Strangers at Lisconnel Part 12

"Did any of yous be chance see an ould man goin' this road to-day? An ould ancient man, somethin' lame; be the name of Christie Dermody?"

"Ay, sure enough, himself was in it not so long ago," said old O'Beirne.

"If it hadn't been you, 'twas very apt to ha' been him come back."

In the man's face one trouble seemed to be relieved by another at the tidings.

"Glory be to goodness, then, that I've heard tell of him at last," he said. "But G.o.d help the crathur, what's to become of him streelin' about this freezin' night? The snow's as dhry as mail-dust. Perished he'll be.

Och, he's the terrible man to go do such a thing on us. What way did he quit? It's me ould father, sir, that's over eighty years of age."

"And is he after strayin' away on you?" said old O'Beirne.

"Follyin' him since yisterday mornin' I am," said the other, "when it's in me bed I should be be rights, for I'm that distroyed wid the could on me chest I've scare a bit of breath in me body. But sure what matter if I can come be the crathur agin. Is it that a-way he went, did you notice?"

"You're bound to wait till the flurry of the win's gone by," said old O'Beirne, for his visitor pointed out into a shrieking whirl, shrilling higher and fiercer. "Sorra a minyit you'll lose, for you couldn't stir a step in that or see a stim. Sit you down a while. What was it set him rovin'?"

"Did he say anythin' agin us? Anythin' of bein' thrated bad?"

"Well, I wouldn't say he seemed altogether satisfied in himself," said old O'Beirne, remembering his suspicions. "Somethin' he said of bein'

made a fool of, and tould lies to----"

"And gettin' boys' wages," said Dan.

"Ay, ay, wirrasthrew, that was the very notion he had, goodness help us.

What will we do at all wid him? You see, sir, me father's a won'erful proud-minded man; he is that. And a great big man, and as strong as ten he was, ontil he got rael ould entirely. So it's cruel bad he thinks of not bein' able for everythin' the way he used to be; and he won't let on but he is, be no manner of manes he won't. 'Deed no, he sez he's as good a man as ever he was in his life."

"Belike now he's of the opinion the sun doesn't dhrop down out of the sky of an evenin'," said little old Mrs. O'Beirne, with sarcasm. "What does the ould body expec'?"

"I dunno, ma'am, I dunno. Sure it's agin nathur and raison. There's meself gettin' as grey as a badger, and noways that supple as I was. But me father's a terrible cliver man. You'd niver get the better of an argufyment wid him, for he wouldn't listen to a word you'd be sayin'. So you see the way of it was, the two of us is workin' this great while on Mr. Blake's lan', that's a dacint man enough; and it might be three year ago, he sez to me one Sat.u.r.day night--for be good luck 'twas me and not me father he'd mostly be payin'--sez he to me, 'Look it here, Ned, it's the last time I'll be givin' man's wages to your father, for bedad an infant child 'ud do as much as he any day of the week. So I'll put him on boys' wages,' he sez, 'that'ill be three shillin's, and every penny as much as he's worth,' sez he. And sure I knew it was the truth he was sayin', but 'twould break me father's heart.

"So nought better could I do on'y to make out 'twas he would be gettin'

the man's wages, and meself the boy's. Diff'rint raisons I conthrived,"

he said, with some natural pride in the details of his strategy, "but mostly I let on 'twas because of me bein' such a fool about the horses they couldn't trust me wid any except the ould ones. Anyway me father was contint enough; faix, some whiles he seemed a bit set up like, considherin' he had the pull over me, and he'd be sayin' what at all 'ud we do without him, and I such an omadhawn. Niver a cross word we had until last week I got laid up wid this mischancy could and the pain in me chest, so sorra a fut could I go to me work; and I well knew the whole thing 'ud come out, if he went when I didn't. Bedad I dhramed it all the night asleep and awake, till I was fairly moidhered in me head."

"Tub-be sure," said old O'Beirne, "that's the worst of lettin' on. If anythin' goes crooked, it's like the bottom bursted out of a sack of mail; you're carryin' about nothin' at all before you know what's happint you."

"Well, we done the best we could, me wife and me, to dispersuade him off of goin' on Sat.u.r.day. Bad wid the could too, we said he was; but och not a fut of him but would go. So Barney McAuliffe was tellin' me wife, when the men was payin' in the yard, me father he ups and says to Mr. Blake:

"'Beg pardon, sir, but you're after givin' me no more than me son's money, and it's meself was workin' this week, not him.'

"And Mr. Blake sez, just goin' off in a hurry, 'What are you talkin'

about, man? Whethen now, you don't suppose I've been payin' you full wages, that hasn't done a stroke of work worth namin' this half-dozen year? That'ill have to contint you till Ned's back agin.'

"And Barney sez my father had ne'er a word out of him, but just went home dazed like. And me wife sez when he come in, he sits down on the form be the door, and niver opens his lips. So she knew right well what ailed him, and she said iverythin' she could think of--how it's disthroyed we'd be on'y for him now I was laid up, and the won'erful man he was, and this way and that way. But niver a word he heeded, nor near the fire he wouldn't come, and had her heart-scalded seein' him sittin'

there in the draught of the door. And I meself was tired callin' him to come in and spake to me, and I lyin' in bed, but next or nigh me he niver come, not even for little Maggie that he always thought a hape of. And the next mornin' if he wasn't quit out of it early, afore anybody knew, in the bitter black frost, and a quare threatinin' of snow. So then as soon as I heard tell, I up wid me and come after him.

Troth, I left the wife frettin' wild, the crathur, thinkin' I'd get me death; but what else could I do? And now I must be steppin' on again.

Och no, thank you, lad, if I took a dhrop of spirits, I'd be choked wid coughin'. But you might just set me on the right road."

"I'll go along wid him," said Dan, aside to his grandfather, "and if I can bring him, or the both of them, back here, I will. It's my belief he's as bad as he can stick together."

So Dan and old Dermody's son went out into the night. A lull in the wind had come, and the light of the moon, hung near the horizon's rim, flickered out dimly ever and anon as the edge of the drifting mist lapped up wave-like and touched her. It was piercingly cold. Ned Dermody leaned heavily on Dan as they walked, only till he fetched back his breath, he said, but it was slow in coming. They had not gone many hundred yards, yet vast tracts of solitude seemed to have folded round them, before Dan caught sight of something that somehow startled and shocked him--a group of boulders by the road, with a shadow under one of them strangely like a human form. A few paces further on he became aware that it really was a man--the old man--sitting huddled up under the big glimmering stone. Thus far had he carried his forlorn quest after Fortune, and mutiny against Fate. His snaggy stick lay at a little distance, a black line on the snow, and the sight of that made Dan's heart stumble. But Ned Dermody shouted out hoa.r.s.ely and loud: "Be the Lord it's himself," and, as Dan afterwards used to tell, "took a flyin'

lep at him, as if he'd a mind to ha' lep over the world."

"Musha now, and is it there you would be sittin' to catch your death of could?" he began, in a tone of gleeful reproach, shaking the old man by the shoulder. "Goodness forgive me for sayin' so, but it's yourself's the pernicious ould miscreant. Fine thrampin' over the counthry I've had after you--forby givin' us the greatest fright altogether. Sure I give you me word the whole of them at home was runnin' in and out of the house on Sunday mornin' like so many scared rabbits about a bank. And ne'er a man-jack of them, you persaive, had the wit to find out where you was off to till meself riz out of me bed to go look. And now, man-alive, git up wid yourself and come along, for it's mortal could here, and there's tons' weight of snow this instiant minyit ready to dhrop down on our heads. Come along. Sure it's niver disthressin'

yourself you'd be about ould Blake and his wages? Musha sure Norah and meself was sayin' on'y on Sat.u.r.day night that there wasn't many stookawns like me had fathers to be bringin' them home shillin's every week as regular as the clock, and givin' prisints to the childer, and all manner. There's little Maggie frettin' woful to be missin' you out of it. Don't be keepin' me standin' on me feet, there's a good man, for it's quare and bad I've been, and the doctor was sayin' he couldn't tell what ruination mightn't be on me if I didn't mind what I was at. And here's the dacint lad waitin' to show us the road. We're just comin'

along this instant, boyo. Look-a-daddy, 'twas all a mistake, and we'll settle it up next week, when we're both workin' agin. Very belike Mr.

Blake didn't rightly know what he was sayin'. Wake up and come along....

Daddy darlint, don't you hear what I'm tellin' you? It's raisin' your wages they'll be after Lent, I wouldn't won'er, raisin' them a shillin'

belike--rael grand it'ill be--G.o.d Almighty!"

He stood up suddenly and looked towards Dan, but at neither him nor anything else. The moon began to shine clearer in a c.h.i.n.k between two straight leaden bars, and the great white bog seemed to grow wider and stiller under the strengthening light. The very wind had forsaken them, and gone off keening into the far distance. It seemed to Dan that even a flake fluttering down would have been some company, but not a single one was in the air. He felt himself seized by a nameless panic, such as had not come over him since he was a small child a dozen years ago.

"What's the matter at all?" he said futilely to Ned Dermody, knowing well enough.

"Gone he is," said Ned, "the life was vexed out of him among us all.

He's gone. And it's follyin' him I'd liefer be, on'y for them crathurs at home."

But in another moment he came staggering against Dan, and clutched his arm, saying wildly: "Ah, lend me a hand--for pity's sake--a hand for a minyit. Don't let go of me." And he leant such a heavy dead weight on him that all Dan could do was to let it slip down and down as softly as might be, until the snowy earth took it from him.

Ned had followed in spite of the crathurs at home.

CHAPTER X

CON THE QUARE ONE

Among the unfamiliar faces that show themselves now and then at Lisconnel, some make no second appearance, never coming our way again, but pa.s.sing out of our ken as utterly as if their route lay along a tangent, or the branch of an hyperbola, or other such unreverting line.

We seldom, it is true, get proof positive, as in the case of the Dermodys, father and son, that they will no more return. Generally their doing so any day may be supposed possible as long as anybody remembers to suppose it. But some come back at more or less regular intervals, like periodic comets, so that if a certain time elapses without bringing one of them, the neighbours say they wonder what's took him at all, while some reappear erratically enough to preclude any calculations upon the subject. Of this latter cla.s.s was Con the Quare One, who, after his first arrival, on a summer's evening, now more than a quarter of a century since, became a rather frequent visitor, usually stopping for a few days at least, before he resumed his travels. It was conjectured that these were very extensive, though perhaps less so than Mad Bell's.

But it was even more difficult to obtain a satisfactory report of them from him than from her. Mrs. M'Gurk said he was "so took up with his own notions, that he mostly knew no better where he'd been, or what he'd been doin', than a baste drivin' home from a fair; you might as soon be axin' questions of one as the other; though when Con chose to give his mind to it, he knew what he was about as well as anybody else. Sure if you wanted to know which way he was after comin', as likely as not he'd talk about nothin' on'y the sorts of clouds he'd been watchin' goin' by over his head; and 'twould take a cliver body to tell from that what road he might ha' had under his feet." This incommunicativeness made him a disappointing guest sometimes by the firesides, where he was finding a night's lodging; though he might eke out his conversation with a little tw.a.n.gling on his fiddle, in which the melody would be quite as vague as his narratives. As for his own earlier history, he never gave any clear account of it, probably having none to give, and the neighbours'

speculations upon this point were somewhat wide of the mark, which was not surprising, as what stray hints he did let fall could be very deviously construed. The opinion most commonly received held that he had "took and run off from home, and he but a gossoon, be raison of doin'

some quare bit of mischief, and had a mind yet to be keepin' out of his people's way; though, like enough, they weren't throublin' their heads about him be now;" a theory which was not entirely in accordance with facts.

Con was not, I believe, an especially quare one at his first start in life, begun under the thatch of a little whitewashed cottage, dotted down among gra.s.s-fields beside a clear, brown river, which kept his mother busy exhorting him and his half-dozen brethren to not be falling in and drowning themselves on her. Her days were haunted by apprehensions of that catastrophe, which, however, was not included in the plot of her life's drama. Con's chosen bugbear was the bridge which bestrode the river close by, and beneath the arch of which he had once happened to be while a cart pa.s.sed overhead. For the lumbering rumble had been an appalling experience, which he shuddered to repeat. Yet he lacked the moral courage to rouse his elders' derision by an avowal, so he followed, and did not let on, whenever their wading and dabbling brought them into the hollow-sounding shade. Despite this daily anxiety, Con spent his earliest years light-heartedly enough, with no stinting of pitaties--none at least that reached the childer--and ample scope for sports and pastimes. But when he was still very small, his grandmother, lately widowed and on her way to a new abode, stopped a night with her married daughter, and begged that she might bring home one of the grandchildren with her, "just to take the could edge off her lonesomeness," a request which could not well be refused. And Con seemed the appropriate person to go, as the old woman considered that "the dark head of hair he had on him was the moral of his poor grandfather's afore it turned white." Therefore the swiftly running mysteriously murmuring river flowed away out of his life, and with it vanished all the faces and voices and comradeship that had made up his world.

At first he fretted for them rather persistently, but after a time adapted himself to circ.u.mstances, and contented himself with the gra.s.s-bordered, hedge-m.u.f.fled lane, which had become the scene of his adventures, fraternizing with the reserved fawn-coloured goat and demonstrative terrier, who alone took an intelligent interest in them.

For his grandmother was satisfied with the sense of having him "playin'

around handy," and could not be counted company.

But after nearly a twelvemonth had pa.s.sed, Con seemed one day to be seized with a fresh fit of homesickness. It was a brilliant late summer morning, yet to old Mrs. Quin's perplexity, he continued to sit on his little stool, with his slice of griddle-cake half-crumbled in his lap, and answered her suggestions that he should finish his breakfast, and run out to play, by irrelevant requests for his own ould mammy. He wanted her cruel bad, he said, and there was nothin' ailed him, and he wouldn't like to look for blackberries along the hedge--or to throw stones for Bran--or even to be given a whole ha'penny to go buy himself a grand sugarstick down at the shop--he only wanted his mammy. Such was his att.i.tude and refrain all that day and the next. After which his grandmother said to her neighbour, Judy Ahern, that she couldn't tell what had come over the child, and he had her fairly distracted listening to him.

And Mrs. Ahern said: "Maybe he might be gettin' somethin'; there's a terrible dale of sickness about. But he doesn't look very bad to say.

Arrah now, Con avic, why wouldn't you run out and play a bit this lovely mornin'? Wantin' your mammy? Sure that's foolish talk, and she n.o.body can tell how far away this minyit. It's just a notion you have....

'Deed, ma'am, I dunno, but maybe you'd a right to let him home to her, or else he might get frettin' and mopin' himself into the fever. He's a poor little crathur; the face of him this instant isn't the width of a ha'penny herrin'."

"And he so continted," said Mrs. Quin, "until he took his fantigue. Rael quare it is."

"Most things do be quare and ugly these times," said Mrs. Ahern, "Goodness help us all. There's poor Mrs. Duff thravellin' off to-morra, to go stay wid her brother at Gortnakil. Very belike she'd take him along; and he'd be aisy landed home, once he'd got that far."