Part 7

Under these discouraging circumstances, aggravated by wild wind and rain, Mrs Flower started on her doubtful quest. Four days she had to trudge in solitude, and three nights she had to shelter as best she could, the best being on two occasions no better than the lee-side of a dyke and a clump of rustling furze-bushes. Such wide tracts of bogland intervened between cabins where a night’s lodging may generally be had for the asking, because the indwellers have little else to bestow. But she consoled herself with the hope that on the way back she should have her daughter’s company. She durst not now face the possibility of “anythin’ havin’ happint Judy,” so that she would after all return alone. That would have been to look recklessly down a gulf of despair. So she allowed herself to doubt of nothing except her chances of reaching her goal before she was perished outright, or “took rael bad intirely.” When she came to the village of Kilrath, a wannish gleam of prosperity flickered out on her, for she succeeded in persuading Mrs Nally, the owner of a stray spare penny, to buy a tin-mug, which was described as being “that iligant and polished up, ’twould be a pleasure to drink anythin’ out of it, if ’twas on’y a sup of ditch-water, and strong? Och goodness preserve us, ma’am dear, you might take and batter it agin that wall there the len’th of the day, and sorra a dint there’d be in it when you’d done.” As she knew that the Round Lodge could not be very far off, she expended the proceeds of this sale in purchasing a little flour cake for Judy at the shop. It was richly yellowed with soda, and showed three currants on its surface, which could not fail to tempt the most delicate appetite. “And sure the bit of a crathur would be finely agin now.”

By the time that Mrs Flower came to the Round Lodge, the wintry dusk had thickened so that the driving sleet-sheets were more felt than seen. The leafless beech-grove was roaring in the wind with the voice of a foam-fretted shore, and straining and swaying to the stress of the blasts until it looked like an anchored cloud. She groped baffled among the dripping trunks for a long while before she found a clue in a line of red light to guide her across the dim grass-field, until she stood under the porch of the Round Lodge. It was the Tinkers’ habit to be stealthy in their movements, and she passed through the coloured glass door unheard, and down the short passage to where another door stood rather widely ajar, revealing an interior of ruddily lit warmth, paradisiacal to anybody peering in very cold and wet and hungry. Only Mrs Moran and Judy were in the kitchen, which glowed all round its curved walls so that the room looked like a cupful of light filched from the ebbing day. Judy, now convalescent, installed in one of the fine new arm-chairs by the fire, with locks clipped and combed, and wearing a neat lilac print frock and little plaid shoulder-shawl, was wonderfully transformed in aspect. She was eating a broad slice of buttered griddle-cake, and listening to a long story, which Mrs Moran had drawn from her store of reminiscences about the Quality she had lived with. While Mrs Flower watched, the old woman got up and brought the girl something in a large mug. “It’s a nice sup of buttermilk for you,” she said; “sup it up, honey, along wid your cake. I declare now, you and I are great company together intirely.”

“Ay are we,” said Judy complacently; “and if I had me strip of knittin’, I might be tryin’ did I remember the stitch you was showin’ me. Sure none of them at home could do knittin’ no more than the crows in the field. And what become of Miss Lily’s grey horse? They’d be apt to put it out of that, after it doin’ such a thing.”

Judy’s mother never heard the answer to that question, for she was pre-occupied by a struggle towards a difficult resolve. When it was formed at last, she turned to slip noiselessly away. “Sure she has her chance there, me jewel,” she said to herself. “I’ll let her be.” But she was not destined to depart uninterrupted. As she turned to go, one of her cans swung, clanking against the door-edge, and Judy had espied her before she could retreat.

“Why, there’s me mammy!” Judy said. “It’s comin’ she’ll be to take me home.” Her exclamation began jubilantly but ended in a minor cadence, for her present quarters were in most ways very much to her mind, and being still less vigorous than usual, made her feel all the more loth to resume the rough faring upon which she looked back across this brief novel experience of cosy chimney-corners and ample meals. It struck her that her mammy might have arrived more appropriately some other time; _some_ time, of course, but _other_ certainly; and the opinion betrayed itself on her countenance.

“Well, and what way are you, Judy?” said Mrs Flower, pausing as she found herself observed; “grandly you look to be set up in there, bedad.”

“Oh, she’s doin’ finely?” said Mrs Moran. “You’d better step inside, ma’am—if you’re Judy’s mother,” she added, though she could not forbear a mistrustful glance from her visitor’s bedraggled rags to her own clean boards and good bit of carpet. “It’s wet walkin’ to-night.”

“I dunno but I’d a right to stop where I am,” said Mrs Flower, standing still. “Drippin’ I am, sure enough; the showers this day’d drinch a water-eel. I was on’y trampin’ round wid the things; and as for takin’ you along, Judy, ’deed for the matter of that, sorra the hurry I’m in at all, unless them that have got you so be.”

“There’s no hurry whatsomever,” said Mrs Moran rather stiffly. “Let alone that the child’s noways fit to be streelin’ about the counthry.”

“The saints above know I’ve no wish to be saddlin’ meself wid her,” said Mrs Flower defiantly. “It’s just a livin’ torment she’d be to me, and divil a hap’orth else.”

“Well, to be sure, one’d ha’ thought you might ha’ found somethin’ more agreeable to say of your own child,” said Mrs Moran, “even supposin’ it isn’t convenient to have her along wid you these times.”

“Convenient, is it?” said Mrs Flower. “Be jabers, it’s them that has the rarin’ of the likes of her knows the throuble of it. Troth, you might be tired bangin’ her about and givin’ her abuse from one day’s end to the other, and get no good of her at the heel of the hunt.”

“’Deed then, if you can conthrive nothin’ better to do wid her than that, I’d a dale sooner she sted where she is,” said Mrs Moran, with increasing sternness, and a change of mind about the propriety of offering Mrs Flower a cup of tea. “She’s an unnatural crathur,” she said to herself, “and all she cares for is to be shut of the child.”

“Well, good-bye to you, Judy,” said her mother. “I’ll not come near you, I’m that muddy and wet.”

“But you’ll be comin’ back some time soon, mammy?” said Judy, who had hitherto kept silence, somewhat shocked and affronted at her mother’s disparagement, which was a new experience to her, as at home Mrs Flower had been always wont to defend Judy’s character and extol her, without much cause, “for lendin’ a great hand wid the childer,” and other domestic virtues. Now, however, Judy was stricken with remorse as she saw the familiar black shawl and weather-worn face disappearing into a darkness which led towards the dreary noises of the wild night. She got out of her arm-chair, and despite Mrs Moran’s remonstrance, ran across the room and down the passage, hobblingly, because she was still lame from her fall. When she reached the porch, her mother, though close by, was almost swallowed up in the gloom, which had superseded the last glimmers of twilight. Only in the farthest west lingered a dull-red band, hardly more luminous than a drift of the dead beech-leaves. Judy stood on the steps peering out, with the hearth-glow behind her. “Stop a minute, mammy,” she called; “I’m after forgettin’ to bid you good-bye or anythin’. And I’ll ax herself inside to be wettin’ the tay——”

Mrs Flower looked round, and halted for a moment. Then she shook her fist menacingly at her daughter. “Be off and run in wid you out of that, you young divil!” she shouted hoarsely. A gust of wind intercepted and bore away the words, but her threatening gesture was plain enough against the fading wraith of the sunset. And it was the last that Judy ever saw of her unnatural mother.

AN ACCOUNT SETTLED

AN ACCOUNT SETTLED

One wet autumn evening, Mr Natty Grogan was taking stock and making up his books with the assistance of his family. When thus occupied, the young Grogans were wont to complain that he would be trotting after them with dogs’ abuse from Billy to Jock, till you couldn’t tell where to have him; while he used to declare that the lot of them all together were more different kinds of fools than you’d find anywhere else in the breadth of Ireland, and so was their mother before them. She had died many years since and her husband was reported to have remarked that the event would save him a couple of shillings a week, anyway, for milk and chicken-broth. But it is fair to observe that unfeeling speeches were likely enough to be put into his mouth on this occasion—such was his character among his neighbours. They said that his wife had been “a very dacint poor woman, and a dale too good for any such an ould slieveen, and it was a pity all the childer, except, maybe, Andy, took after himself.”

For the present, however, popular disapproval of the Grogans was in abeyance, as almost everybody else had gone to bed and to sleep, so that Athcrum’s one wide street lay deserted and blank. It was a very wet evening, and the whitewashed house-fronts had an ample dado of mud splashes about their doors and lower windows, but they were all now muffled up in darkness. The Grogans’ late sitting threw no light on the outer gloom, for the battered shop-shutters were up, and business proceeded in the little back room, whence old Natty lit himself every now and then with a sweeling dip, to grope among his stock-in-trade in the adjoining shop. He accompanied these researches with dissatisfied grunts, rising occasionally into requests wrathfully shouted to his family, for an explanation of what he found or missed. They grimaced at one another, and sometimes whispered together before they complied with his demands—Nannie and Tom and Stevie, seated round the table, where the strong lamp-light flared in their faces. Their father, peering in at them from murky recesses behind the counter, half saw and half surmised these signals, which did not soothe his irritation.

“What at all’s gone wid the rest of the ten-pound tin of arrowroot biscuits?” he called suddenly. “It was better than three parts full last time I seen it, and, accordin’ to the accounts, there’s no right to be anythin’ out of it since then, but ne’er an atom have you left in it, on’y a dust of crumbs.”

“Belike _they_ niver put down the last person had some,” suggested Tom, disassociating himself from the transaction with prompt presence of mind.

“And why the mischief didn’t you? Am I keepin’ the pack of yous foolin’ here to be slingin’ me goods about the parish, and not so much as take the trouble to scrawm it down? There’s not an infant child goin’ to school but ’d make a better offer at doin’ business.”

“It’s very apt to ha’ been Mrs Moriarty,” said Nannie, choosing to ignore this aspect of the matter; “she did be gettin’ them kind of things the time the childer was sick. We can aisy charge them to her.”

“Mrs Moriarty’s great-grandmother’s cat!” said her father. “You might as well save yourself the trouble—and there’s none readier—of chargin’ anythin’ to her these times. The people at the post-office was tellin’ me this mornin’ that the last American letter come for her, sorra the money-order was in it at all, except word of the daughter bein’ in hospital, and the husband out of work. It’s one while before she’ll be settlin her account. Howsome’er, charge the biscuits to her, and don’t be makin’ too free wid allowin’ her anythin’ else on credit. Whose bill’s that you’re makin’ out there, Stevie?”

“Yourself’s after biddin’ me get Dan Farrell’s,” Stevie replied.

“Ay, did I? It’s the best chance we have to be gettin’ anythin’ out of the man, and he wid his couple of bastes in at Kenmare fair yisterday. If we don’t look out sharp, his story’ll be that the agent took the price off him for rint. The divil mend the both of them for a pair of thievin’ villins! Sure Widdy Rourke below was tellin’ me she seen Dan diff’rint times comin’ out of Carmody’s as hearty as anythin’; and when’s he had a glass from us at all? Ah, musha! long life to him. A great notion he has to be spendin’ his ready money at Carmody’s, and we to be givin’ him credit for everythin’ else he happens to fancy. Plase the pigs, I’ll learn him the differ! What’s the amount he’s owin’? Eighteen shillin’? Then just set him down a couple of pound of them biscuits, or anythin’—the way there’ll be no bother wid change comin’ out of his note.”

“Biscuits he didn’t get, I’ll take me living oath,” said Stevie confidently.

“Keep your oaths till they’re axed for. ’Twas as apt to be biscuits as anythin’. And I’ll tell you what it is, me young shaver, _you_’ll step over to Farrell’s to-morra mornin’ and get the bill ped.” Old Natty gave these commands in a triumphant tone, meaning them to be a penalty for his son’s contumacious contradiction; and Stevie did say grumblingly—

“Troth and bedad, it’s nicely bogged a man’ll be thrampin’ them roads after these polthogues.”

But the young Grogans had a way of posing in aggrieved attitudes from motives of policy, and the commission was really much to Stevie’s mind, the office of collector being always in request among them, because it was endowed with what they called their chances. These consisted in a private lengthening of the bill by addition of sundry fictitious items, the price of which the inventor pocketed. Thus, on the present occasion, before Stevie went to bed he was careful to supplement Dan Farrell’s account with the following entries, which were purely efforts of imagination—

_s._ _d._

Extry male 2 3 Shuger 1 0 Other extrys 1 9

Five shillings was an unusually large toll to levy in this way, but Stevie knew his man, and had little fear of failing to extract it; easy-going Dan would so certainly be loth to “get argufyin’ and risin’ ructions.”

Next morning, Stevie started betimes on his two-mile walk. The raindrops had only just ceased pricking the wide, continuous puddle, which lent a Venetian aspect to the main street, and sounds of gurgling and dripping were audible all around, as if everything were talking over the late downpour. When Stevie faced towards the purple mountain range, in the direction of which lay Dan Farrell’s, he saw the pale mists creeping along the ridges, and writhing up the ravines, and swirling in the curved hollows, and the air had the breath of autumnal chill that comes with rain in harvest time. Water gleamed greyly from the furrows of every little field that he passed, and he passed scores of them before he reached the river bridge, where he was within a few perches of his goal. He might have taken a shorter route, but it included a swampy patch and the passage of some stepping-stones, for which he considered the state of affairs “too soft altogether”; and he therefore kept upon comparatively dry land. The dryness was very comparative indeed all over Dan Farrell’s little holding, which occupied the entrance to a winding green glen, where both stream and hillside curved suddenly, leaving a triangular bit of level ground. During the past night, however, this had undergone an abrupt change of contour, as the swollen river had flung an impetuous arm across it, islanding its apex and rejoining the main stream, turbid with melted clods and tangled with wisps of drowned green oats.

When Stevie came to the bridge, Dan Farrell himself was standing up to his knees in the soaked grain by the water’s edge and thinking of his bad luck, without any presentiment that more was on its way. He was a tall, black-bearded man, and had been a gaunt and grizzled one ever since a virulent attack of rheumatism last spring had changed him from middle-aged to elderly in a few racking weeks. This illness had brought Sarah Tighe, his sister’s daughter, from her home in Athcrum to nurse him and manage his forlorn household, for Dan had lately been left a widower, and his four children were incapably small. Sarah was now calling to him from the door to the effect that he hadn’t as much sense as little Bobby, or else he’d come in out of streeling through them oats, and they as wet as the waves of the say, unless maybe he’d a mind to have himself bawling for the next month with the pains in his bones. But Dan turned a bothered ear to her warnings, until she added—

“And if here isn’t one of the young Grogans slingein’ along over the bridge.”

Then the recollection of his growing account at the shop started out from the misty background of his troubles, and took up a commanding position in the forefront. He cast a glance of listless despondency on the flooded field and turbulent river, and began to walk slowly up the plashy furrow towards his house, set in motion by a vague sense that it was more fitting for him than for his niece to receive young Grogan. By the time he reached the door, Stevie was already there talking to Sarah, a plump young woman, whose colouring suggested an autumn hedgerow, with gleams of ruddy berries and black, and warm brown leaves. She was naturally conversational and vivacious, but it may be feared that her consciousness of Brian Mahony inside there disapproving of the colloquy led her to carry it on with increased animation. Had nobody been by to mind, Mr Stephen Grogan might have received a welcome more in accordance with Sarah’s own private opinion of him, which was low. When her uncle came up, she stood demurely aside, and waited while his health was inquired after and the weather bewailed. Then Stevie asked—

“And what way was the fair a’ Tuesday?”

“As bad as anythin’ at all,” said Dan, “onless you was to be payin’ the dalers to take your bastes off you for a complimint.”

“But you’re after selling a couple?” said Stevie.

“Och, did I—and what’s four pound ten to git for a grand little heifer, and she a rael dexter, if you was to be tired swearin’ agin it? Worth three times the money she’d ha’ been to me, if I could ha’ held on to her a sixmonth longer.”

“Sure, now, it’s you farmers that are the rich people, makin’ nothin’ of pound notes at that rate,” said Stevie, laughing with a sort of uneasy jocularity. Dan knew quite well what was coming, before the other went on, “So as I was passin’ this way, I just looked in wid our bit of account, Misther Farrell; it’s been runnin’ this good while now.”

“Ay, bedad,” Dan assented dejectedly, “will you be steppin’ inside?”

Inside reigned a brownish twilight, and the corners were all rounded off with smoke-haze. One of them was occupied by Brian Mahony, a neighbour of the Farrells, who, since Dan’s illness, had often come in to lend him a hand. This morning he had undertaken the repairs of a turf-creel. He was a powerful-looking young man, with a shock of chestnut hair and tawny tufts and frills about his face, which just then wore a glum expression, misliking the entrance of Stevie Grogan. His dissatisfaction caused him to appear deeply absorbed in his task, and to discuss it with the little Farrells, who stood around to watch his splicing and weaving. They were unsuspectingly flattered by his unusual disposition to consult them, and they favoured him with much criticism and advice.

“Sit you down, man, and warm yourself,” said Dan, taking the glazy blue paper which young Grogan had extracted from a thin pocket-book bound in black American cloth, and tied round with frayed strings of pink tape. “I’m afeard we haven’t e’en a sup of anythin’ in the house.”

As Stevie seated himself near the circle of glowing sods, Dan carried his bill over to the window, that the light of its one deep-set pane might assist his somewhat feeble scholarship in spelling out the items. Many of them baffled him completely, but the grand total of one pound five shillings appeared with cruel distinctness, and caused him serious dismay. He had been prepared for a sum that would make a very large hole in one of his few precious notes, and even this prospect was grievous. But the demand for a whole note, body and bones, and some silver too, came as an unexpected stroke. His hands shook as he held the paper to the light, obscured by the leaves of a straggling geranium plant, and he felt bitterly convinced that he was being cheated. Manners, however, would not permit him to enter any protest beyond saying to his niece—

“Musha, Sally, it’s a terrible sight of sugar you seem to ha’ been usin’.”

Upon this Stevie of course said—

“And I’m sure _she_ doesn’t want it, anyway,”—smirking gallantly at Sarah, who had sat down in the adjacent chimney-corner and taken up her strip of lace-work.

“Won’erful fine talk you have,” said Sarah.

“And divil a word but the truth, talkin’ of you,” rejoined Stevie, sidling a little nearer to her along his rickety-legged bench.

Sarah replied by making a threatening demonstration with her needle, which caused her frail thread to snap.

“There now, you have it broke on me,” she said, “and sorra the bit of you’s worth the throuble of tyin’ a knot.”