cabins scattered over
the face of the island the inhabitants, too, slept, notwithstanding the
storm, till, towards daybreak, the wind itself--sweeping over and over,
and round and round its unprotected top; playing mad pranks along the
steep perpendicular cliffs; rushing vociferously through the narrow
fluted channels and fissures, in at one end, out at the other; loosening
the thin flakes of limestone and dropping them with a hollow or tinkling
clatter upon the next ledge--producing, in short, every variety of sound
of which that not very responsive musical instrument was capable--was
the only thing left awake and astir upon Inishmaan.