Part 10
This rivalry, as it were, between the estranged families in the matter of news from their non-resident members recurred with the same equipoised result on more than one similar occasion, and was extended even to less happy events. For instance, one time when Pat wrote in great distraction, and a wilder scrawl than usual, that the “three childer was dreadful bad wid the mumps, he doubted would they get over it,” the next mail brought just such a report from Molly; which was rather awkward for her mother and grandmother, who had been going about passing the remark that “when childer got proper mindin’ they never took anythin’ of the sort.”
At length, however, when perhaps half-a-dozen years had gone by, the balance of good fortune dipped decidedly towards the O’Farrells. One autumn morning a letter came from Pat to say that he and his family were coming home. He had saved up a tidy little bit of money, and meant to try could he settle himself on a dacint little bit of land; at any rate he would get a sight of the ould place and the ould people. Great was the rejoicing of the O’Farrells. Whereas for the M‘Neills at this time the meagre mail-bags contained no foreign letter, no letter at all, bad or good, let alone one fraught with such grand news. Molly’s mother, it is true, dreamt two nights running that Molly had come home; but dreams are a sorry substitute for a letter, especially when everybody knows, and some people remind you, that they always go by contraries. So Mrs Neil fretted and foreboded, and had not the heart to be sarcastic, no matter how arrogantly the O’Farrells might comport themselves.
Then the autumn days shrivelled and shrank, and one morning in late November the word went round Meenaclure that the _Kaley_ that evening would be up at Fergus the weaver’s. This meeting-place was always popular, Fergus being a well-liked man, with a wide space round his hearth. And this night’s conversazione promised to be particularly enjoyable, as it had leaked out that Dan Farrell and Mrs Keogh and Dinny O’Neill were concerned in what is at Meenaclure technically termed “a join,” for the purpose of treating the kaleying company to cups of tea. In fact, the materials for that refreshment, done up in familiar purple paper parcels, lying on the window-seat, were obvious to everybody who came into the room, though to have seemed aware of them would have been a grave breach of manners. When all the company were mustered, and the fire was burning its brightest, Fergus might well look round his house with satisfaction, for so large an assembly seldom came together, and universal harmony seemed to prevail. This was not disturbed by the fact that several both of the Timothy O’Farrells and Neil M‘Neills were present, as by this time everybody thoroughly understood the situation, and the neighbours arranged themselves as a matter of course in ways which precluded any awkward juxtapositions of persons “who weren’t spakin’.”
It was a showery evening, with a wafting to and fro of wide gusts, which made the Widdy O’Farrell wonder more than once as she sat on the form by the hearth, with the Widdy Byrne interposed buffer-wise between her and old Joe M‘Neill. What she wondered was, whether her poor Pat might be apt to be crossin’ over the say on such an ugly wild night. Just as Mrs Keogh, with an eye on the lid-bobbing kettle, was about to ask Fergus if he might happen to have e’er a drop of hot water he could spare her—that being the orthodox preface to tea-making on the occasion of a join—the house-door rattled violently, and opened with a fling. As nobody appeared at it, this was supposed to be simply the wind’s freak, and Fergus said to Mick M‘Murdo, who sat next to it, “Musha, lad, be givin’ it a clap to wid your fut.” But at that instant a voice was heard close outside, calling as if to another person a little farther off, “Molly, Molly, come along wid you; they’re all here right enough, and I wouldn’t be keepin’ the door open on them.” Whereupon there was a quick patter of approaching feet, followed by the entrance of two bundle-bearing figures. As they advanced into the flickering light, it showed that the figures were a man and a woman, and the bundles children; and in another moment there rose up recognising shrieks and shouts of “Pat” and “Molly,” and then everybody rushed together tumultuously across a chasm of half-a-dozen years.
“They tould us below at Widdy Byrne’s that we’d find yous all up here,” said Pat O’Farrell, “so we left the baby there, and stepped along. Och, mother, it’s younger you’re grown instead of oulder, and that’s a fac.’”
“And where’s the wife, Paudyeen agra?” said Pat’s mother; “or maybe she sted below wid the child?”
“And where’s himself, Molly jewel?” said Molly’s mother. “Sure you didn’t come your lone?”
“Why, here he is,” said Molly. “Pat, man, wasn’t you spakin’ to me mother?”
“Och, whethen now, and is it Pat O’Farrell?” his mother-in-law said with a half-strangled gasp.
“And who else would it be at all at all, only Pat?” said Molly, as if propounding an unanswerable argument.
“Mercy be among us all—and you niver let on—och, you rogue of the world—you niver let on, Patsy avic, it was little Molly M‘Neill you’d took up wid all the while,” said his mother.
“Sure I was writin’ to you all about her times and agin,” Pat averred stoutly.
Perhaps things might have turned out differently if people had not been delighted and taken by surprise. But as it was, how could a feud be conducted with any propriety when Mrs Neil had unprotestingly been hugged by Pat O’Farrell, and when old Joe M‘Neill and his wife and daughter were already worshipping a very fat small two-year-old girl, who unmistakably featured all the O’Farrells that ever walked? The thing was impossible.
For one moment, indeed, an unhappy resurrection seemed to be threatened. It was when everybody had got into a circle round the hearth, in expectation of the cups of tea, which were beginning to clatter in the background, and when Pat O’Farrell, who was talking over old times with Neil M‘Neill, suddenly gave his father-in-law a great thump on the back, exclaiming with a chuckle, “Och, man, and do you remimber your ould sheep that we got in the oats, and gave a coloured wash to? Faix, but she was the comical objec’—‘the tiger-sheep,’ the childer used to call her.” Whereupon all the rest looked at one another with dismayed countenances, as if they had caught sight of something uncanny. But their alarm was needless. For Neil returned Pat’s thump promptly with interest, and replied, “Haw, haw, haw! Bedad, and I do remimber her right well. Och now, man alive, I’ll bet you me best brogues that wid all you’ve been behouldin’ out there in the States you niver set eyes on e’er a baste’d aquil her for quareness—haw, haw, haw!” And the whole company took up the chorus, as if minded to make up on the spot all arrears of laughter owing on that long unappreciated joke. Amid the sound of which I have reason to believe that there fled away from Meenaclure for ever the last haunting phantasm of the unchancy tiger-sheep.
THE SNAKES AND NORAH
THE SNAKES AND NORAH
The Kennys’ little farmstead was a somewhat amphibious one, occupying the southern end of the isthmus which keeps the Atlantic foam from riding into Lough Fintragh, a small, dark-watered nook niched in the shadow of steep mountain slopes. Another murkier shadow brooded over it in the opinion of the Kennys, who, like most of their neighbours, at least half-believed that its recesses harboured a monstrous in-dweller. Their thin white house stood fronting the seashore, with a narrow grazing strip behind, while their yard and sheds lay along the dwindling isthmus, which becomes a mere reef-like bar of boulders and shingle before it again touches the mainland. In calm weather Joe Kenny might see his unimposing ricks reflected from ridge to butt, with gleams of ochre and amber and gold in both salt and fresh water; but in stormy times, which came oftener, it might befall him to witness a less pleasing spectacle of hay-wisps and straw-stooks strewn bodily, floating and soaking on the wasteful waves. So he was not surprised to find that this had happened when he walked out one December morning after a wild night whose blustering had mingled menace with his dreams. Despite its close-meshed roping and thick fringe of dangling stone weights, the more exposed haystack had been seriously wrecked and pillaged. “Och, bad cess to the ould win’ and its whillaballoos!” said Joe, as he surveyed the distorted outlines, and made a rueful estimate of the damage. “If I got the chance to slit its bastely bellows for it, ’twould be apt to keep its huffin’ and puffin’ quiet for one while—it would so.” This was not, however, the limit of his losses. Presently he stood looking vexedly over the door of a half-roofed shed, which contained a good deal of sea-water and weed; also a very small red calf, and a large jelly-fish. The calf was drowned dead, but the jelly-fish seemingly lived as much as usual. “Eyah, get out wid you, you unnathural-lookin’ blob of a baste!” said Joe, giving this unprofitable addition to his stock a contumelious flick with his blackthorn. “There’s another good fifteen shillin’s gone on me. I’d never ha’ thought ’twould ha’ tuk and slopped over the wall that way. Sorra the bit of a Christmas box I’ll be able to conthrive her this year, and that’s a fac’; and to-morra fair day and all—weary on it!”
“Her” was Rose O’Meara, Joe’s sweetheart; and since he had long looked forward to the opportunity of the Christmas gift as likely to bring about a favourable crisis in his courtship, the falling through of his plan made him feel dejectedly out of humour, in which unenjoyable mood he strolled on towards the pigstye. Traces of the spent storm lay all around him. The tide had receded some way, but the waves were fast by, still hissing and seething, and flinging themselves down with hollow booms and thuds. They had evidently been beating high against the yard-wall, for all along it they had left great masses of brown sea-wrack tossed in bales and clumps, as if loaded out of a cart; and these were connected by trails of green and black weed, skeleton branches, shells, clotted froth, driftwood, and other debris, all in an indescribable tangle. As Joe stumped through it, he trucks his foot sharply against something hard, and nearly tripped up. When he recovered his balance, he saw that the obstruction was not the boulder which he had already execrated in haste. It was a wooden box. In much excitement Joe picked it up, and set it on the top of the wall for exacter scrutiny. The tides were constantly sweeping in with miscellaneous fringes on the Kennys’ demesne, but seldom did they bring anything that might not be justly termed “quare ould rubbish.” During all the course of Joe’s life, and he was not in his first youth, no waif had been washed up so promising in appearance as this box. About ten inches square it was, and made of a fine grained dark wood, which seemed to have been very highly polished. The corners were clamped with bronze-like metal, elaborately wrought, and plates of the same inlaid the keyhole and hinges. So strong was the lock, that when he tried to wrench off the lid he seemed to have a solid block in his hands, and it shut so tightly that the lines of juncture were almost invisible. Its weight was considerable enough to increase his conviction that it held something very precious.
Joe’s first impulse was to rush home with his prize, exhibit and examine it. Immediately afterwards, however, it flashed across him like an inspiration that here was Rose’s Christmas box; and upon this followed a more leisurely resolve to keep it a secret until he should present her with it intact on Christmas morning, still distant three whole days. This course would cost him the repression of much impatient curiosity, but it was recommended to him by a sense that it would enhance the value of the gift. He would be making over to Rose all the vague and wonderful possibilities of the treasure-trove, which in his imagination were more splendid than any better-defined object, as they loomed through a haze of unseen gold and jewels. Disappointment had scanty room among his forecasts. “Sure, I’d a right to give it to her just the way it is, wid anythin’ at all inside it, for amn’t I axin’ her to take meself in a manner like that, whether good, bad, or indiff’rint comes of it?—on’y it’s scarce as apt, worse luck, to be any great things as the full of a grand lookin’ box is. But she might understand ’twas as much as to say I’d be wishful she had every chance of the best that I could git for her, the crathur, if it was all the gold and silver and diamonds that ever were dhrownded under the say-wather, and’d never think to be lookin’ to reckon them, no more than if they were so many handfuls of ould pebbles off of the strand.” Thus reflected Joe, who had a vein of sentiment, which sometimes outran his powers of expression. And thereupon, leaving the box atop of the wall, he went to look after the pigs. He found them all surviving, though the storm had caused some dilapidations in their abode, which obliged him to do a little rough carpentry, and kept him hammering and thumping for several minutes. And when he returned to the place where he had left the box, the box was gone.
He searched wildly for it among the litter on both sides of the wall, and nowhere could it be seen. Yet at that hour what man or mortal was there abroad to have stirred it? Then he thought that the weeds looked wetter than they had been, and he said to himself that “one of them waves must ha’ riz up permiscuous and swep’ it off in a flurry while his back was turned; and a fine gomeral he’d been to go lave it widin raich of such a thing happenin’ it.” So as no more satisfactory explanation was forthcoming, he turned homeward, empty-handed and crestfallen. But before he had taken many steps, he saw sitting under the lee of the yard-wall Tom O’Meara, Rose’s brother, who was generally recognised to be courting Mary Kenny, Joe’s youngest sister. The O’Mearas lived a good step beyond the other end of the isthmus, and Joe had begun to speculate what so early a visit might signify, when the greater wonder abruptly swallowed the less as he became aware that Tom had the twice-lost box in his hands.
“Look-a, Joe, at what I’m after findin’,” he called jubilantly.
“Findin’? Musha moyah! that’s fine talkin’,” said Joe. “And where at all did you find it, then?”
“Where it was to be had,” said Tom, promptly adjusting his tone to Joe’s, which was offensive.
“Then it’s sitting atop of our wall there it was,” said Joe. “Whethen, now, some people has little enough to do that they can’t keep their hands off meddlin’ wid things they find sittin’ on other people’s yard-walls.”
“And suppose it was sittin’ on anybody’s ould wall,” said Tom, “what else except a one of them rowlin’ waves set it sittin’ there wid itself, and it all dhreepin’ wet out of the say? Be the same token it’s quare if one person hasn’t got as good a right to be liftin’ it off as another. Troth and bedad, I’d somethin’ betther to do than to be standin’ star-gazin’ at it all day, waitin’ to ax lave of the likes of yous.”
“I’ll soon show you the sort of rowlin’ wave there was, me man, if you don’t throuble yourself to be handin’ it over out of that, and I after pickin’ it up this half-hour ago,” said Joe, with furious irony.
“Come on wid you, come on!” Tom shouted, jumping to his feet with a general flourish of defiance. At this point the dispute bade fair to become an argument without words, and would probably have done so had it not been that the two young men were the brothers of their sisters. As it was, a sort of Roman-Sabine complication fettered and handcuffed them. “Divil a thing else I was intendin’ to do wid it, but bring it straight ways in to your sister Mary,” said Tom, “that you need go for to be risin’ rows about the matter.”
“It’s for Rose’s Christmas box; that’s what I think bad of,” said Joe.
“Let’s halve it between the two of them, then, whatever it is,” said Tom, feeling that a compromise was the utmost he could reasonably expect from circumstances.
And so it was arranged, rather weakly on Joe’s part, he being the better man of the two, and well within his rights, if he had chosen to claim the box unconditionally. The joint presentation should take place, they agreed, on Christmas Eve, the next day but one, when Rose O’Meara would be visiting the Kennys; and then Tom departed whistling, with the pick he had come to borrow the loan of, while Joe consoled himself as best he could for this arbitrary subtraction of more than half the pleasure and romance from his morning’s find.
Late on Christmas Eve, when the Kennys’ kitchen was full of glancing firelight, and the widow Kenny, with her son and daughters and her guests, Tom and Rose O’Meara, had all had their tea, Joe and Tom were seen to often whisper and nudge one another, until at last Joe got up and produced the box from its secret hiding-place. But Tom hastened to forestall him as spokesman, placing considerable confidence in his own perspicacity and grace of diction. He said—
“See you here, Mary and Rose. This consarn’s a prisint the two of us is after gettin’ the two of yous—I mane it was Joe found it aquilly the same as me, that picked it up somethin’ later. And it’s he’s givin’ the whole of his half of the whole of it to Rose; but he’s nothin’ to say to the rest of it; and it’s meself that’s givin’ Mary the half of the whole of the half—och no, botheration! it’s the whole of the—it’s the other whole half of it—”
“You’ve got it this time,” Joe remarked in a sarcastic aside.
“—I’m givin’ Mary. So that’s the way of it, and when we’ve got the lid prized off for yous, you’ll just have to regulate it between yous, accordin’ to what there is inside.”
“And if it’s all the gold and diamonds in the riches of the world,” said Joe, “you’re kindly welcome to every grain of it, Rose jewel—ay, bedad, are you.”
“To the one half of it,” corrected Tom, with emphasis. But his sister tapped him with the pot-stick, and said, “Whisht, you big omadhawn, whisht.”
“It’s a pity of such a thing to be knockin’ about and goin’ to loss,” said Mary, rubbin’ her finger on the embossed metal-work; “and I wonder what’s gone wid whatever crathur owned it. Under the salt say he’s very apt to be lying this night—the Lord be good to him!” The rustle of the waves climbing up the shingle outside seemed to swell louder as she spoke.
“For anythin’ we can tell, he might be takin’ a look in at us through the windy there this minute to see what we’re doin’ wid it,” said Joe.
Everybody’s eyes turned towards the dark little square of the window, and Mary left off handling the box as suddenly as if it had become red-hot.
“Oh, blathers!” said Tom. “Just raich me the rippin’-chisel that’s lyin’ on the windy-stool, Norah, and we’ll soon thry what it is at all.”
Norah, the elder sister, made a very long arm, and secured the tool with as little approximation as might be to the deep-set panes. She had neither sweetheart nor Christmas box, and was disposed to take a rather languid and cynical view of affairs.
“There’s apt not to be any great things in it, I’m thinkin’,” said the widow Kenny from her elbow-chair by the hearth. The truth was that she had been reflecting with some bitterness how not so many years since Joe would have “come flourishin’ in to her wid any ould thrifle of rubbish he might ha’ picked up outside,” whereas now he had kept this valuable property silently in his possession for three days, for the purpose of bestowing it upon the O’Mearas’ slip of a girl. Consequently, Joe’s mother held aloof from the eager group round the table, and uttered disparaging predictions of the event. Tom and Mary did make a prudent attempt to fend off their collision with the disappointment which might emerge from the mists ahead by repeating, as the chisel wrestled with the stubborn hasps and springs, “Sure, all the while belike there’s on’y some quare ould stuff in it, no good to anybody.” Joe and Rose, on the contrary, chose to run under crowded sail towards the possible wreck of their hopes, and talked of sovereigns and bank-notes and jewels while the lid creaked and resisted.
But when at length it yielded with a final splinter, it disclosed what no one had anticipated—namely, nothing. The box was quite empty. Daintily lined with glossy satinwood, as if for the reception of something delicate and precious, but bare as the palm of your hand. There was not even so much vacant space as might have been expected, for the sides were disproportionately thick. Very blank faces exchanged notes with one another upon this result. Almost any contents, however inappropriate and worthless, would have been their “advantage to exclaim upon,” and more tolerable for that reason than mere nullity, about which there was little to be said. Rose was the first to rally from the general mortification, observing with forced cheerfulness that “sure ’twould make an iligant sort of workbox, at all ivints, and ’twas maybe just as handy there bein’ nothin’ in it, because ’twould hould anythin’ you plased.” To which Mary rejoined, dejectedly refusing to philosophise, “Bedad, then, you may keep it yourself, girl alive, for the lid’s every atom all smashed into smithereens.”