Changing Winds Part 34

It was odd, indeed, that Henry had not seen Mary in that time, but it was still more odd that he had not seen Sheila. Matt Hamilton had died soon after Henry had entered Trinity, but Mrs. Hamilton still had the farm which, people understood, was to be left to Sheila when her aunt died. He had not cared to go to the farm ... a mixture of pride and shyness prevented him from doing so ... but he had hoped to meet her on the roads about Ballymartin. "Perhaps by this time," he said to himself, "she will have forgotten my funk!" But although he frequently loitered in the roads about the "loanie," he never met her, and it was not until he said some casual things to William Henry Matier that he discovered that she was not at the farm. "I heerd tell she was visitin' friends in Bilfast!" Matier said, and with that he had to be content. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger were at Ballymartin then, and he had little opportunity to mourn over her absence; indeed, when he remembered that they were with him, he was glad that she was not at the farm: their presence would have made difficulties in the way of his intercourse with her. He would try to be alone at Ballymartin, in the next vacation, and then he would be able to bring her to his will again. But he did not spend the next vacation at home, and so, with this and other absences from Ballymartin, he was unable to see her for the whole of his time at Trinity. Neither he nor his father had spoken of her since the day when Mr. Quinn had solemnly led him to the library to rebuke him for his sweethearting. Mr. Quinn, indeed, had almost forgotten about Henry's lovemaking with Sheila, and when he met the girl and remembered that there had been lovemaking between his son and her, he thought to himself that Henry had probably completely forgotten her....

He wished to see her again, and his desire became so strong that he started to walk across the fields to the "loanie" that led to Hamilton's farm before he was aware of what he was about. His mind filled again with the visions he had had of her at Trinity, and he imagined that he saw her every now and then hiding behind a tree, ready to spring out on him and startle him with a loud whoop, or running from him and laughing as she ran....

4

He met her in the "loanie," and for a few moments he did not recognise her. She was sitting on the gra.s.s, in the shade of a hedge, huddling a baby close to her breast, and he saw that she was suckling it.

"Oh, Henry, is that you?" she said, starting up hurriedly so that the baby could not suck. She drew her blouse clumsily together, but the fretful child would not be pacified until she had started to feed it again, and so she resumed her seat on the gra.s.s.

"I didn't know you were back," she said, holding the baby up to her.

"Are you here for long?"

He did not answer immediately. He had not yet completely realised that this was Sheila whom he had been eager to marry, and then when he understood at last that this indeed was she, something inside him kept exclaiming, "But she's got a baby!" and he wondered why she was feeding it.

"Are you married, Sheila?" he said.

She laughed at him, and answered, "That's a quare question to be askin', an' me with this in my arms!" She looked at the baby as she spoke.

"I didn't know you were married," he replied. "I was coming up to the farm to see you!"

"I've been married this year past," she said.

"I didn't know," he murmured. "No one told me!..."

And suddenly he saw that her face was coa.r.s.er than it had been when he loved her. Her hair was tied untidily about her head, and he could see that her hands, as she held the child, were rough and red, and that her nails were broken and misshapen. Her boots were loosely laced, and she seemed to be sprawling....

"I'm all throughother," she said, as if she realised what was in his mind and was anxious to excuse herself to him. "This wee tory hardly gives me a minute's peace, an' my aunt's not so well as she was!"

He nodded his head, but did not speak.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he asked after a while.

"It's a boy," she said, "an' the very image of his da. He's a lovely child, Henry. Just look at him!"

He came nearer to her and looked at the baby who had his little fingers at her breast as if he would prevent her from taking it from him. The child, still sucking, looked up at him with greedy-sleepy eyes.

"Isn't he a gran' wee fella?" she went on, eyeing her son proudly.

"Whom did you marry?" he asked.

"You know him well," she answered. "Peter Logan that used to keep the forge ... that's who I married. D'ye mind the way he could bend a bar of iron with his two hands?..."

Henry remembered. "Doesn't he keep the forge now?" he asked.

"No, he sold it to Dan McKittrick when he married me. We needed a man on the farm, an' he's gran' at it. There isn't a one in the place can bate him at the reapin', an' you should see the long, straight furrows he can plough. The child's the image of him, an' I declare by the way he's tuggin' at me ... be quit, will you, you wee tory, an' not be hurtin' me with your greed!... he'll be as strong as his da, an' mebbe stronger!"

"Are you stayin' long?" she said again.

"No," he answered. "I'm going to London!..."

"London! Lord bless us, that's a long way!"

"I'm going soon ... in a day or two," he went on, making his resolution as he spoke. The sight of her bare breast embarra.s.sed him, and he wanted to go away quickly.

"You're a one for roamin' the world, I must say!" she said. "You're no sooner here nor you're away again. Mebbe you'll come up an' see my aunt ... she was talkin' about you only last week ... an' Peter'd be right an' glad to welcome you!"

"No, thanks, not to-day," he answered. "I've something to do at home ...

I'm sorry!..."

"But you said you were comin' to see me!..."

"I know, but I've just remembered something ... I'm sorry!" He was speaking in a jerky, agitated manner and he began to move away as if he were afraid that she would detain him. "I'll come another time," he added.

"Well, you're the quare man," she said. "Anybody'd think you were afeard of me, the hurry you're in to run away!"

He laughed nervously. "Of course, I'm not afraid of you," he exclaimed.

"Why should I be?"

"I don't know!" She looked at him for a few seconds, and then the whimsical look that he remembered so well came into her eyes. "D'ye mind the way you wanted to marry me, Henry?" she said.

"Yes ... yes! Ha, ha!"

"An' now I've this! It's a quaren funny, isn't it?"

"Funny?"

"Aye, the way things go. I wonder what sort of a child I'd a' had if I'd married you!"

"I really don't know!... I'm afraid I must go now!"

"Well, good-bye, Henry! I'll mebbe see you again some time!"

She held out her hand to him and he took it, and then dropped it quickly.

"Yes, perhaps," he answered, and added, "Good-bye!"

He went off quickly, not looking back until he had reached the foot of the "loanie," and then he stood for a second or two to watch her. She was busy with her baby again. He could see her white breast shining in the sunlight, and her head bent over the sucking child.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned," he said to himself, as he hurried off.

And as he hurried home, his mind set on quitting Ballymartin as speedily as possible, he remembered the casual way in which she had spoken of their possibly meeting again. "I'll mebbe see you some time!" she had said. So indifferent to him as that, she was, so happy in her love for her husband whom he remembered as a great big, hairy, tanned man who beat hot iron with heavy hammers and bent it into wheels and shoes for horses.

"She takes more interest in that putty-faced brat of hers than she does in me," he said to himself, angrily, and then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. "Of course, she does," he said aloud. "Why shouldn't she? It's hers, isn't it?"

He remembered her young beauty and contrasted it with her appearance when he saw her in the "loanie" with her child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had begun to neglect her hair....

"It's a d.a.m.ned shame," he murmured. "If she'd married me she'd have kept her looks!..."