Part 18

Theig Ahern, the village orator, urged eloquently that it would be a good job to lend anybody a helping hand “against the likes of such a notorious, ould, black-hearted, naygurly, exterminatin’, widow-robbin’, childer-starvin’ miscreant of a land-grabber as ould Warden, himself and his sheriff’s writs.” But then Timothy Dolan argued briefly, yet effectively, that there were plenty of as good jobs, and better, to be done in their own bits of fields, without tramping half a dozen miles over the country after them. The hearers who said “Ay, bedad,” and “Thrue for you,” to this sentiment seemed nearly as numerous as those who received it with murmurs of “mane-spirited” and “unmanly.” So the issue remained doubtful.

Meanwhile, the originator of the discussion, seated at his favourite post on the wall of his Letterard oat-field, was speculating about the result. Not many hours had passed since Johnny Quin had made his way home under the waning moonlight, through dewy fields, from his stealthy bill-sticking at Rathbeg. He had himself composed and written and copied the notices over-night in the emptied National schoolroom, with some assistance from his old friend, Peter Cleary, the teacher, to whom he did not communicate their contents. Mr Cleary, however, though he preferred to be discreetly ignorant, may have guessed at their purport from the words which he was occasionally called upon to spell. “Och not at all, Johnny. There does be but one _r_ in ‘tyrant,’ and all the _i’s_ you have is a _y_ and an _a_. You always made an oncommon bad offer at the orthography.”

And now Johnny, blinking half-drowsily in the sunshine, spent most of the day in looking forward hopefully to the success of his plot. It had occurred to him yesterday, when enjoying his own wittiness embodied in the absurd haycock, and feeling how much that enjoyment would be enhanced by the presence of spectators. To assemble these by a stratagem which would “raise the laugh on them” for coming was a project with a twofold charm, and it fully occupied his mind from the moment of its first conception until he had evolved and, so far as lay in his power, carried out all the details.

If he had been asked what he expected to gain in case things happened as he hoped, he might have truthfully replied, a fine shindy entirely, for that outcome was undoubtedly uppermost in his anticipations. Suppose that a dozen or so of the Rathbeg men were moved by his bogus summons to tramp over with their scythes in the evening, and, upon arriving, found their job was nothing more than simply the removal of the pygmy cock from its ridiculous site. “Bejabers, it’s ragin’ mad they all ’ill be as sure as sure,” Johnny said, chuckling as he rehearsed the scene. “‘Where’s Moriarty’s meadow that’s evicted?’ says they, ‘and that we’re come to mow for?’ ‘Is it, where is it?’ says I. ‘Musha, where else but here,’ I says--for on the roof I’ll be--‘up over your fools’ heads. And I’ll bet me brogues it’s the quarest little meadow ever a man was evicted out of,’ says I. Leppin’ they’ll be.”

About the incidents of this promising fray Johnny felt no anxiety at all. He did not, of course, propose to encounter the exasperated visitors quite single-handed. The stir of their advent would, he knew, bring plenty of the neighbours flocking to see what was up, and there would be no lack of Letterard lads to side with him. What did cause him some uneasiness was the doubt whether any party would actually come. His appeal might have been disregarded. The Rathbeg farmers might be too busy for such expeditions; or they might know enough about Letterard affairs to be aware that there was in reality no talk of evicting Felix Moriarty, and so perceive the hoax. For this reason Johnny kept his own council, lest the failure of his joke should “raise the laugh” on _him_.

But while the sunset was still unfurling in the west a wide fan of pink-flushed feathery cloudlets, which seemed to be waving off a misty little moon, like a white rose-leaf, fluttering up out of the faint green east, Johnny’s fears were dispersed by what he deemed a very joyful sight. From his coign of vantage he espied coming up the lane something which he presently ascertained to be a troop of men, several among whom carried scythes or sickles. And, more than this, along with them moved a brilliant blue and scarlet object, drawn by a pair of horses.

“Glory be! if it isn’t a mowin’-machine they’re after bringin’!” he said in high delight. “Well now, that bangs Banagher.” And he laughed so uncircumspectly that he almost lost his footing on the slope of Moriarty’s thatch, to which he had mounted. A mowing-machine it was, the fact being that Theig Ahern, the orator, in the absence of his elder brother, a well-to-do farmer, had taken upon himself, contrary to advice, to borrow it for the demonstration against the evictors.

With his torn straw hat flapping in the gusty breeze, Johnny stood up tall beside his dumpy haycock, and surveyed the approach of the cavalcade, smiling his broadest smile. But there were no smiles on the faces that looked up at him. The party from Rathbeg were by this time distinctly out of humour. They had failed to get any satisfactory information about Moriarty’s meadow from the following of unoccupied gossoons whom their progress had attracted, and this led them to apprehend that they had somehow blundered about the road. No suspicion of a trick had as yet occurred to them; but they were not by any means in a mood to take one in good part.

Therefore when Johnny, grinning more broadly than ever, replied to inquiries: “Is it Moriarty’s meadow you was lookin’ for? Sure amn’t I meself standin’ on it before your eyes? And a grand big one it is. Only I dunno will yous find it very handy drivin’ your pair-horse yoke into it. Maybe it’s lucky I done the mowin’ meself,” his answer evoked looks and language sufficiently threatening to make him glance round rapidly, singling out the friendly faces, as he took a firmer grip of the sturdy blackthorn, which he had providently hidden behind the haycock.

An excited parley ensued, growing momentarily angrier and louder, while Farmer Ahern’s fiery chestnuts fumed and fidgeted, spurning the rough road, and flashing the set blades of their machine in restless starts to and fro. Then on a brief pause a voice rose clear and shrill. It proceeded from little Dan Molloy, who had perched himself on a wall adjoining the cabin, and it said,--

“Sure, now, if _he’s_ so fond of mowin’”--Dan pointed to Johnny--“mightn’t you take your fine yoke in there”--he pointed across to the open gate of Johnny’s oat-field--“and give it a turn through his bit of oats?”

This suggestion, which was received with an assenting laugh, roused acute horror in Johnny, such peril did it threaten to his thriving crop, the very core of his hope and pride. Down he hurled himself with a clatter to prevent the outrage, aiming, as he passed, at the mischievous visage of Dan Molloy a resentful cuff, which Dan adroitly ducked. But Johnny’s action only precipitated the event he was dreading. For the restless horses, scared by his abrupt rush towards their heads, broke away from all control and bolted straight into the field.

Alas for the lovely young oats as four pairs of galloping hoofs and a pair of wide-rimmed iron wheels burst wildly into them, followed by a throng of trampling feet which wrought hardly less grievous havoc. Every moment was destroying among the soft green blades and haulms with their silken ears the work of many days’ sunshine and dewy air, when suddenly, before the careering runaways had been brought to a standstill, another yet more alarming object diverted the attention of their pursuers.

Johnny’s reserve on the subject of his jest had known one exception, very unfortunately for his confidante’s peace of mind. She was his mother, a little old widow woman, prematurely aged and crippled by rheumatism, so that she had to be carried to and fro between her bed and her armchair, her only journeys. Her son Johnny was most kind to her. It had been with the best intentions that he enlivened their morning meal by telling her all about the grand trick he had just played on the Rathbeg lads, and how infuriated they would be when they landed over with their scythes to cut nothing good or bad, and what a laugh it would raise on them, and what a splendid row was certain to follow. “It’s much,” he said, “if somebody’s head isn’t broke over it.” And then he had gone off whistling in the highest spirits, leaving little Mrs Quin a prey to the blackest forebodings.

All the long, lonely day she brooded uninterruptedly upon the dreadful possibilities of the coming encounter, in which crooked, shining scythe-blades, wielded by rash and wrathful hands, might play a part as fatal as if they were flashes from a murky cloud. “They’ll be murdherin’ one another up there,” she said to herself, “and me sittin’ here all the while like an ould tabby-cat in comfort by the chimney-corner, and no abler to do a hand’s turn agin’ it.”

Johnny’s fear that nobody might come formed her sole hope, and of that she was bereft about the pink sunset time, when little Joe O’Hea ran in to her with a jug of sour milk and the news that he had just seen a great lot of men carrying scythes, and a quare big yoke of a mowin’-machine going along up the lane towards Felix Moriarty’s. At these tidings Mrs Quin’s heart sank. Then her mind swiftly caught at and grasped a desperate resolution. “Joe, sonny,” she said to Joe, who was on the point of racing off for another view of the remarkable machine, “do you see that bucket of wather?” It was a zinc bucket set brimful near the door. “I want you,” she continued, “to take a couple of standin’ leps in the middle of it.”

“But sure, ma’am, wouldn’t I be splashin’ it all over the floor and dhrowndin’ everythin’?” Joe objected, amazed.

“Never you mind, sonny; do as I bid you like a good boy. Lep away, and I’ll give you a penny,” said Mrs Quin. Whereupon Joe, although still puzzled, by no means loth, did jump so energetically that the contents of the bucket were speedily dispersed in sparkling showers, a bountiful share of which thoroughly drenched his own garments.

“That’s an iligant child,” Mrs Quin said approvingly, “ne’er a dhry stitch there’s on you at all. Now come here till I tell you what else I’m wantin’ you to do. You know, Joey, it’s a terrible wicked thing,” she went on impressively, as he stood by her, dripping and expectant, “it’s a terrible wicked, dangerous thing for childer to get meddlin’ wid the fire.”

“_I_ don’t ever meddle wid it,” Joe hastened to protest. “Biddy and Paddy does be at it of an odd while, and I do be biddin’ them let it alone and not be burnin’ themselves up.”

“To be sure, avic, to be sure, so you would. But now, just for this very once, and you’re to not ever go do such a thing again _at all_ in the len’th of your life’s days, I want you--may goodness forgive me--to take the little matchbox you’ll find behind the blue jug on the dresser, and run out to the back of the house, where you can aisy raich to the thatch from the high bank of the field, and strike a few of the blue heads of the matches, jewel, on the rough side of the box--och but I’m the ould sinner!--and stick them lightin’ into the thatch here and there, as if you was stickin’ pins in a pincushion, and you’ll see the fine flare-up there’ll be directly. It’s as dry as tinder.”

This commission was surprisingly to the taste of six-year-old Joe. “And what more’ll I do after that, ma’am?” he said, eager for further agreeable instructions. “There’s the pigsty--”

“Sure, then, you might be runnin’ up the field and screechin’ fire and thieves and all manner,” said Mrs Quin; “it’s a sort of game, you see.”

But as Joe gleefully darted out, armed with the small yellow box, she shook her head stiffly. “Och now meself’s the wicked ould woman. But deed it’s murdherin’ themselves they’d be--and Johnny. And if I sent them only a message,” she argued, “sure they might be apt to think the crathur was romancin’, and just keep on fightin’; but seein’s believin’. And the child’s drippin’ wet, forby his clothes bein’ woollen every thread. He couldn’t set himself alight anyhow. May goodness forgive me. It’s killin’ me his poor mother had a right to be for puttin’ such divilment in the crathur’s head.”

So we can easily understand how it came to pass that in the midst of chasing the driverless mowing-machine several people became aware of a thick smoke column rising on the edge of the slope below them, and of red flames shooting up through the blue cloud, growing rapidly stronger and brighter in the faded daylight. At the same time they observed a small figure rushing about with shrill shrieks in the adjacent field. Joe, in fact, had been so much scared by the sudden huge blaze of the dry thatch that he performed his screaming lustily.

Among the first to see was Johnny Quin. “Mercy around!” he said, “there’s our house blazin’ wild, and Herself inside it.”

He outstripped all the others in their rush down-hill, and reached the scene of the conflagration none too soon, for the kitchen was a smother of smoke, through which wisps of fiery straw had already begun to drop fiercely about the helpless old woman as she sat distracted by conflicting terrors. She could hardly realise her relief when she found herself where she could breathe and see, and in the arms of her Johnny safe and sound.

Nevertheless the mother and son spent that night uncomfortably enough, huddled in a corner of their devastated dwelling, under an extemporised shelter of potato-sacks, while all around them hummed and plashed through their charred rafters the drops of a downpour which had arrived just too late to save their roof. Johnny sat in mournful meditation.

“Well now,” he said at last, “it’s quare bad luck. There’s me oats destroyed, that was grand, and the machine smashed, and the horse’s leg cut woeful, and our bit of good thatch ruinated over our heads--and all wid intendin’ a joke.”

“It’s on your knees you ought to be, me lad,” said Mrs Quin, the incendiary, “thankin’ goodness that the feet of you aren’t raped off wid them hijjis slashin’ scythes, and meself not burned into ashes and cinders schemin’ to purvint yous doin’ murdher, instead of talkin’ about bad luck.”

But Johnny’s gratitude remained undemonstrative. “I’m thinkin’,” he said, “it’s a fool’s work to be raisin’ a laugh on any people. For you never can rightly tell what else mayn’t take and rise up along wid it. Ay, bedad--and apter than not somethin’ you won’t like.”

DELAYED IN TRANSMISSION

When anybody in Meenaclochran gives a party, the word which goes round to bid the neighbours often has far to travel over the wide bog-land, and is conveyed by very miscellaneous messengers, all manner of wayfarers being pressed into the service. This was especially often the case with the Nolans and the M‘Nultys, two of the most sociably-disposed families in the place, and living remotely at opposite ends of the spacious and lonesome Cregganmore bog. Both households, however, comprised lively young people, while both were a shade or so more prosperous in their farming than is common in that district, and owned the warmest hearths and the widest floors. Consequently, among circumstances thus propitious, it was not likely that the obstacles merely of long miles and rough walking would prove insuperable when either wished to let the other know “there would be dancing in it” on such or such a night. As they were on most friendly terms they of course took care that the dates of their entertainments should not clash; but everybody knows how difficult it occasionally is to prevent this, and not long ago, by a chapter of those accidents which will sometimes happen, Dinny Breen and John Hickey met on Tackaberry’s Bridge, Dinny charged with an invitation from the Nolans to the M‘Nultys, and John with one from the M‘Nultys to the Nolans, both for the same Saturday evening.

Tackaberry’s Bridge is about half way between the two white farmhouses, humping itself up in an abrupt, ungainly loop, like a travelling caterpillar, over the Murna River, which flows through the middle of the bog. Though roughly built it shows more traces of design, such as it is, than the rest of the road, which seems just a track worn by feet choosing the firmest ground as they go to and fro. Stepping-stones occur here and there, and are found convenient by pedestrians in soft weather, but naturally tend to discourage any other kind of traffic.

As Dinny Breen sat now on the low parapet under the only little tree, a stooping willow, visible far and wide, he looked down into the clear brown water and said: “If the both of them has company axed for the one night, it stands to raison that naither of them could be goin’ out in any case. So there’s no great good in me trampin’ on all the way to M‘Nulty’s.”

“There is not, bedad,” said John Hickey. “Nor in meself, for the matter of that, to be mindin’ about lavin’ word wid the Nolans.”

“Because,” said Dinny, “this is a very handy day to be borryin’ the gun off Pat Kelly, when we have the dogs along, and the polis are away wid themselves to Loughmore Petty Sessions. A race’s runnin’ on the whole of them.”

“True for you; they are so bedad,” said John.

The last-named consideration was an important one, owing to the fact that neither the proposed borrowers nor lender happened to possess a licence, which made immunity from the chance of encounters with inquisitive patrols appear a highly desirable feature in an afternoon’s sport. Accordingly, the opportunity was pronounced too good to be thrown away, and the two faithless youths were soon happily engaged among bogholes and tussocks, and heathery boulders and golden-burning furze bushes, with no further thought of Nolans or M‘Nultys.

Anyone whose experience has lain in places like Meenaclochran will understand how improbably large an amount of good luck would be needed to keep the news of an entertainment from the ears of an uninvited neighbour. No such exceptional quantity intervened on this occasion. Very little _contrariness_ of things, on the other hand, commonly suffices to ensure the worst possible complexion being put on the matter; and that was now amply supplied. A few unfortunate remarks from tactless or ill-disposed acquaintances, a few slight misrepresentations, inadvertent or otherwise, and the thing was done. The seeds of offence were safely sown and might be trusted to thrive apace. Only a short growing space was wanted to ripen the conviction alike of Nolans and M‘Nultys that they had been treated by each other with black ingratitude, if not insulted outrageously; and their firm belief in their wrongs was supersaturated with bitterness. The mood of that goddess excluded from the wedding feast, or of that fairy forgotten at the christening, may well have been enviable in comparison, since all the world has heard tell how they gave expression to their resentment with a satisfactory thoroughness far beyond the reach of any little farming folk “looking as sulky as a pig” at one another on a lonely Donegal bog. Although the latter had certainly no wish to conceal their state of mind, pride forbade them to manifest it in public by utterances more explicit than enigmatical innuendoes, coupled with the cast of countenance aforesaid; and this helped to keep the origin of the grievance in obscurity, thereby lessening the chances of an explanation.

Consequently, before many weeks went by, all Meenaclochran had begun to remark with interest that “Nolans and M‘Nultys weren’t so very great these times, whatever ailed them;” and soon afterwards it became clear that they were “black out altogether.”

The estrangement may perhaps have gratified two or three mischief-makers; it undoubtedly caused much distress to more than one of the persons most concerned. Generally speaking, it was regarded as an inconvenient and untoward occurrence, and if it had made a newspaper paragraph, might have been said, with more than average truth, to have thrown a gloom over the whole parish. On nobody, however, did it produce less effect than on the pair who had brought it about. Dinny Breen and John Hickey, being but slightly acquainted with either of the fronted parties, and finding their chief pleasure in the company of their terriers, stravading over the hills and bogs, were equally ignorant and unconcerned about this detail in the social affairs of their neighbourhood. They might have stated accurately that it was “all one to them so long as they could be gettin’ after the rabbits, and birds and troutses.”

But as the autumn waned into winter, diminishing their opportunities for those favourite pursuits, they found themselves impelled to devise other pastimes. And one tedious morning in Christmas week, said Dinny to John: “D’you mind the day a while ago you and me was bringin’ round word of a party to Nolans and M‘Nultys, and divil a bit of it we brought them at all?”

“I do so, bedad,” said John. “That was the time we got the three brace of snipe up at the end of the lough, and took them home along wid the rabbits sittin’ in the middle of two big loads of bracken, and me hayro of war at the barracks”--he referred to the police sergeant--“lookin’ over the gate at us and we goin’ by.”

“Because,” said Dinny, “I was thinkin’ why wouldn’t we be bringin’ it to them now? Better late than never, as the man said when he ate the bad egg. We needn’t be tellin’ them what Saturday it was, so they’ll never suppose but it’s the next, that’s St Stephen’s Day. I’d like to see what ould Anastasia M‘Nulty would say to it. There’s apt to be some quare talk out of her, for Mick Gahan was tellin’ me she’s ragin’ mad agin all the Nolans this while back, whatever’s took her.”

“Lookin’ as bitter as sut at one another they are this long time, sure enough. Troth now, I wouldn’t wonder if the whole pack of them would be leppin’ over it,” John said hopefully. “I’m passin’ by Nolan’s place this evenin’, and I could as aisy as not look in.”

“And I’ll leg it over to M‘Nulty’s,” said Dinny, “for I might as well be doin’ one thing as another.”

The two friends executed their design without difficulty, but, so far as John Hickey was concerned, with somewhat disappointing results. For when he put his head in at the Nolans’ back door, he saw nobody except Mrs Peter, rolling out a flour cake on the table, and in reply to his communication all she said was: “Musha, I hope they’re well,” with an air of the utmost composure. Then to his inquiry whether he should convey an answer for her, she rejoined simply and placidly: “Ah, go and fish.” So that he retired with a sense of failure.