Part 11

It seemed to Mrs Farrell that the lane was unwontedly steep, and that never before had she waded so wearily through the deep sand. Twice she had to bid Katty not “be tatterin’ along at such a rate, fit to jig the breath out of a body.” As they went between the silvery banks, which took lilac and amber hues in the sunset shine and shadow, she was groping among her memories for some way of creeping out from under the huge burden of years so suddenly heaped upon her by the computations of her friends.

“I was growin’ an ould woman, I well knew,” she reflected, “but what they say’s beyond the beyonds entirely. I never heard tell of any of the Carmodys livin’ to one hundred, let alone a couple, nor yet anybody belongin’ to me poor mother aither. People ’ill be wonderin’ what’s keepin’ me in it so long. Onnathural it is.”

Yet she could find no escape from their conclusions. The years that had passed since her early widowhood lay behind her all in a dim mist of monotony, confusingly alike, without any notable events for time-marks. Whatever things she did remember distinctly and consecutively belonged, she knew, to the far-off days before the loss of her elder sister and her own short married life. In the featureless blur of shifting summers and winters it was impossible to fix dates for isolated reminiscences such as the dear tea and the American war; ten years, or twenty, or forty might have elapsed between them. That old prayer-book, the legacy of her father’s brother, alone afforded hopes of a clue, and so impatient was she to follow it up that when she reached her door she bade Katty wait a minute till she fetched out something she wanted read. Katty, tilting the damp-embrowned page to catch the slanted sunbeams, spelt off the fly-leaf, “Norah Carmody.”

“Sure enough, you’ve got it right, that’s me name,” said Mrs Farrell. “But would you try is there any figures on it, honey?”

“Sivinteen hundred and sixty-two there is,” said Katty, peering closer at the faded ink. “That’s a quare long while ago.”

“It is so, God knows,” Mrs Farrell said, relinquishing her last hope. “And it stands to raison nobody’d take and write down me name before I was born. Thank you kindly, Katty.”

As she turned indoors she felt the new, unaccustomed weight of that great old age pressing sadly on both body and mind, and she dropped her basket on the floor and sat down forlorn by the smouldering wraith of a fire. She had not the heart to think even of Nannie Phelan’s tea, which in any ordinary circumstances would have given the evening a cheerful flavour; it seemed such a lonesome fate to be the ouldest ould woman in Ireland.

II

It was early in July when her neighbours discovered the Widow Farrell’s wonderful age, and three months later found her beginning almost to look the character of a bi-centenarian, so bent, wizened and decrepit had she grown. Not that anything definite ailed her: the change was wrought partly by her own melancholy imaginations, and partly by other people’s alarming speeches. She told herself that she needn’t expect to have the use of her limbs any while longer, and everybody she met told her how surprising it was to see her able to be going about at all; and the consequence was that she daily felt herself becoming more feeble and incapable. On Sunday mornings she sometimes cheered up a bit, because she could not help feeling flattered by all the attention she received as she climbed the steep boreen to Mass, among a troop of sympathetic acquaintances, who contended with one another for the privilege of offering so distinguished a personage an arm. But even then she heard and overheard many observations which, however kindly meant, were by no means encouraging, and through the long week, when she lacked any such excitement, she sat brooding and moping, until her strength waned with her spirits. Out of doors she seldom stirred.

One mild autumn afternoon, however, the mellow golden light tempted her to lift her old shawl over her head and creep as far as the John Phelans, who lived close by, just across a loop of smooth firm sand at the mouth of a boreen. Down this a stream of people had been wending on their way back from Rathcroskery fair, and as several of them had turned into the Phelans’ kitchen, the widow arrived amid quite a large party of neighbours. Nannie Phelan, maiden sister to the man of the house, welcomed her kindly, and sat down with her in a quiet corner, noticing that the old woman looked what she would have described as “skeery and desolit like.”

“Sure, I dunno is there one thing amiss wid me more than the other,” Mrs Farrell explained lugubriously, “only I was dramin’ all last night a dale about the little round musheroons we did be gettin’ in the fields at home, and they made me think of me sisther Rose, that had an oncommon fancy for them ever. I’d bring her any ones I could find, and she’d be puttin’ them in among the hot ashes for to broil. I mind the smell of them this minyit, and she pokin’ them out wid a bit of stick, and sittin’ cocked up on the end of th’ ould settle a-nibblin’ of them, the crathur, like a wild rabbit wid a weeny white turnip stole for itself. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe a sort of sign.”

“She’s away this great while, I should suppose? The Lord be good to her,” Nannie said with interest. It was a new departure for Mrs Farrell to mention this long-vanished elder sister, of whose very existence many of her friends had never heard.

“Ay is she that,” she replied to Nannie, “for what else would she be after all this while? And Christy Dann as well--the back of me hand to him; nobody thought anythin’ of them Danns. But sorra tale or tidings ever I got of what become of her since then. I dunno if any of them did at home, and I question would they let on to me even so, they were that mad about it all. Many’s the time I would be frettin’ and wonderin’, for I always had a great wish for poor Rose ever since I was no size to spake of. As pretty as anythin’ she was, and rael good-nathured. ’Twas twinty-siven pities--But sure it was to be, and belike it’s all one now which of them she took.”

“What happint her, ma’am?” Nannie inquired eagerly; but before she could be answered the open door all at once admitted sounds of such shouting and clattering and trampling that curiosity about the immediate present expelled curiosity about the remoter past, and she rushed out like the rest to see what was going on.

Everybody considered that if Joe Mulcahy had not taken more than was good for him he would never have trotted his horse and car down the steep and deep-rutted boreen; and nobody thought it otherwise than very natural that the result of his rashness was an upset at the foot of the hill. The horse tripped, and Joe and his two fares were pitched off. But they all fell softly, and only the harness was damaged. While it was a-mending with fishing-line the stranger passengers were invited to take a seat at the Phelans’ fire, the circle round which was thus enlarged by the addition of a middle-aged, black-bearded gentleman in light grey, and a little girl in navy blue with a curly-feathered hat.

Elderly Terence Lalor from Moyloughlin, who was visiting his married sister, Mrs Phelan, under-took, as the person of most consequence present, to entertain the new-comer, whose “furrinness” appeared plainly in his accent, even before he remarked, in the course of conversation, that he had had little experience of side-cars, as they were pretty considerable scarce on the streets of New York City, which he had but lately left.

“They’re the quare ould awkward yokes, bedad,” Terence asserted with polite self-depreciation. “’Tis only in a poor, backward counthry people would be bothered usin’ them at all. We ourselves has to make a shift wid them to be gettin’ to fairs and funerals and such. Deed now I mind the big loads there did be on our ould rattlethrap at home of a Sunday mornin’, drivin’ over to Mass at Cranmore; and, by the same token, I mind me poor mother had a sayin’ that a jauntin’-car was a terrible secret-thrap. For, says she, the people sittin’ back to back on the two sates might be talkin’ away about diff’rint things, widout a notion that e’er a word ’ud get across the well from one side to the other. But then maybe all of a suddint the horse ’ud come to a stand, or throt over a soft place, where there wasn’t a sound of his feet or the wheels, and wid that every word they were sayin’ ’ud rise up clear on the air, before they could stop themselves spakin’ loud, like as if they intinded it for the whole of Ireland. Begob, I knew that to happen meself before now. But most whiles, when you’re peltin’ along the hard road, you couldn’t tell what anybody might be sayin’ or doin’ on the far side, more especially if there was e’er a big box, or a couple of sacks, or anythin’ sizeable, sittin’ stuck up between yous on the well. There’s a story I’m hearin’ all the days of me life shows the truth of that same, sir; and morebetoken you was passin’ the very place it happint to-day, drivin’ over here from Moyloughlin, as you was a-sayin’.”

“So we did, sir,” said the stranger, “and I seldom ran across a lonelier-looking prospect than you have lying around most of the way.”

“Well, sir,” said Terence, “it was before me own recollection altogether, but I wisht I had a pound-note for every time I heard tell of it. ’Twas when the Carmodys of Moyloughlin, very respectable, dacint people, that are all gone now, were after makin’ up a match for the eldest daughter wid a strong farmer of the name of Lawrence M‘Nelis, that owned a good bit of land, and was a warm man. But this Rose Carmody couldn’t abide the thoughts of him at all. The work of the world they had gettin’ her persuaded, and in the end nothin’ ’ud suit her but she’d be married away over at Carrick, where her grandmother lived. So to satisfy her they settled it that way, and the day before the weddin’ she and her father set off drivin’ to Carrick on their car, wid herself on the one side and a big box of new clothes beside her, and her father on the other sate, and the well between them piled up high wid a cartload of things belongin’ to Rose that they were bringin’ over. Well and good, sir, they come as far as a cross-roads you might remimber, where the Carrick road turns off the bog, and there’s a collection of quare big lumps of boulder-stones scattered just in the corner. And thereabouts ould Carmody and the driver seen another car standin’ a bit down the Kilanure road wid nobody mindin’ it; so they passed the remark that that was no way to be lavin’ it; and that was all they noticed then. But when they got to Carrick, sorra a bit of Rose was on the car, and sight nor light they ever seen of the girl agin. For what did she do, if you plase, but took and slipped herself off unbeknownst there at the cross corner, where Christy Dann was waitin’ for her, lurkin’ behind the big stones--a young rapscallion widout a brass bawbee to his name that she took a fancy to--and away wid the pair of them to the States before man or baste could purvint it. Finely distracted her people were, that’s sartin. But what become of her nobody knows from that good day to this--Any more than I know what the mischief you’re riefin’ the sleeve out of me coat for, Kate. Is it wantin’ anythin’ you are?”

“If you had aught better than a pair of ould owl’s eyes in the ass’s head of you, ’tisn’t makin’ a fool of yourself you’d be tellin’ stories agin the Carmodys and ould Widdy Farrell sittin’ fornint you listenin’ to the whole of it,” his sister remonstrated in an indignant whisper.

But his attention, and indeed everybody else’s, was diverted to the American gentleman, who had jumped up and stood facing the semi-circle of neighbours with an air of no small importance and excitement.

“I’ll tell you what’s become of her, sir--you and all your friends,” he said. “She’s alive and well this day in her son’s house on Congress Avenue, Corneliusville, the widow of a highly-respected citizen, and the grandmother of myself, Christopher P. Dann. I was named for my paternal grandfather. Yes, sir, he mayn’t have been very flush of cash at the time when he carried off Rose Carmody from the folk who were for buying, and selling, and breaking her heart among them all, but he made his pile out West, and left a good business to his children and his children’s children. Often she’s told me how she slithered off the car and crawled on her hands and knees through the furze bushes, afraid of her life that her father might look behind him before she got to the shelter of the big stones. And she’s never regretted it, she claims, not for half-an-hour. But now I’ll trouble you to present me to the Widow Farrell that good lady mentioned, for it was to look her up that I’ve driven over from Moyloughlin, where I called at the Carmody house and could get no information relating to any member of the family, except the Widow Farrell of Clochranbeg--my great-aunt Norah, I take it, born Carmody.”

“Well I declare to goodness if that doesn’t bate anythin’ ever was! And here’s Mrs Farrell herself--step along, woman alive,” Nannie Phelan said, pushing forward the widow.

“Musha then, you done well, sir, to not be delayin’ any longer, if that’s what you’re after,” said Matt Caffrey. “When a body comes to be goin’ on for a couple of hunderd year ould it stands to raison them that’s intendin’ to visit her has a right to set their best foot foremost.”

“Indeed it’s a very ould, ould crathur I am, sir,” the widow said in her tremulous high piping; “a hunderd and fifty year’s a quare great age for a lone widdy woman to be lastin’ to, wid ne’er a one left in this world. And it’s true for them that I’m apt to quit very prisently. Sure I’m scarce able to stand on me two feet these times, let alone walkin’. But what talk have you about me sister, Rose Carmody. Och, but that was the notorious young villin to entice her away from us. How-an-e’er, it’s oulder agin than meself she was, and in her clay she is this many a long year, God save us all; ay is she, for sure.”

“You’re wrong there, ma’am,” said Mr Christopher Dann, beginning to shake hands with her vigorously. “As I stated, she’s alive and well; has never had a day’s sickness since I knew her, and that’s over forty years. But as for the advanced age you claim, Aunt Norah, you’re mistaken there again; you put it at too large a figure by a very long chalk. Why, it’s some seventy odd years since my grandfather and grandmother Dann crossed the fish-pond, and she says she left the sister Norah, that she’s talking about all the time, only a little slip of a girl of ten or eleven. So if you’re eighty-five, ma’am, this day, it’s the very most you can total up to. Grandmother Dann herself’s something just short of ninety, and a fine woman still. If you’ll excuse the remark, I think she’s better preserved than yourself--fresher and robuster looking. But there’s considerable of a family likeness all the same. Rosette, come here and tell me whether this old lady reminds you of anyone at home.”

The little girl, who seemed to be about seven years old, came and stared hard for a moment with very large dark blue eyes, which were overcast occasionally by a drift of soft black hair. “Why, certainly,” she said with confidence, “if she had a red shawl, and not such wide ruffles to her cap, she’d be a little like great-grandma Dann.”

“That’s so. What Miss Rosette Dann misses seeing correctly don’t amount to a lot,” her father said with pride. “But, talking of the shawl, don’t you feel like fetching it out of the strap on the brown handbag over there by the door?”

As Rosette ran off Mrs Farrell said: “Woman dear, I give you me word she’s the livin’ moral of me sisther; the very eyes of her, and the toss of her head to keep the hair out of them. Me brothers would be sayin’: ‘Way there, Captain,’ to her, and biddin’ her stand steady, lettin’ on ’twas our ould plough-horse she was like. Well now, to think of me behouldin’ such a thing, and gettin’ news of Rose, after all the frettin’ I had and wonderin’ what was become of her, and if it’s drownded she was crossin’ over the water, or starved dead maybe rovin’ about the world wid that young miscreant--beggin’ your pardon, sir, if he was somethin’ to you, but it’s dog’s abuse we did always be givin’ Christy Dann. And so Rose is all this while livin’ grand in the States, and no such outlandish ages on the two of us whatever. They had me torminted here, sir, addin’ up this way and that way till they found out I’m the ouldest ever was. Scarce the heart I’d have to be as much as throwin’ their bit of food to me poor hins, when I’d be thinkin’ of the show I was makin’ of meself livin’ that onnathural len’th of time. But now--it’s as surprisin’ as can be.”

Yet she considered it a degree more surprising a moment afterwards when Rosette returned with an ample shawl overflowing her short arms, and was helped by her father to wrap her great-grand-aunt in the soft, scarlet cashmere folds. They made of the little old woman an object more brilliant than the red sods’ glimmer through the dusky room, as her friends clustered round her, testing the fabric with finger and thumb, exclaiming and conjecturing about price and material. Rosette, however, planted herself in front of the widow, and looked fixedly at her for a minute or two. “Was it you really that used to bring great-grandma the cunning little musheroons?” she said at last. “I wish you’d show me where they grow, I’d like to find some myself.”

“There, that’s me drame,” said Mrs Farrell, clapping her hand impressively on Nannie Phelan’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you it was a sign of somethin’? ’Deed, jewel, I’m afeard it’s a trifle late in the saison for musheroons, but there might be an odd few yet in the high fields up above me house. I’ll skyte up wid you to thry is there, and welcome.”

“Is your house near by?” said Rosette, “for I guess we might go round there and have tea. We’ve brought it in a hamper, because father said we didn’t know what circumstances the Carmody family might be in. And I think _these_ circumstances are real poky and smoky. Father can carry the hamper; it’s heavy.”

Miss Rosette Dann was a young person whose wishes were complied with as a rule. She might presently have been seen crossing the curved sweep of sand towards Mrs Farrell’s cottage, walking hand-in-hand with her great-grand-aunt, at a brisk rate, enlivened by skips and hops, to which the old woman adapted her paces quite nimbly and cheerfully.

Towards dusk that evening Mrs Doherty called on Mrs Hickey in a state of serious perturbation. “I’m after gettin’ a quare turn,” she said, “for I looked in just now at the Widdy Farrell’s door on me way up here, thinkin’ she might be apt to be after takin’ a wakeness. And if I did, there was the ould crathur dressed out in I dunno what sort of deminted red rags, dancin’ her steps like a three-year-ould--a jig, if you plase--in the middle of the floor, wid a couple of strange people, as well as I could see, sittin’ inside and laughin’ at her; tinker tramps belike. It’s daft entirely the poor ould body’s gone.”

“Sorra a bit daft is she,” said Mrs Hickey. “Didn’t you hear tell? Sure there’s some people belongin’ to her just after landin’ over here from the States, and they as rich as Jews; and accordin’ to what they say the sisther of her that run away from her own weddin’ this great while back’s livin’ out there yet as fit as a fiddler; and it’s all a mistake about the widdy herself bein’ any wonderful ould age to spake of. The American gentleman says ’twas her grandmother owned the prayer-book wid her name in it, and he knows the Widdy wasn’t so much as born for better than forty year after the war about the tay. She’s raison to dance jigs bedad. They brought her the iligantist shawl you ever witnessed.”

“It’s well to be her,” said Mrs Doherty. “But here am I braggin’ away this day to everybody at the fair that we had the wonderfulest ould ancient woman at all livin’ here in Clochranbeg. And now it seems she’s no oulder than plinty of other people.”

“Ah well, she won’t be so one of these days,” said Mrs Hickey, “if she lives long enough.”

And with that consideration Clochranbeg has so far had to remain content.

THE HINS’ HOUSEKEEPER

Biddy M‘Gowran felt herself to be a person of no small importance when her grandmother had fairly set off to market and she could contemplate her own morning’s work. She expected to be extremely busy, and well she might, as her task was nothing less than the “redding up” of their kitchen, which she rightly thought in bad need of such an operation. The mistake she made was in assuming that it could be satisfactorily performed by the hands and wits of seven years old.

Biddy had arrived at Kilanure only the day before, having hitherto lived with her other grandmother in a gate-lodge a long way off. Both her parents had always been dead, it seemed to her, though her grandmothers did talk as if the trouble had happened quite a short time ago. The gate-lodge she had just left was a highly ornamental one, with a little terrace of coloured tiles round it, and stained glass in the Gothic porch-windows, and all things about it were kept very spick and span. A girl came up from the village once a week to wash and scrub, and whatever could be polished was polished, and whatever could not be was dusted every day.

Why this Kilanure grandmother, whom she had so seldom seen, should now have come to fetch her away, Biddy did not know; but as she was told that she should return “one of these fine days,” she started happily enough, while little, old Mrs Nolan stood under the porch, shaking her head sorrowfully in the cold March sunlight.