Part 19

Dinny Breen’s adventures were more interesting as he found at home Mrs Anastasia M‘Nulty who received his misleading message with a tirade which almost came up to his expectations in vehemence and vigour. She ended an impassioned critique upon the characters and conduct of the Nolan family, past and present, by requesting him to tell them from her that unless they “kep’ their impidence to themselves they would be very apt to get it back, along wid somethin’ they might happen not to like,” which Dinny solemnly promised to do. Whereupon, as he was passing the haggart gate, out after him sped Molly M‘Nulty, who must have been running along the other side of the dyke on purpose to intercept him, and who breathlessly explained that “he needn’t repeat e’er a word her grandmother was after sayin’, for she’d seemed in a quare cross humour the whole day, and didn’t mane anythin’ at all, good or bad.” So Dinny more honestly pledged himself on no account to deliver Mrs M‘Nulty’s refusal.

Now these things would scarcely have helped the most acute and furthest-sighted to predict what did actually happen on that next Saturday evening, or to account for it with any certainty. Who, indeed, can say how it came about? But whether through the genial influence of the season, or a limited choice of gaieties, through amity or _ennui_, _Liebe oder Langeweile_, the fact is that in a moonless obscurity between seven and eight o’clock two parties of people, coming from opposite directions, rushed almost into one another’s arms on Tackaberry’s Bridge as they fled towards the willow tree for shelter from a shower of rattling hailstones.

“Musha, good gracious! and is it yourself, Mrs M‘Nulty, ma’am?” said Julia Nolan, becoming aware of whom she had jostled against. “Maybe it’s too soon we are, then, steppin’ over to your place?”

“Pather Nolan, begorrah--I didn’t expec’ to see you till we got to the farm,” said Art M‘Nulty. “And what way at all are you facin’ the now?”

Meanwhile Peter’s eldest son was shaking hands interminably with Art’s youngest daughter, and saying: “And how’s yourself this long time, Molly asthore? Sure I haven’t seen a sight of you for a month of Sundays.”

“Somebody’s after makin’ fools of us, that’s the truth,” declared Joe M‘Nulty when facts had been stated.

“And a dale our best plan then,” said Peter Nolan, “is to not be made fools of. Just step along home wid us the whole of yous, the way you was intindin’, and ’twill be a comical thing if we can’t get a drop out of the bottle, and a scrape off of the fiddle handy enough.”

Well and good, as the old _shanachies_ say. Peter’s suggestion was unanimously adopted; and since shortly afterwards the neighbours were not only remarking how “M‘Nultys and Nolans had patched it up,” but were also agreeably excited by the prospect of “young Pather Nolan and Molly M‘Nulty gettin’ married at the Shrove,” we may perhaps regard the results of this second misdeed on the part of Dinny and John as an exception to the rule that two wrongs don’t make a right. Still, by way of a better moral, we should bear in mind that only for the opportune clatter of the hail-shower the consequences would probably have been widely different. For if the two families had passed each other by unbeknownst in the dark, to arrive cold and wet at empty, shut-up houses, it is hard to say what complications might not have ensued. The chances certainly are that no such wedding would have taken place at the Shrovetide, if indeed it had not been put off hopelessly for ever and a day. So great are the perils that environ practical jokers and their victims.

FOR COMPANY

Larry Behan, stepping over from Loughmore to Clochranbeg, a few perches short of the Silver Lane met with Joe Hedican, leading his sorrel mare, and said to him: “What at all ails yous?”

“Is it what ails us?” said Joe.

“Sure what else?” said Larry. “And the mare in a lather and a thrimble, and yourself comin’ along as unstuddy as a thing on wires. Lookin’ fit to drop down of a hape together the two of yous are.”

“And why wouldn’t we have a right to be?” said Joe, “and ourselves just after behouldin’ what we won’t either of us be the better for till the day we’re waked.”

“Bedad then, that same’s the plisant talk for me to be hearin’, wid the light darkenin’ before me every minyit,” said Larry, “And so it’s wakin’ th’ ould mare you’ll be one of these days, says you? Well now, I niver heard the like of that. But, to be sure, I’m not very long in the County Donegal. I hope you’ll send me word of the buryin’, for I’d be sorry to miss it. ’Tis the comical notion, if you come to considher it.”

He laughed, upon considheration, with much noise, at anyrate, but as the mare rolled her eyes wildly at him, and Joe only shook his head the more ominously, he withdrew abruptly from their unsympathetic countenances, though he persisted in his guffaw. When he had gone half a dozen yards he faced round and shouted: “Might you happen to know is the Garveys’ boat in yet?” Joe, however, was just mounting, and he plunged off at full speed, without seeming to hear. “Fine floundherin’ and bouncin’ about he has, and be hanged to him, himself and his ould baste,” Larry said with indignation. “If I thought the Garveys were like to be stoppin’ out late I’d lave it till to-morra, and turn back now, but I couldn’t tell I mightn’t lose the job altogether wid delayin’.”

This was not the risk he chose to run, and he presently reached the entrance of the high-banked, winding boreen, whence he threw a look backwards in hopes that some fellow-travellers might be catching him up. Nothing, however, moved on the lonely moorland road behind him except the gallop of Joe Hedican’s horse hurling itself in the wrong direction. So he went forward without the prospect of any company.

The Silver Lane twists through an undulating sea of softly heaped-up mounds, scantily clad with bent-grass, pale and dry, and dark, harsh-textured furzes. These are rooted in almost pure sand, silvery hued, yet under strong sunbeams yielding dim golden glimmers that give a faint purple to the shadow in its curves and folds. But the touch of this March evening’s twilight left it all cold white and grey. It lies deep and powdery on the narrow roadway, so that a man has not even the sound of his own footsteps to reassure him, should he be disposed to feel lonesome and apprehensive. Larry Behan was feeling both as he passed the second sharp turn of the lane and came to a place where a crevice-like path pierced the sandhill on his left. Here he noticed several huge hoof-prints, some of them impressed with violence upon the low buttresses and ledges of the banks, which, in the ordinary course of things, no horse would have trodden.

“Hereabouts it is they seen whatever it was frighted them,” he said to himself, “and set the mare prancin’ and dancin’. ’Twas the quare capers she had. Between us and harm--look where she flounced right across the road, and scraped herself up agin the furze bush: her hair’s thick on it.”

He was hastening on, longing and dreading to be round the next corner, when he heard close by a sound--such a homely, commonplace one that he experienced hardly a moment of panic before out of the little by-path ran a very small boy, swinging a large tin can. As a general rule Larry would have seen nothing particularly attractive about the black-headed, bare-footed, flannel-petticoated gossoon, and would probably have allowed him to pass on unaccosted. But in the present circumstances he could have desired no better company, for an innocent child is the most efficacious safeguard possible when uncanny things are about. Another encouraging reflection also occurred to him immediately: “’Twas that now, and divil a thing else scared the two of them--the little brat skytin’ by, clatterin’ his can, and the light shinin’ off it on a suddint.” Still, this view of the matter, though plausible and rational, was not quite certain enough to justify him in letting slip the chance of an escort, and he therefore set about engaging the child in conversation. He did so rather clumsily, for lack of the familiarity with children’s society which would have enabled him to fill up the gap between thirty odd and five years old with appropriate small-talk.

“Is it goin’ for water you was, sonny?” he said.

“She sent me to the well again,” said the gossoon, stopping his trot and pointing up the little path to a tangle of briars and long grass in a slight hollow.

“And is it gone dry on you?” said Larry, looking into the empty can.

The reply was a turning of it upside down to show a crack that ran for several inches round the bottom rim. “I can put the top of me littlest finger right through it,” the gossoon said and proved. “It won’t hould e’er a sup at all. And the big jug’s broke too.”

“That’s a bad job,” said Larry.

“There’s nothin’ she can be sendin’ now unless the black kettle itself, that’s as much as I can do to lift when it’s empty inside, let alone full--it’s the size of meself, bedad,” averred Larry’s protector.

“Sure then, she couldn’t ax you to be carryin’ that. Is it far you come?” Larry inquired with some anxiety.

“I dunno,” said the gossoon. “But it’s a terrible ould baste of a big kettle for always wantin’ to be filled. I hate the sight of it sittin’ there on the fire, wid the dirty ould sutty lid tryin’ to lep off it; and then Herself does be bawlin’ to me to run out agin and bring the water before it’s boiled dry. I do be sick and tired of goin’ up the lane wid the heavy can pullin’ out the arm of me all the way back; fit to destroy me, Katty Lonergan says it is. And a while ago I was givin’ it a couple of clumps agin’ a stone, where I seen a weeny crack comin’; so maybe that’s what beginned it. But you needn’t let on, or I’ll be kilt. Sorra a sup it ’ill hould.”

He dropped some small handfuls of the fine sand into the can, and holding it up watched the grains sift slowly out. This experiment he repeated more than once, and Larry, albeit in a hurry, looked on with prudent patience. But at last he suggested: “Mightn’t she be mad if you’re too long delayin’?”

“She does be mad most whiles,” his companion said philosophically, “and I don’t so much mind if she won’t be sendin’ me back wid the ugly ould kettle.”

However, he began to walk on, rattling a couple of cockle-shells that had remained in the can. Larry kept close beside him, and meekly waited when he occasionally stopped to pick up pebbles, or explore rabbit-holes, or start sand-avalanches and cascades by tugging at the colourless roots of the grasses in the slithery banks. It was a slow progress, and the dusk had grown perceptibly greyer by the time that Larry emerged from between them, at a place where the road branches, on the right towards Clochranbeg, on the left towards the great Bog of Greilish.

“And what way are you goin’, avic?” Larry inquired with less anxiety now, having left behind the Silver Lane, which he knew to be the most perilous stage of his journey.

The child pointed to a small cabin standing opposite, a stone’s throw back from the road; a reply that somewhat surprised Larry. For even through the gathering dimness the place looked quite ruinous and deserted, with rifted roof, and rank weeds peering in at frameless windows.

“She’s screechin’ to me,” said the gossoon, and darted off, making for the door. Larry heard nothing but the cockle-shells clattering in the can. “There’s no sort of people,” he said to himself, “would be livin’ in the likes of that, unless it was tinkers stoppin’ awhile. But I see ne’er a sign of an ass or a cart in it. Well now, he was the quare little imp--himself and the big kettle.”

A bit further on he overtook the Widow Nolan, who was going his way, and as they walked along together he casually asked of her how the Silver Lane had come by its bad name. “For,” he said, “since I’m in this parish I met wid many that do be afeared of it, but what’s wrong wid it I niver happint to hear tell.”

“Sure it was before my time,” said Mrs Nolan. “There used to be a woman livin’ in th’ ould empty house you seen at this end of it, and a little boy belongin’ to her, that she gave bad treatment to. Huntin’ him off she was continual to fetch her in big cans full of water out of the well up near the far end of the lane, that you might be noticin’ goin’ by. So one day she sent him wid a great heavy lump of a kettle he couldn’t rightly lift, and tryin’ to fill it the crathur over-balanced himself and fell in after his head, and was got dead-drowned. And ever since then it does be walkin’ there now and agin; and folks say there’s no worser bad luck goin’ than for a body to see a sight of it, or to so much as hear the clink of the can--well, man alive, what’s took you at all?”

“The Lord have mercy on me this day,” said Larry, “and meself just after walkin’ alongside of it, and talkin’ to it, the len’th of the boreen.”

And thenceforward neither of them had any breath to spare for conversation until they at last reached distant--still cruelly distant--Clochranbeg.

THE END

EDINBURGH COLSTON AND COMPANY LTD PRINTERS

Mr T. FISHER UNWIN’S

POPULAR NOVELS

=MR T. FISHER UNWIN= has much pleasure in announcing the publication of the following Novels. Notes thereon will be found overleaf:--

SIX SHILLINGS EACH.

THE DAYSPRING. A Romance WILLIAM BARRY. A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg MRS AUBREY RICHARDSON. THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE. THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT ROY HORNIMAN. ANGLO-AMERICANS LUCAS CLEEVE. THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE MRS PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY. HELEN ADAIR LOUIS BECKE. ROSEMONDE BEATRICE STOTT. LAURA’S LEGACY E. H. STRAIN. THE BLACK SHILLING AMELIA E. BARR. THE VINEYARD JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. THE MIS-RULE OF THREE FLORENCE WARDEN. THROUGH SORROW’S GATES HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. KITTY COSTELLO MRS ALEXANDER. NYRIA MRS CAMPBELL PRAED. COURT CARDS AUSTIN CLARE. THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT FORREST REID. A BACHELOR IN ARCADY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. THE FILIGREE BALL ANNA K. GREEN. MYRA OF THE PINES HERMAN K. VIELE. THYRA VARRICK AMELIA E. BARR. THE SONG OF A SINGLE NOTE AMELIA E. BARR. A BUSH HONEYMOON LAURA M. PALMER ARCHER. THE WATCHER ON THE TOWER A. G. HALES. THE CARDINAL’S PAWN K. L. MONTGOMERY. TUSSOCK LAND ARTHUR H. ADAMS. THE FOOL-KILLER LUCAS CLEEVE. LOVE TRIUMPHANT MRS L. T. MEADE. MOTHERHOOD L. PARRY TRUSCOTT. HE THAT HAD RECEIVED THE FIVE TALENTS ANGUS CLARK. CHINKIE’S FLAT AND OTHER STORIES LOUIS BECKE.

T. FISHER UNWIN’S NEW NOVELS.

THE DAYSPRING--A Romance. By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Author of ‘The Wizard’s Knot,’ etc., etc.

This is the lite story of an eager, earnest young soul, rising at length above the illusion of the senses to the clear heights of faith. Noble aims, misconstrued in the mirage of modern Paris, under the charm of a deluding spirituality, bring us to the moment of choice between two paths, one that of so-called Free Love, the other that of supreme self-sacrifice. The dreamy mysticism, the sparkling humour, the sudden brilliances, the delicate fancies which characterise the work of the author of ‘The New Antigone’ are to be found in this newest and perhaps most fascinating of Dr. Barry’s books. A background of adventure is set by the last days of the Second Empire and the Commune of 1871.

A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg. By Mrs AUBREY RICHARDSON. (First Novel Library).

A dramatic episode of life in Homburg, at the height of the English season. The characters represent types of men and women actually to be met with in the high social and political world of to-day. A Society Beauty and a Sister of an Anglican Community personify the red Rose of Love, Pride and Gaiety, and the pale Lily of Purity, Aspiration and Repression. In the heart of the Rose, a lily bud unfolds, and in the calyx of the Lily, a rose blossoms. The incidents of the story succeed each other swiftly, reaching a strong _dénoûement_, and working out to a satisfying termination.

THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA: A Satire for Idle People. By W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE, Author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth.’

Lady Patricia is an Englishwoman of a noble but impoverished family, whose girlhood has been spent on the Continent. Left an orphan she comes to England with the independent intention of seeking her own living. Sometimes under her own, sometimes under an assumed name, she takes various situations in England and France, and is brought in contact with many different sets of society both in the upper and the middle classes. In this volume she relates her experiences, and comments upon them with caustic wit. The plan of the work affords the author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth’ an excellent opportunity of satirising the aristocracy and the _bourgeois gentilshommes_ of England and France, and readers of the earlier volume will be prepared for a book full of piquancy and daring.

THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT. A Novel. By ROY HORNIMAN, Author of ‘The Living Buddha,’ ‘The Sin of Atlantis,’ etc.

There is nothing easier for a girl who has been born in a garrison town of hard-up Service parents than to drift, especially if, as in the case of Philippa, she has been disappointed in her first romance and is left a little soured and hardened. It is so easy to enjoy the tawdry amusements that come her way; and if, like Philippa, she is beautiful, flirtation follows flirtation, men come and go, till it becomes the habit to talk of her as ‘that fast Miss Blount.’ She is not the sort of girl as a rule who gets married. There is something in the atmosphere about her which makes marrying men fight shy of her. Philippa, however, is saved from social shipwreck by marrying in such a way as to rouse the envy of all those who have been her traducers. The background of the story is concerned with the family life of Captain and Mrs Blount’s household. There are also some exciting chapters dealing with the South African war.

ANGLO-AMERICANS. By LUCAS CLEEVE.

The main theme of this story is the fundamental antagonism existing between two characters--an American girl educated in ideas of freedom and independence, and of the subservience of man to woman, and her husband, an English Lord, who expects his wife to regard his career and interests as her own, and to devote herself to them even to the obliteration of herself. The girl’s father is a millionaire, and the story tells incidentally of the illicit means by which his pile was made.

THROUGH SORROW’S GATES. A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ etc.

The scene is laid in Halliwell Sutcliffe’s favourite country, the moors of the West Riding, though in the present book he goes even further into the heart of the heath, nearer to that simplicity of feeling and passion which is the real mark of the moor-folk. His characters spring from the moor, as it were, and grow out of it; and not least of these characters is Hester, the impulsive, erring farm lass, who dreamed wild dreams at Windy Farm, and saw herself supplanted by a little, well-born woman rescued from the snow.

KITTY COSTELLO. By Mrs ALEXANDER.

This story--the last that was written by Mrs Alexander--tells the experiences of a well-born, beautiful Irish girl suddenly plunged, somewhere about the ‘forties,’ into commercial circles in a busy English port. The attraction of the book consists rather in the brightly-drawn contrast of the Irish and English temperaments, with their widely differing views of life, than in exciting incidents, though the reader can hardly fail to feel the fascination of the heroine or to be interested in all that befalls her.

NYRIA. By Mrs CAMPBELL PRAED.

The author considers this the most important book she has yet written. Its preparation has engaged her for a long time, and in it she gives her readers the very best of herself. The scene is laid in Rome in the first century A.D., and among the characters are many historical figures. The period offers magnificent opportunities for the writer of romance, and of Mrs Campbell Praed’s imaginative gifts and power of vivid description it is, of course, needless to speak at this time of day. The story, which is a lengthy one, will be found to be full of dramatic situations and thrilling incidents.

COURT CARDS. By AUSTIN CLARE, Author of ‘The Carved Cartoon,’ ‘Pandora’s Portion,’ ‘The Tideway,’ etc.

A romance dated in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and placed on both sides of the border. The time, a stirring one, when the old order changing had not yet wholly yielded place to the new, admits of romantic incidents of every kind, from raiding, kidnapping and gaol-breaking, to mysterious love-making and midnight murder. The intrigues between the English and Scottish Courts form a plot sufficiently intricate, which is here likened to a game of whist, the court-cards chiefly used therein being Queen Elizabeth of England, James VI of Scotland, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, called ‘The Knave of Hearts,’ who by a series of extraordinary adventures, rose from the condition of a wanderer and sheep stealer on the border side to the position of chief jester and ruling favourite at the Scottish Court.

THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By FORREST REID. (First Novel Library).

This is the history of the earlier half of the life of a man of genius, following him through boyhood and youth to maturity. It is a book in which the form, the atmosphere, count for much. Essentially the study of a temperament--a temperament subtle, delicate, rare--it has more in common, perhaps, with the work of D’Annunzio than that of any English novelist; the author’s aim, at all events, having been to describe, from within, the gradual development of a human soul--to trace the wanderings of a spirit as it passes from light to light in search of that great light ‘that never was on sea or land.’

A BACHELOR IN ARCADY. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ ‘Mistress Barbara Cunliffe,’ etc.

In this book Mr Sutcliffe abandons his strenuous manner of adventure, feud, swordplay and fierce wooing, and gives us an English idyll. The bachelor is a man of some thirty odd years, who dwells in rural peace among his animals, birds, fields and flowers, and, assisted by his faithful henchman, sows his seeds, mows and prunes in complacent contempt for such as have succumbed to the delights of matrimony. And so he fares through spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, his chief companions the squire across the fields and his young daughter, till as time goes on he discovers that the girl is all the world to him, and the curtain descends on the bachelor--a bachelor no more.