Part 15

Mrs Rea looked rather dreadful, for she had her head muffled in two large shawls, one grey and one black, and had wisped round her throat a white apron, which gave a curious conventual touch to her appearance. She explained that she was destroyed with a very bad cold, some sort of asthmy or influenzy she thought it must be, it had come on so sudden, and her corroborative coughs were quite alarmingly loud. “Ne’er a fut’ll I git out to-morra,” she said, “not if the city of Dublin was just across the width of them two rails there, instid of len’th-ways. And me writin’ word to poor Biddy Loughlin I was comin’ at twelve o’clock. Lookin’ out for me she’ll be.”

“Sure you could aisy send her a message be some of them that’s goin’,” said Dinny. “Art Walsh is, I know, and his sisther.”

“’Deed but I wouldn’t like to be disthressin’ them to be wastin’ their day runnin’ about after me messages,” Mrs Rea said, “nor I wouldn’t like poor Biddy to be losin’ her time expectin’ me.”

“Well, thin, I dunno how you can manage it,” said Dinny. “One thing or the other you must do—send it or let it alone.”

“Where’s yourself, lad?” said Mrs Rea.

“And didn’t I tell you I hadn’t a penny to me name? Not unless it’s borryin’ I was, and then where’d me wages be on Sathurday? I wouldn’t mind if it was meself only, but I can’t be lavin’ the ould bodies at home too short, and that’s the end of it. There’s no use talkin’.”

“Och, you gaby, wasn’t I manin’ you to go on me own couple of shillin’s in place of meself, and take me message? Supposin’ you’d nought betther to do. It’s too late to be writin’ be the post, and if Biddy doesn’t get word, as like as not she’ll be in a fine fantigue, considherin’ I’m lost and sthrayed away; but when you tould her that kilt wid a cowld was all I was, she’d know nothin’ ailed me. Quite convanient she lives to the station, so ’twouldn’t delay you above a minyit, and then all the rest of the while you could be seein’ anybody else there was, and the sights of Dublin, and everythin’.” Mrs Rea was so bent upon recommending her plan that she forgot her hoarseness and bad cough. However, this signified little, as Dinny was too well pleased with the project to be critical about symptoms.

“I give you my word, Judy, woman,” she said, when shortly afterwards relating the incident to her friend, “the eyes of him shone out of his head at the notion like the two bright lamps in the tail end of the thrains runnin’ by there on a black night.”

Thus it came to pass that Denis Fitzpatrick was after all one of the party who on the morrow made an early start from Letterowen. It was a still, soft morning, discreetly hooded in grey, but with an indefinable atmosphere abroad, as if the air were full of some secrets that might be told when the sun got a little higher. Quite a crowd of the neighbours were on the platform seeing the excursionists off, some of them with rather envious eyes. And among those malcontents was Maggie M‘Grehan, who felt herself aggrieved by her failure to capture her railway fare, notwithstanding that she had the prospect of a drive to the Malahogue Races for her holiday amusement while her sister Katty looked after their bedridden father. Her mood lightened, however, at the sight of Denis actually starting with the rest, because, for reasons of her own, she had been considerably put out by the stoppage of his expedition.

Mrs Rea did not appear. Of course it would have been unwise of her to venture out with her cold, although her violent cough had wonderfully subsided. But she saw the train whisked by as she was making herself very busy over cleaning up the inmost recesses of her dresser; and her comment was, “Ah, well; sure ’twould ha’ been a pity to stand in their way, the crathurs.” Her day after this passed without noteworthy incidents until about tea-time, when, as she and Julia Carroll were sitting quietly at the brightening fire something unwelcome occurred. To all appearances, it was nothing worse than the entrance of a pleasant-looking, dark-eyed girl, in a becoming velvet-trimmed hat and neat cloth jacket; yet the tone of the ejaculations with which Mrs Rea greeted her clearly betokened an untoward event. “Och, glory be to goodness, is it yourself here, Norah M‘Grehan? Whethen now, how did you come whatever? Isn’t the childer at your place took sick, the way you couldn’t git lave at all, so Katty was tellin’ me—the last time you wrote?”

“But sure they’ve got finely now, and the misthress is takin’ them out to Dalkey for a bit of a change. I wrote home word on Sathurday. Didn’t they tell you?”

“Deed no; I seen naither of them; and there I am after packing off poor Dinny Fitzpatrick up to Dublin this mornin’ arly. Ragin’ he is this minyit of time, you may depind, findin’ nobody in it.”

“And what’d ail him to be ragin’?” said Norah, “or what call’d he have to be thinkin’ of findin’ anybody? He knew as well as I did I was comin’ down to-day. So off he wint, and joy go wid him and the likes of him. Be good luck I’ll be out of it on the eleven o’clock train to-night afore he’s back.”

“Well, if he knew, it’s a quare thing,” Mrs Rea began.

“Quarer it’d be if he didn’t,” Norah said, interrupting, “when he heard it from Maggie last night. Katty was tellin’ me—for Maggie’s off to the races—she seen her talkin’ to him outside, so she was checkin’ her for havin’ anythin’ to say to him, not bein’ friendly these times, since he took upon himself to give me impidence about the Molloy’s party. And Maggie said he stopped her to ax would I be comin’ home on the holiday, and she tould him as plain as she could spake that I was. So that was the way of it, and the best thing could happen.”

“Well, well, well, but that bangs Banagher,” Mrs Rea said, not disguising her chagrin. “What was he up to then at all? Troth now, you might as aisy make an offer to count the grains of sugar meltin’ in your tay as tell the contrariness and treachery there does be in another body’s mind. But we’d betther just be sittin’ down; ’twill be drawn be this time. Wait till I reach down a cup and saucer for you, Norah alanna; it’s somethin’ to git a sight of you at all evints.”

It is to be feared that Norah did not find this tea a very lively entertainment, although she talked away at a great rate, telling all her Dublin news. Mrs Rea listened with only a divided attention, the other half, and the largest, being occupied by the thought that after all she might better have gone on the jaunt herself. A sacrifice thrown away is generally an irritating and depressing subject for meditation; and Mrs Rea’s seemed to have been worse than merely wasted, as she said to herself that “all the good her stayin’ at home had done anybody was only harm.” These reflections made her a dull and silent hostess. Then, during a pause in the conversation, Julia Carroll expressed her belief that she herself “as like as not wouldn’t be dhrinkin’ tay anywheres by next St Patrick’s Day.” The little old woman spoke in a hopeful tone, looking as if she saw many pleasant possibilities in the conjecture; but a slip of a girl of Norah’s age and experience could scarcely share that view, and the remark did not tend to cheer her.

However, when they had finished tea, Mrs Rea went out into the grey dusk at the door to collect her hens with the few crumbs, and a moment afterwards Norah, who was putting turf on the fire, heard a sound that made her drop the sod out of her hand suddenly enough to set the white ashes fluttering about like snow-flakes, while the golden sparks darted up straight like shooting stars. It was Mrs Rea exclaiming: “Och, mercy be among us! is it yourself, Dinny Fitzpatrick? And what at all brought you back so soon, and how did you conthrive to come?” To which the voice of Dinny replied: “Sure, ma’am, when I got there I found there was nothin’ to be keepin’ me in it whatsome’er, so one of the guards at the station was a dacint chap from Youghal, and for the sixpence I had along wid me for a dhrink, he let me come back on the two o’clock mail that stops next to nowhere for man or baste, and that way I got home very handy. And was you seein’ anythin’ to-day of Norah M‘Grehan? But, bedad, ’twould be just of a piece wid the rest of it if she was on the road thravellin’ back to Dublin agin now.”

“Musha, thin, she’s not got very far yet, that’s sartin. But, goodness help you, man alive, wouldn’t it ha’ been a dale more sinsible to ha’ axed the question afore you took skytin’ the len’th of the counthry, and nothin’ at the end of it?”

“And, begorra, didn’t I ax it? Sure I knew there was some talk of her comin’ home, so I axed her sisther Maggie last night, and no, sez she, sorra a fut could she get lave.”

“It was an onthruth she tould you,” said Mrs Rea.

“Troth, now, I had me doubts it was, ever since the ould woman I seen at her place in Dublin said she well remembered Norah writin’ home to say she was goin’; and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s not the first ugly turn that Maggie’s after doin’ agin us. But did you say, ma’am, that Norah was above at her house?”

“What for would _I_ go to be tellin’ lies on you? Sure, not at all, but if you’ve a fancy to be standin’ on the one flure wid her, just step your feet over the hins’ ould dish, and there you are.”

Dinny stepped accordingly, and immediately afterwards found himself shaking hands vehemently with Norah M‘Grehan, and inquiring what way she was this long while. Norah replied that she must be running home to her poor father and Katty, for she’d presently have to be settin’ off again to catch the Dublin train. But Mrs Rea, bustling jubilantly about the dresser, said, “Aisy now, honey. You’ll give the poor lad time just to swallow his cup of tay, and then he’ll be all ready to go along wid you.”

While Dinny gulped down a very hot mixture of sugar chiefly and grounds, Julia Carroll took the opportunity to draw from the events of the day a moral in support of her favourite contention against travelling about, pointing out what a sight of trouble it would have saved if Dinny had “stopped paiceably at home, the way he needn’t ha’ been scaldin’ and chokin’ himself for want of a few minutes to spake to his frinds.” Mrs Rea, however, rejoined—“And supposin’ Norah had took it into her head to stop paiceable where she was too, where’d the both of them be this evenin’?” And although she answered readily enough, “Sure, where Norah was, she wasn’t at home,” the argument did not convince anybody. Certainly not Mrs Rea. For when Dinny had just started with Norah he wheeled round suddenly to make a penitent confession. “Och, murdher! Och, Mrs Rea, ma’am, I niver remimbered it till this instant, but tellin’ you the thruth, I niver went next or nigh the ould woman you bid me be bringin’ word you wasn’t comin’—cliver and clane I forgot it, and went off straight to look for the Square—Well now, wasn’t I the bosthoon?”

“Sure, no matther,” Mrs Rea said, blandly. “It’s little Biddy Loughlin’d be troublin’ her head about me goin’ or stayin’, for the thruth is, there was niver much love or likin’ between any of us and any of thim.”

Dinny looked hard at her for a moment, “And another thing I disremimbered,” he said, “was to be axin’ you after your terrible bad cowld.”

“Bedad, Dinny, I’m thinkin’ it wint off to Dublin along wid you,” she said. “Anyhow it’s quit away surprisin’.”

“It’s my belief, you’re a great ould rogue, ma’am, yourself and your cowld,” said Dinny. “But I’d as lief I hadn’t lost thim two shillin’s and everythin’ on you.”

“Sure what matther at all?” Mrs Rea said again. “And who can tell but I mightn’t get as good a chance next St Patrick’s Day, and be travellin’ up to Dublin iligant after all? I wouldn’t wonder if I was—there’s time enough.”

A PROUD WOMAN

A PROUD WOMAN

Peter Mackey, the Carrickcrum Doctor’s man, introduced me to Mrs Daly one early summer morning, when her table was flecked with small quivering shadows by the young beech-leaves. That such a ceremony was required argued me a stranger to the place, for “ould Anne Daly” at her stall had a speaking acquaintance with almost every passer-by. Her rickety deal board stood at the cross-roads under the beech-tree whose trunk was built into the wall behind the National School, where she had a view of Carrickcrum’s street on either hand, and looked up the road to the bridge, and down the road to the police barracks as well. She was a picturesque figure in her black gown and bluish apron; for her hair made white light beneath broad cap frills hooded with a heavy grey shawl, and the brown eyes among their weather-worn wrinkles still glanced as brightly as the waters of a bog-stream. Her knitting-needles twinkled up at them, in and out of the dark, rough stocking-leg that lengthened in her hands, as she sat perched on a crippled chair, dexterously propped against the beech’s roots. Upon the planks before her glowed a small heap of half-a-dozen oranges, and as many pink sugar-sticks protruded from a white Delft jam-pot. That was all her stock-in-trade, and even the golden dance over it of the spangling sunbeams could not give it an opulent aspect. What caught my eye at once, however, was a signboard nailed to the trunk just above her head, bearing on a brilliant ultramarine ground, in letters of fiery vermilion, the words:—

THE SENTRALL IMPOREOM.

The inscription somehow took my fancy, and I had scarcely beheld it when I seemed to be reading in the catalogue of a certain art exhibition: “No. 34. The Sentrall Imporeom, by Charles Hamilton, price ——.” Whereupon followed a vision of the corresponding work—the quaint old country woman presiding over her simple wares beneath her leafy canopy and grandiloquent label, with perhaps a hint of the village street in the distance to explain the situation. I presaged “a hit,” and felt impatient to set about it at once. There was a grass-patch over the way that would conveniently accommodate my easel. Then I wondered who had put up the gaudy signboard, and why; whether in pompous earnest, or intending a jest at the poor little establishment: and what might be Mrs Daly’s sentiments on the subject. So, with a design to elicit these, I remarked: “That’s a fine piece of painting you have up there.”

“’Deed now is it, sir?” Mrs Daly replied, darting a quick look at me to ascertain whether my admiration was unfeigned, much as I have seen her prove the soundness of her pears with the point of her knitting-needle. It stood the test with effrontery, and she proceeded: “That was Joe Lenihan. He done it last winter wid the bit of paint he had over after finishin’ Mr Conroy’s new cart. Joe’s a terrible handy boy. It’s got a nice apparence off it, to my mind, and ne’er a harm at all that I can see; but, och! the Gaffneys were ragin’ mad over it—them at the shop below there, sir.” She pointed down the street, and I took a few steps backwards to get a glimpse of its single plate-glass pane, which displayed groceries, hardware, millinery, and other things, and above which ran, large and yellow, “GENERAL EMPORIUM.” “Ragin’ they were,” Mrs Daly said in a tone that was half-gratified and half-rueful. “Sure to this day they won’t look the way I am. But I dunno what call they have to set themselves up to be the only Imporum in the place, and they just ‘P. Gaffney,’ sorra a hap’orth more, and plenty good enough, for them, until before last Christmas they got a man over from Newtownbailey to do their paintin’. There was nobody here aquil to it, I should suppose. So now they’re of the opinion I had a right to ha’ hindered Joe of doin’ me a Imporum as well, and I wid ne’er a notion he was plannin’ any such a thing. Howsome’er, he made a very good job of it, sir, as you was sayin’.”

“It’s a fine morning, Mrs Daly,” someone said at my elbow, and, turning round, I saw beside me a tall, respectable-looking young man in a grey tweed suit. “I’m just after shooting old Mr Carbury dead with the rook-rifle, and throwing him over the wall into the river below at Reilly’s,” he said.

“And is it yourself, Mr Ned? I never heard you comin’. Well now, but you’re terrible wicked to go do the like of that,” Mrs Daly said, as placidly as she had praised Joe Lenihan’s handiness. “It’s hangin’ you they’ll be this time for sartin. So you’re off to the barracks?”

“Straight,” said Mr Ned gravely, “and they needn’t offer to say it’s manslaughter either, for it’s an awful murder. You might have heard the shot. But to see him rolling down the river, over and over—I didn’t wait till he sank, for it’s time I gave myself up on the charge of committing a cold-blooded murder.”

He strode away abruptly with an air of solemn fuss, and Mrs Daly said, looking after him commiseratingly: “He’s a son of the Clancys at Glen Farm. Asthray in his mind he is, the crathur, and scarce a mornin’ but he comes by here on his way to the polis wid a story of some quare villiny he’s after doin’. My belief is he dhrames them in the night, and when he wakes up he can’t tell the differ as a sinsible body would. Anyhow he niver harmed man or baste. But sure the Sargint and all of them up there knows the way it is, and they niver throuble their heads about his romancin’, or now and again they put him up in the guard-room for a while, just to contint him.

“Only one day be chance he landed in on them when there was nobody in it except a young constable that was new to the place, and him he had in a sarious consternation wid the slaughtherin’ he was tellin’ him of. Fit to raise the counthryside he was before the other men came home. It’s as good as a play to hear Joe Lenihan tellin’ it. ’Deed now, we’d maybe do betther to not be takin’ divarsion out of the crathur’s vagaries, that’s to be pitied, the dear knows. But sure your heart might be broke waitin’ for somethin’ to laugh at, if you was to look black at everythin’ wid a grain of misfortin in it, for that comes as nathural as the grounds in your cup of tay.”

So Mrs Daly philosophised; and when she had finished I bought an orange, and went on my way.

This, however, was only the first of many visits to the Sentrall Imporeum. My wish to paint it and its proprietress continued, and she presently gave me a series of sittings, in the course of which I learned a good deal about her character and affairs. Mrs Daly lived close by, in a very miserable little shanty, windowless and chimneyless, built against a sunken bank, so that its ragged thatch was on a level with the roadway. How she lived seemed less obvious than where, as although she owned three or four hens, and did some coarse knitting while she sat all day at the table with its screed of sweets and fruit, one would have estimated the combined profits of these to fall far short of sufficiency for even her modest wants. Her lameness debarred her from more active industries, she having been crippled by an accident at the same disastrous period—about thirty years before—when her husband died, and her son ’listed, and her daughter married an emigrant to the States.

Perhaps it should be reckoned as another disability that she was the proudest woman in the parish, to whom an offer of assistance seemed an insult, and who would accept nothing from her neighbours beyond a most rigorous equity. For instance, Arthur Kelly, the struggling farmer who owned the shed which she inhabited, would gladly have allowed her to occupy it rent free, but was obliged every week compunctiously to receive sixpence.

I myself experienced the same sort of thing in my trivial dealings with her. Small artifices, prompted by baffled speculations as to how she made out a subsistence, all signally failed. If I contrived one day to over-pay for a purchase, pleading want of change, on the next the undesired pennies were sure to be awaiting me inevitably and inexorably. She refused point-blank to sell me the crushed and over-ripe gooseberries with a fancy for which I had been seized, and she insisted upon taking a farthing apiece off the price of some apples that were fully half-sound. In fact, I was soon compelled to desist from practising any such stratagems, perceiving that our sittings and conversations would otherwise abruptly end. But being wise in time, I kept on good and improving terms with Mrs Daly, and made my studies at the Sentrall Imporeum desultorily all through the summer. Still, when it drew to a close, I was quite aware that our friendliness had not brought me a step nearer venturing upon any attempt to undermine her rigid principle of independence.

This being so, I was not a little surprised when one wet evening at tea-time Mrs Daly paid me a visit for the purpose of asking me to do her a favour. The cottage I had taken that summer stands on the same side of the road as her tiny cabin, but about half-a-mile farther from Newtownbailey. It belongs to the brother-in-law of Peter Mackey, Dr Kennedy’s man, which is how I came to hear of it, and it contains no less than three rooms on the ground—literally ground—floor, besides two little attics huddled up under the thatch. As it has a strip of privet hedge in front, and a path three flag-stones long leading to the door, and a hen-house leaned-to against one end, it may be considered superior to the neighbouring residences, though unsophisticated mud and straw are the main ingredients in its, as well as in their, composition. With the help of loans from my friend the Doctor, and some properties of my own, I had furnished it in a style which I believe excited admiration on the whole. Yet the establishment did not reach the standard of what was deemed appropriate for “rael quality,” especially as I did for myself single-handed, with only an old woman from next door to “ready up” things in the morning; and my social standing was consequently always regarded as an ambiguous and perplexing point at Carrickcrum.