Part 17

Maggie did indeed look so wan and woebegone that Rose’s first thought was: “She’d never ha’ been persuaded to come away wid me. If I had but known I might ha’ promised to take her safe enough, instead of to be vexin’ poor Granny wid goin’ against the notion; and I’d liefer than a great deal I had so.” However, she was obliged to mingle active exertions with the regret that made them all dreary and wearisome. She could not afford to linger, lest her little fortune should actually, as poor Granny had dreaded, dwindle away, leaving her without the means of paying her cousin’s passage. That Maggie must now accompany her was obvious, for “Who else would be mindin’ the girl?” and Maggie herself had apparently no wishes one way or the other. So Rose hastened to make their preparations before the waning autumn became stormier winter, and the long amber rays, which seemed stooping to peer in under thatched eaves at little low windows, should be all lost among clouds and mist.

One thing that she did gave some small consolation to Maggie and herself. She bespoke a wooden cross for their grandmother’s grave from Jim Doherty, who was a great hand at carpentry. Jim at first made some demur about accepting the commission, on the grounds that he might be “bothered to find the right grave there promiscuous in the Union corner.” But in the end he consented, and refused to take a farthing for his work, and promised to paint the cross a fine, strong pink, and if possible at all to set it in the proper place, though about this he still expressed doubts. So Rose entrusted Mrs Doherty with the key of the deserted cabin till Mrs MacAteer could take possession of its few effects, and she and Maggie said farewell to Kilgowran.

The cousins voyaged safely to New York, and were fortunate enough to get situations there in the same household. One day, soon after Rose had reported their arrival to Mrs Doherty at Kilgowran, she received an Irish letter, which she and Maggie spelled out with bewildered amazement at first, and finally with almost incredulous joy. It was written by the Kilgowran schoolmaster, from the dictation evidently of more than one person, which made its style rather involved and obscure, as we may perceive:--

“Dear Rose, and Maggie, jewel machree, that has no call to be fretting all the while. Sure, now, Rose, you needn’t be mad wid me, for the only plan I could contrive to get you out of it was to take off wid meself to the Infirmary as soon as I got your back turned, for then I well knew you wouldn’t be long quitting yourself, and bringing little Maggie wid you. So I bid Jim Doherty let on I was the ould woman they were after burying there on Friday. But afraid of me life I was lest he wouldn’t have the wit to be telling you the right lies.--Dear Miss Rose Byrne, you can bear me witness that ne’er a word of truth I told you good or bad, except saying I couldn’t tell the very place the grave was, and small blame to me for that same, when Herself is sitting here by her fire this minyit, and well able to be giving impidence as ever she was in her life. But I mean to let you know I didn’t go back of me promise about the cross, no fear. A grand little one it is, and I have it painted as pink as a rose, the way it had a right to be. Dear Miss Byrne, so when I brought it over to her just now--”

“The big _stookawn_ he was to go do such a thing,” Rose commented on reading this.

“--nothing else would suit her but I must stick it up for her on the wall alongside of her dresser, and an iligant apparence it has. I may say Mr Joseph Gogarty, the National School teacher, is in a great admiration of it altogether. (I am glad to state that I consider the memorial cross a neatly-made and tastefully-constructed article.--J. G.)--Indeed now, Rose, yourself was a very good girl to think of spending your money on it, if Jim Doherty would let you, and there will I be keeping it, dry and convanient, till whenever I want it, plase God; and then Jim Doherty will see there will be no mistake about where it’s put in the burying-ground. And, Maggie, alanna, you will be getting on finely in the States; and don’t be lonesome, me jewel, for there do be no chances in Kilgowran, and sure the hins is grand company to me. So no more at present from your grandmother, Honoria Behan, and Jim Doherty.”

“Saints above, but herself’s the great rogue, glory be to goodness,” Rose said when they had at last puzzled out the real state of affairs. “And rightly she got the better of me that time, and quare fools she made of the two of us, that were frettin’ ourselves distracted, and she just waitin’ ready to flourish up out of her bed like an ould cricket leppin’, and back again wid her into her little house as soon as she had us safely landed on board. But all the same, it’s wonderin’ I am, Maggie, if she isn’t apt to be lost entirely widout either of us.”

“I’ll save hard,” said Maggie. “Wid such a power of dollars in me wages it won’t be a great while till I have enough to get back to her. Ah, Rose dear, me heart’s cold to think of her sittin’ there wid that ould pink cross stuck up on the wall. But, plase God, that’s where I’ll find it yet when I get home to her; and then I’ll not be long takin’ it down.”

And at the present time Maggie is still saving hard, and the pink cross still hangs on the wall beside her grandmother’s dresser.

LOUGHNAGLEE

Mrs Molly Whelehan told the story to her grand-daughter, Helena Mahony, much as she herself had heard it from her own grandmother, who, having lived at the very time and place of its end, “had a right,” as Mrs Whelehan said, “to know the whole of it.” They were seated on a fine swarded bank by the northern shore of Loughnaglee, and resting, that is to say Helena was resting, for her grandmother seemed just as fresh and brisk as when they had set out two or three hours before, which was absurd. For Helena had been quite lately sent to stay with her, because a family conclave had decided that “the crathur was gettin’ a great age entirely, and too ould and feeble to be left any longer livin’ her lone.” Whereas now, the day but one after Helena’s arrival, her grandmother had nearly “tramped the two feet off of her,” gathering rushes to patch the roof of the calf’s shed from breakfast-time till noon.

Loughnaglee is set in level green land, with low shores, except at its northern end, where a little hill range sends down a spur to the water’s edge, overlooking it with a bold, furzy crag, lifted on a pedestal of steep grass slopes. Beneath this run very tall blackthorn hedges, which here enclose the dwindled lake-corner, turning to either hand in symmetrically right lines and angles, so that it is like a small court, with three high, thick walls. Its water-floor generally lies in shadow, looking sombrely solid and opaque, as if paved with black flags, even when the rest is all shimmering blue or silver. Perhaps this gloomy aspect may have conspired with an echo born of the cliff to suggest and foster the belief whence Loughnaglee has come by its name--the Lake of the Cries: but no one has so far found or invented any legend to explain its origin.

Wide shadow fell heavily on the water as the old woman and the girl sat by it, close to the last sloe bush on the eastern shore; for although it was midsummer and midday everything scowled back sympathetically and unseasonably at the lowering cloud-canopy overhead. “If it’s trampin’ round Loughnaglee as often as meself you were,” Mrs Whelehan said as they sat down and her grand-daughter complained of being “kilt,” “it’s little enough you’d think of steppin’ as far as the Fivestones for a bundle of rushes. But sure we can be restin’ here aisy for a bit, till it’s time to go in and put on the pitaties. And bedad if any people was livin’ all their lives beside it as long as I am, they wouldn’t have so much talk out of them about the quare things there do be on the lough. Ne’er a sign of them I seen anyway.”

“I wouldn’t suppose it was any quarer than e’er another little ould lough,” said Helena, who being momentarily out of humour threw some disparagement into her tone.

“For the matter of that,” replied the grandmother, promptly changing front, “them that never set fut next nor nigh it till last Monday isn’t very apt to have any great opinion about the quareness that might or mightn’t be in it. Sure it’s much if they know the raison it got the name Loughnaglee on it at all.”

“It had to be called some name, I should suppose,” said Helena, who was still inclined to suppose perversely, “and one’s as good as another.”

“Well now, indeed and bedad, the people were fine fools if they’d no better sort of raison than that when they called it the Lough of the Cries in the Gaelic,” said Mrs Whelehan. “But there’s some could be tellin’ you a different story, and a one that’s no lie either, to me certain knowledge.”

“Could they so?” said Helena, who had been cooling her hands and face with the clear water and felt her curiosity revive.

“But before ever that happint,” said Mrs Whelehan, “I was hearin’ tell about the cries. For they do say that if a man’s anywheres convanient to the lough, sittin’ here beside it, maybe, or up a bit on the hill, and if he hears anythin’ cryin’ and callin’ him by his name, he may depind there’s some harm after befallin’ the woman he sets the most store by in this world, whoever she may be--his mother, or his wife, or his child, or his sweetheart, just accordin’, though it’s far enough away she was all the while.”

“To be sure, then, that’s rael quare,” said Helena. “I wonder is it the truth?”

“You’ll be wonderin’ a long time before you make a bowl of stirabout wid it,” Mrs Whelehan said oracularly, “but very belike your mammy was tellin’ you agin now what happint me grandmother’s brother in the same identical place we’re sittin’ in this minyit, I might say.”

“She was not,” said Helena. “No great talk of Loughnaglee she has these times. Only a slip of a _girsheach_ she says she was and she gettin’ married and quittin’ out of it.”

“Herself hasn’t much nathur in her to be disremimberin’ it, if she was twinty _girsheachs_. But I niver had any such great wish, so to spake, for Biddy,” Mrs Whelehan said frankly. “She always took after her poor father’s ould sister, Nellie Whelehan, that was as contrairy as a wild hin. However, what happint me grandmother’s brother, Jim M‘Farlane, was before my time, when they were all livin’ in the empty house fornint me own, and the Cavanaghs were in the next one, that’s gone to ruin. And the ould people were very wishful to be makin’ up a match wid Jim M‘Farlane and Norah Cavanagh, the only daughter. Me grandmother said she knew Norah had a likin’ ever for Jim, and Jim had nothin’ agin it, till Mrs Cavanagh’s niece, Rose Moore, come to stop wid them, and then he seemed takin’ a notion he might be better satisfied if he got her. Just for the sake of variety, for me grandmother said she wasn’t any nicer than Norah, unless that might be the raison. But too young he was to be firm in his mind. However, he was betwixt and between, and they had nothin’ settled this way or that way, when the two girls took it in their heads one day to go pull sloes along the hedge here, that were just turned black. It was the grand hedge for sloes, and bedad it’s full of them this minyit, if they were ripe. The white blossom on it does be a sight to behould at the turn of the winter, and the sloes do be the size of young plums, wid a bloom on them you could write your name in. Grand wine they make. So off they set in the mornin’, and when they came here they found Jim M‘Farlane up on the hill there wid his tarrier after rabbits, and they only passed him the time of day, and that was all. And Rose went wid her basket along this lough side of the hedge, and Norah over yonder”--Mrs Whelehan pointed across the smooth dark water--“where there’s somethin’ of a steep bank.

“Well now, after a while Jim was mindin’ the dog that had him nearly bothered altogether wid the barkin’ and yelpin’ it kep’ up at a rabbit hole; but all the same it seemed to him he heard somethin’ callin’ his name wid a woeful screech. And says he to himself: ‘That’s Rose Moore about drowndin’ herself as sure as the sun’s in the sky.’ And off wid him to the place he’d seen her goin’. But there she was, pullin’ away on the field side of the hedge, and sorra a pin’s points amiss wid her, and ne’er a bit of her was after callin’ him, or hearin’ anythin’ only the little dog barkin’ and yellin’. Howane’er he stood out that some person was screechin’ in it, and they looked through the hedge here to try was there any signs of Norah over there. And at first they seen nothin’, but prisintly they noticed a white strake on a bush opposite, like as if a bough was wrenched off it; and the next minyit they seen a white strake agin’ in the black wather, and what was that but poor Norah’s apern, and she floatin’ across to them on the set of the current? So Jim got her on shore by some manner of manes, but the breath was out of her body entirely. And the crathur had the thorn bough clutched in her hand, the way they knew she was houldin’ on to it till it broke, and callin’ to Jim, and he runnin’ off from her after Rose Moore, that naught ailed in the world.”

“Then she needn’t lose her life only for him bein’ mistook that way?” said Helena.

“She need not, goodness may pity her. And only for him havin’ the story in his head about the callin’ it’s well enough he’d know Norah’s voice, that he was used to all the days of his life. So if there’s no raison for what people do be sayin’ about the lough, get me a one. There was raison enough to drownd the poor girl anyhow. But what I hope in me heart is that the crathur wasn’t seein’ Jim, and he startin’ off and lavin’ her that thought so much of him, for the sake of goin’ to Rosey Moore. She might aisy catch sight of him through the hedge leppin’ down the hill, and ’twould be fit to break her heart.”

“Sure if she was to be drownded the next minyit, that ’ud be the less matter,” said Helena. “’Twould make no differ to her then.”

“It’s little the likes of you or anybody else knows what mightn’t make a differ,” said her grandmother. “Some folks do be sayin’ she didn’t die contint--God be good to her--and wasn’t restin’ aisy. I mind meself hearin’ ould Christy Nolan and Judy Dunne sayin’ that long ago they seen--’Twas about the time of Jim and Rose’s weddin’, for they got married after all; but me grandmother said Rose wouldn’t look at him for a great while she was that mad wid him for lettin’ Norah be drownded.”

“What did they see?” said Helena.

“Ah, me dear, accordin’ to my opinion there wasn’t an atom of truth in it. The Cavanaghs were very dacint, respectable people. I niver heard tell of e’er another one of them walkin’. And forby that, more betoken, look at all the years I’m livin’ alongside the lough, and sight nor light I seen of e’er such a thing, in the daytime at anyrate, and nobody has any call to be rovin’ about in the night. If they see anythin’ quare then, they’ve thimselves to thank for it. I don’t believe--”

“Och, what was that?” Helena gripped her grandmother’s arm and shrank behind her, as a croaking chuckle approached them, breaking into a laughter-like skirl, while a snowy gleam appeared, crossing over the murky water.

“Sure only the big gull,” said Mrs Whelehan, pointing up to the wide white wings as they sailed by. “But it’s no good sign for the weather when that sort come streelin’ in so far from the say, and bedad I think there’s a shower blowin’ up on the win’ this instant. So we’d do better to be stirrin’ ourselves, till we get home dry.”

Indeed the first large drops were stamping circles on the capable water, and ripples were rising and reeds bending to rub them out, as Mrs Whelehan went with Helena home. The old woman was considering that she must fetch in a creel of turf before the day turned out too entirely soft on her. But her grand-daughter’s thoughts were occupied somewhat fearfully with the story she had just been told. It seemed to her that life at lonely Loughnaglee would henceforth have one more shadow, thrown by the fate of Norah Cavanagh, who “didn’t die contint.”

MORIARTY’S MEADOW

For some time Johnny Quin of Letterard had been looking over the low stone wall at his bit of young oats, which you could almost see grow in the midsummer sunshine, when he was pulled by the sleeve, and, turning round, beheld little Joe O’Hea with a grey kid tugging at the other end of a string.

“Johnny, man,” said Joe, “couldn’t you take and give the baste a lift up there for me? She’d get grand grazin’ on it.” Joe spoke remonstrantly, as if Johnny had been neglecting an obvious duty; and he pointed to the roof of Felix Moriarty’s cabin, which stood just across the lane.

The cabin was very small, with one tiny window-pane in its mud-walls, which were deeply weather-stained under the eaves, and from which the whitewash had worn off, leaving large brown patches. But its worst point, considering it as a dwelling-house, was the roof, for the thatch undulated in hillocks and hollows, and also bore a luxuriant crop of grass, almost as long and thick and green as the thriving oats over the way. This seemed to little Joe a desirable pasture for his kid, whose browsings along the stone-dyked lane were but scanty, and hence his appeal to his taller friend.

Johnny, however, was of a different opinion, and replied: “Sure not at all. The crathur’s over small sized to be cockin’ up that height off the ground. It’s breakin’ her four legs she’s apt to be before you’d get her down safe. Or belike she’d be losin’ herself in the long grass. Or maybe it’s puttin’ his roof up for a meadow Moriarty is all the while. Ay, bedad, you may depind that’s what he’s doin’. So just keep along the road wid her steady, me son, and niver mind anythin’ growin’ where she’s no call to be trespassin’.” Accordingly Joe and the kid sauntered on, leaving Johnny to his oats.

But Johnny’s attention had caught on Felix Moriarty’s thatch, and did not disengage itself quickly. His own pleasantry, too, about Moriarty’s meadow had taken his fancy, and he continued to repeat and elaborate it in his thoughts. At last, the forenoon being long and employment scarce, he actually went so far as to climb, sickle in hand, up on the waving roof, where he was presently slashing vigorously.

“Bedad now,” he said, surveying the tufts which had fallen round him, “I’m after knockin’ that same down in fine style: I did so, and wasn’t long about it either.” Nor did he stop here.

Having raked together the crop, and added a few bundles of grass from the bank, he carefully built up on an inconveniently sloping base a symmetrical little cock. This he secured with a rope scientifically twisted of the withered bents along the border of his oats, and then, jumping down noisily into the lane, contemplated his handiwork with complacent pride. Only one element was wanting in his satisfaction with it. There were no spectators to share his amusement and admire his wit. The key of the locked cabin door lurked hidden in some crevice of the thatch, for Felix Moriarty was away at the haymaking in a district where work seemed less slack. Nobody was about in the neighbouring fields. Even Joe O’Hea and the kid were out of sight round the corner.

“Sure now it’s a grand joke,” Johnny repeated to himself more than once, “and it looks as comical as anythin’ sittin’ there up over the man’s door as if it consaited it was in the middle of a sivin-acre field. Anybody ’ud be laughin’ at it that seen it, passin’ by.”

But of passers-by there appeared to be small prospect, as this lonely upland lane led no-whither in particular, and the nearest dwelling was merely his own cottage, the topmost thatch of which peered just visibly over the edge of a long slope.

“It ’ill be twinty pities,” Johnny declared, “twinty pities and a half if nobody sees it before it’s blew away wid the win’.” At that moment all these pities sadly threatened to come about.

Still Johnny had a daring and ingenious turn of mind. Early the next morning, in Rathbeg, a village some few miles from Letterard, much excitement was awakened by the discovery of certain handbills which had been posted up on walls and doors in several conspicuous places. They were white foolscap sheets, written upon in a large round hand to the following effect:--

_Men of Rathbeg! Assemble in your Thousands this Saturday evening to Mow the Meadow of the evicted Tenant, Felix Moriarty, on the Town-land of Gortramakilleen at Letterard. Down with Tyrants!_

These placards must have been affixed during the night, and nobody in Rathbeg knew anything about the matter, a secrecy which, together with the shortness of the notice given, suggested that some peculiar urgency in Felix Moriarty’s affairs made it expedient to render him the required assistance without incurring the observation of the constabulary. Such a state of things was not by any means unprecedented, and would in itself strongly dispose the men of Rathbeg to be active on his behalf, although none of them were acquainted with Moriarty except vaguely by name, or indeed knew much more about little, out-of-the-way Letterard than that it had for proprietor an ill-reputed landowner. On the other hand most people were just then too busy getting in their hay to spare easily even the fag-end of the lingering daylight, especially as the unsettled aspect of the weather made every dry hour doubly precious. And to be sure, it was a long step from Rathbeg to Letterard. Hence there were abundant materials, for the debate which was carried on in and about Finucane’s public for a considerable time after the finding of the summons.