Part 2

“And you’ll be plased to tell him, Mr Mulcahy,” she dictated to the schoolmaster, who was also cobbler and scribe at Clonmalroan, “that whatever he does he’s not to be runnin’ into the forefront of the firin’, and he a head and shoulders higher than half of the lads. He’d be hit first thing. God be good to us. Bid him to be croochin’ down back of somethin’ handy. Or if there was ne’er a rock or a furze bush on the bit of bog, he might anyway keep stooped behind the others. But if he lets them get aimin’ straight at him, he’s lost.”

Mr Mulcahy, who was stirring up the sediment of his lately watered ink, received these suggestions about conduct in the field with decided disapproval. “Bedad now, Mrs Connor,” he said, “there’d be no sinse in tellin’ him any such things. For in the first place he wouldn’t mind a word of it, and in the next place--goodness may pity you, woman, but sure you wouldn’t be wishful to see him comin’ back to you after playin’ the poltroon, and behavin’ himself discreditable?”

“Troth and I would,” said Mrs Connor. “If he was twinty poltroons. All the behavin’ I want of him’s to be bringin’ himself home. Who’s any the betther for the killin’ and slaughterin’? The heart’s weary in me doubtin’ will I ever get a sight of him agin. That’s all I’m thinkin’ of, tellin’ you the truth, and if I said anythin’ diff’rint it ’ud be a lie.”

“He might bring home a trifle of honour and glory, and no harm done,” Mr Mulcahy urged. But Mrs Connor said: “Glory be bothered”; and in the end he only so far modified his instructions as to substitute for her more detailed injunctions a vague general order to “be takin’ care of himself.”

It may perhaps be considered another righteous judgment upon this most un-Spartan mother, that while these precautions of hers were entirely neglected, little of the honour and glory which she had flouted did attend the fate of her Terry. He was shot through the lungs by a rifle posted a mile or two distant from the dusty hillock on which he dropped, and where he lay gasping and choking for what seemed to him a vastly long time, before the night fell suddenly dark and cold, and not to pass away. As this particular casualty was not discovered till the next morning, his name did not appear on the list which Barny Keogh spelled over to the Widdy Connor a few days later, and at the end of which she said fervently: “Thanks be to the great God. There’s no sign of himself in it.” But on the very next evening, a half line in the _Freeman_ ran: “_Add to Killed: Private T. Connor_;” and when Peter Egan down below at Donnell’s read it out by chance, the widdy, listening, felt as if she had just wakened up into a dim sort of nightmare. All the more she felt so, because everybody round her was saying: “May the Lord have mercy on his soul,” as if anybody could believe that Terry had really become to them a subject for such pious ejaculations. So she hurried back through the wide spaces of the bleak March gloaming to her little, silent house, where she shut herself in to sleep off her dream. But it woke up with her in the grey of the early dawning.

Lady Winifred’s Captain was killed about the same time as Terry Connor, and, like him, without anything specially glorious in the circumstances of his death. Rather the contrary. The occasion of it was a minor disaster to the arms of his side--a check, a reverse--over which it could not be but that someone had blundered. In point of fact a highly-distinguished General, dictating a draft report of the same to his discreet Secretary, had expressed an opinion that the regrettable incident had been brought about by want of judgment on the part of the commanding officer, the late Captain O’Reilly, when the younger man coughed significantly, and casually remarked: “Ah, O’Reilly--he married one of Lord Astermount’s daughters--the third, I think, Lady Winifred, a little fair girl. Her people didn’t like the match at all, I believe, but still--” His chief appeared scarcely to notice the observation: but Captain O’Reilly’s want of judgment was not mentioned in despatches.

IV

When their world came to an end for the widow, Lady Winifred O’Reilly, and the widow, Katty Connor, the bog-land was just beginning to turn springwards, and everything on it stirred under the strengthening sunshine. Round about the Big House the birds, who now despised breadcrumbs because other food wriggled abundantly in the dewy grass, sang much and gleefully in the fresh mornings, and through the long golden light as it ebbed off the lawn. But Lady Winifred, looking out no more for letters, sought a refuge from it all in the bookroom, which was a dusky brown place in the brightest hours. There she sat on the floor in a corner before a far-stretching row of _Annual Registers_, and read them volume by volume. She had chosen this course of study just as she might have chosen the top of an adjacent rubbish heap in a suddenly surging flood. Steadily through she read them without skipping--_History of Europe_--_Chronicle_--_State Papers_--_Characters_--_Useful Projects_, even when they included the specification of Dr Higgen’s patent for a newly-invented water cement or stucco--_Poetry_, even when it was by the Laureate William Whitehead. That is to say, her eyes travelled down and down the double columns where the faded ink was less distinct than the damp stains which mottled the margin. It may be doubted whether they conveyed many thoughts to her brain, but they blocked the way to others. One of the most definite impressions she received was a feeling of resentment towards those persons who were recorded to have lived a hundred years and upwards in full possession of all their faculties.

One showery afternoon in the last days of May, Lady Winifred was interrupted in the middle of the events of the year 1783 by the entrance of Rose Ahern, the housemaid, who came to take leave of her. Rose, who was now summoned home to tend an invalided mother, had lived longer at the Big House than its mistress, and often remarked these times that “anybody’d be annoyed to see her mopin’, and the two of them that gay and plisant together only a half twelve-month back.” On this occasion, having repeatedly said: “So good-bye to you kindly, me lady, and may God lave your Ladyship your health,” she continued inconsistently to linger in her place, making small sounds and movements designed to attract attention. But Lady Winifred had reverted to her volume twenty-six, and was inaccessible to any save point-blank address. At last Rose went almost to the door, and turned round to say: “I beg your pardon, me lady--beggin’ your Ladyship’s pardon--but what colour might the Master’s uniform be, me lady? None of us ever seen his Honour wearin’ it, it so happens.”

“It was scarlet, I believe,” Lady Winifred said, continuing to look at the pages. “Oh, yes, scarlet.”

“There now, didn’t I tell Thady so?” said Rose. “And he standin’ me out ’twas blue it was, the way it couldn’t ha’ been him we seen; and declarin’ ’twas apter to be poor Terry Connor, thinkin’ of his mother. But sure it’s a good step to her house from where we seen him--whoever he was--last night.”

“_Saw him last night_,” Lady Winifred said, looking up (“And indeed now,” Rose averred afterwards, “’twas like openin’ a crack of a window--her eyes shinin’ out of the dark corner”). “Oh, Rose, what are you saying?”

“’Deed, then, maybe I’m talkin’ like a fool, me lady,” said Rose, “and you’ve no call to be mindin’ me. Only when I was seein’ me brother Thady down to the back gate last night, there was somebody in a red coat at the far end of the Windin’ Walk, there was so, and a big man too. And this mornin’ I heard several sayin’ there did be a soldier seen in it this while since of an evenin’. But sorra a one’s stoppin’ anywheres next or nigh Clonmalroan. It’s the quare long step he’s apt to have come--between us and harm. And I dunno what should be bringin’ poor Terry Connor there, instead of to his own little place; but the poor Master always had a great wish for the Windin’ Walk. Many a time have I seen him meself smokin’ up and down it, before ever he got married; and last year he was a dale in it along with yourself, me lady, lookin’ after the wee bushes plantin’--beggin’ your Ladyship’s pardon. And all the while very belike it might ha’ been just a shadow under the moonlight; only red it was, that’s sartin. But people do be talkin’ foolish, your Ladyship. And may God lave your Ladyship your health. It was as like as not to be nothin’ at all.”

“Oh, very likely,” Lady Winifred said, indifferently, “nothing at all.”

V

But that evening she left the house once more. She had intended to wait until dusk, but its slow oncoming wore out her patience, and there were still rich gleams and glows receding among the furthest tree trunks when she stole forth into the open air. It breathed freshly fragrant on her, after her many weeks in the mouldering mustiness of the bookroom, and the blackbirds were singing with notes clear as the gathering dews and mellow as the westering light. The season was now the late autumn of spring, when most blossoms are falling, though the young leaves are yet in their first luminous green. On the lawn the laburnums and thorn bushes stood with their outlines enamelled on the grass in gold and pearl and pink coral. Along the shaded avenue and shrubbery paths lay softly drifts of dimmer blossoms and blossom dust, in faint ambers and russets and crimsons. But the white plumes of the Guelder roses were still glimmering ghostly above her head as she went by, and some of the firs were studded all over with little pale-yellow tapers like wild Christmas trees.

Lady Winifred was going towards the back gate, and presently came where the Winding Walk, under a dense canopy of evergreens, runs parallel with the avenue, on the right hand, and on the left within hearing of the fretted, rocky stream in the bit of a glen below. Once between the screening laurels and junipers, you could see, however, only up and down short curves of the waving path. About midway in it was a rustic wooden seat, niched in a recess of the shrubs, and Lady Winifred intended to sit down there and wait and watch. But when she reached it, she found it already occupied by someone who had also been watching, as was clearly seen in the look that leaped forward to meet the newcomer, and at sight recoiled again. In this tall woman, with a black shawl over frosted dark hair, Lady Winifred recognised the Widow Connor concerning whom, ages ago, before the days of the _Annual Registers_, she half remembered to have heard about the loss of a soldier son. The older widow was rising up with many apologies for the boldness of slipping in there, never thinking any of the family would be coming out; and she would have gone away, but the other hastened to sit down beside her, and kept a hand on her shawl. “I won’t stay myself unless you do,” said Lady Winifred. “I only came out because it was so warm,” she explained, as she had been explaining to herself, “and such a fine evening.”

“Tellin’ you the truth, me lady,” said the Widdy Connor, “me poor Terry himself would sometimes be smokin’ a pipe in here of an evenin’ when there was nobody about. I was tellin’ him he’d a right to not be makin’ so free--but sure, after all, he done no harm. There’s great shelter under the shrubberies when the weather does be soft--and be the same token, we do be gettin’ a little shower this minyit, me lady; that’s what’s rustlin’ in the laves. So ’twould be nathural enough if Terry was mindin’ the place. But trespassin’ or annoyin’ the family now, he’d never be intendin’. Just comin’ of an odd evenin’ he might be, the way he used. Anyhow Paudeen Nolan and Jim M‘Kenna was positive ’twas him they seen, and they all goin’ home from the hurley match. The other lads said diff’rint; but that Anthony Martin’s a big stookawn, and his brother’s as blind as the owls. Nor I wouldn’t go be what Rose Ahern says--”

“Rose has very good sight,” said Lady Winifred.

“Ah, then you’re after hearin’ the talk, me lady?” said the widow. “Faix now, they’d no call to be tellin’ you wrong, and bringin’ you out under the wet for nothin’, to get your death of cold. Because Terry it was, whatever they may say. But there’s wonderful foolishness in people. For some of them says they wouldn’t believe any such a thing; so what _woula_ they believe at all? And more of them says it’s a bad sign for anybody to be walkin’ that way. And what badness is there in it, if a lad would be takin’ a look at a place he had a likin’ for, and where he might get a chance of seein’ his frinds? And it’s the quare sort of unluckiness ’twould be for one of _them_ to git a sight of him, if ’twas only goin’ by, and ne’er a word out of him. That’s what I was sayin’ this mornin’ to ould Theresa Joyce. For says she to me: ‘It’s unlucky,’ says she. ‘And you’d do betther to be wishin’ he’d bide paiceable wherever he is, till yourself comes along to him,’ says she. But it’s aisy for Theresa Joyce to be talkin’, and she as ould as a crow. She can’t be livin’ any great while longer, so I was sayin’ to her; and it’s somethin’ else she’d be wishin’ if she’d no more age on her than meself. Sure I was reckonin’ up, me lady, accordin’ to things that happint, and at the most I can make it I’m short of fifty years. That’s lavin’ a terrible long time to be contintin’ oneself in.”

“And I’m twenty,” said Lady Winifred.

“Well, now the Lord may pity you, and may goodness forgive me,” the widow said compunctiously as if she had somehow been an accomplice of this cruel fate, and were all at once smitten with remorse. She seemed to ponder for a while deeply, and at last said: “If be any odd chance it isn’t Terry after all, and only the Captain--I won’t be grudgin’ it to her; no, the crathur, I will not.”

Thereupon silence continued long between the two watchers, and nothing befell them except that their blackness was gradually softened into the shadows as cobweb-coloured dusk enmeshed them.

Then there came a moment when the older woman saw the younger start, and, quivering like a bough after it has bent to a waft of wind, look fixedly in one direction. “In the name of God, do you see anythin’, me lady?” Widdy Connor whispered, and as she spoke she saw too. For a small rent in the straggling laurel on their right made a spy-hole, which brought within view a curve of the Winding Walk near its gate end, many yards away, and there, moving and glimpsing in the twilight, from which it seemed to have absorbed the last lingering brightness, went a gleam of scarlet. It was coming towards the seat, and the faces turned that way looked as if a white moonbeam had fallen across them. Almost immediately branches rustled close by, and out into the path a girl hooded with a fawn-coloured shawl stepped warily on the left hand, and stood poising herself for a swift dart past the recess, unintercepted if not unobserved. Lady Winifred could not have noticed the leap of an ambushed tiger; but her companion sprang up and caught the girl by the wrist. “Norah Grehan,” said the widow. “And who at all are you watching for this night? Me son Terry was spakin’ to ne’er a girl, I well know. He’d have told me, so he would. Who are you lookin’ to see?”

“Och, Mrs Connor, ma’am, lave go of me,” the girl said, twisting her arm and struggling. “And don’t let on to anybody that you seen me, or there’ll be murdher. It’s Jack M‘Donnell that’s waitin’ for me below there. He that listed about Christmas, and now they’re sendin’ him to the war. He and me are spakin’ this good while back, unbeknownst, be raison of me father makin’ up a match for me wid some other man; I dunno who he is, but I won’t have him, not if he owned all the bastes that ever ran on four legs. So I do be slippin’ across the steppin’-stones of an evenin’ for to get a word with Jack, that comes over the bog from the dear knows how far beyant Lisconnel. And if they knew up at the farm I’d be kilt.”

“And maybe the best thing could happen you,” said the widow.

“Ah, don’t say so, woman dear. He’ll be comin’ back one of these days for sure, a corporal maybe, or a sargint, with lave to marry. And he’s plannin’ to conthrive for me to be livin’ wid his mother’s sisther in Sligo till then, the way they won’t get me married on him while he’s gone--no fear. He’ll be tellin’ me about it to-night--and bedad there he is whistlin’ to me. Ah, let me go, Mrs Connor; but whisht, like a good woman,” said the girl, wrenching herself free, and speeding away between the half visible dark foliage.

Then Lady Winifred, who had heard the last part of this colloquy, got up also and said: “I think I’ll go home now. It’s a very pleasant evening, but the air feels rather cold.”

“’Deed now you’d a right to not be out under the rain, wid nothin’ on the head of you, me lady, but the little muslin cap,” said the widow, and added as Lady Winifred went: “And, troth, it’s the cruel pity to see the likes of her wearin’ any such a thing, ay indeed is it. Nora Grehan and Jack M‘Donnell, sure now the two of them’s at the beginnin’, and she’s at the endin’. But there’s an endin’ in every beginnin’, and maybe, plase God, there’s a beginnin’ in every endin’.”

Lady Winifred, meanwhile, was not pitying herself. As she walked slowly back to her empty Big House, along paths odorous with the rain whose drops began to pierce their leafiest roofs, she felt again a stunned disappointment, only vaguer and more chilling than the overdue letter had caused her. And there were no little birds about now to mock her into keener consciousness. After all, things were just as they had been when she set out, no worse surely, and how could they be better, except in a dream? But a dream she might have before to-morrow came, and brought back her long day in the brown bookroom with the companionship of the _Annual Registers_. There were still so many unread of the dusty volumes, clasped with blackish cob-webs, made ghastly now and then by the shrivelled skeleton of the dead spinster. She need not yet consider what she should do when they were all finished.

As the Widdy Connor went towards her little silent house, she was saying to herself: “Jack M‘Donnell bedad! Sure the height of him isn’t widin the breadth of me hand of Terry; everybody knows that. It’s my belief ’twasn’t Jack they seen that time at all. They couldn’t ha’ mistook him for Terry, the tallest lad in this counthryside.... And says I to Theresa Joyce: ‘The heart of me did be leppin’ up wid pride every time I’d see him have to stoop his head, comin’ in to me at our little low door. But it’s lower his head’s lyin’ now,’ says I, ‘low enough it’s lyin’,’ And says she to me: ‘If ’twas ever so low, the heart of you’ll be leppin’ up twice as high wid joy and plisure,’ says she, ‘the next time you behould him.’ But, ah sure, it’s aisy talkin’. I’ll see him come stoopin’ in at it no more.”

[_A dramatised version of this story will be found in the author’s volume_: “Ghost Bereft, with Other Stories and Studies in Verse,” published by Messrs Smith & Elder.]

A MONEY-CROP AT LISCONNEL

I

The Widow M‘Gurk flung down a black sod into the midst of the blossom-like pink-and-white embers and ashes on her hearth with a shock that splashed up vivid sparks in all directions, causing a pair of long-legged, panic-stricken chickens to fly higher, far less nimbly, and seek refuge from the startling shower among the rafters overhead. Her action was symbolical, for as she performed it she said: “It’s gone; there’s the whole of it. And you might as well be holdin’ your tongue till you’ve got somethin’ raisonable to say.” As a matter of fact, her niece, Minnie Walsh, had not been making any observations; but Mrs M‘Gurk had some excuse for indiscriminate censoriousness just then, seeing that she referred to the loss of nothing less than what she called “the greatest chance ever she got in her life’s len’th.” Perhaps that rather long length had really been not more productive of great chances than is usual in the lives of people who dwell on the bog-lands at Lisconnel. Yet her neighbours were disposed to consider that she had enjoyed a somewhat full share of good luck. They all remembered, for instance, the handsome legacy of half a dozen half-crowns that had once come to her from the States, and some of them would say when discussing her affairs: “And she widout a crathur to be thinkin’ of only herself.” This latter circumstance could, of course, be otherwise stated as the fact that “she had not a soul belonging to her in the wide world to be doing e’er a hand’s turn for her”; and when she was first left a childless widow, many years ago, that view had predominated. It still prevailed among most of the older inhabitants, whose children were grown up, and capable of lending a helping hand, sometimes from across the western foam; but they of a younger generation, whose long families were as yet the “burden” which the Gaelic sorrowfully calls them, would speak of her loneliness in a tone implying: “It’s well to be her.” In this opinion the widow’s proudly independent spirit helped to confirm them, her habit being to pose as a prosperous person, resentful of any sympathy which appeared incongruous with that attitude, while she adopted an extension of the principle: “_Tell thou never thy foe that thy foot acheth_,” in this respect treating everyone impartially as an enemy. Here, however, was a quite exceptional occurrence, upon the cruel unluckiness of which the most stoical pride could scarcely be imagined to forbear exclaiming. It came about thus.