Strangers at Lisconnel Part 16

Except as a fresh topic of conversation, however, the strangers gave small promise of proving an acquisition to the community. Lisconnel did not like their appearance by any means, and further acquaintance failed to modify unfavourable first impressions. These were mainly received in the course of the day after their arrival, which took place on a night too black for anything beyond a shadowy counting of heads, and a perception that the bulk of the new-comers' household stuff had jogged up on one donkey, and must therefore be small. A portion of Big Anne's furniture had remained behind her in the cabin, owing to certain arrears of rent. Her heart was scalded, she said, wid the prices she'd only get for her early chuckens, and they the weight of the world, if you'd feel them in your hand; and poor Mad Bell, that 'ud mostly bring home a few odd shillin's wid her, was away since afore last Christmas, and might never show her face there agin, the crathur; and the poor Dummy gone, that was great at the knittin' if she got the chance--a bit of narration which would look funny enough in anybody's rental. Mrs. Quigley, who went to the door with the offer of a seed of fire, found it shut, and a voice inside called, "as onmannerly as you plase," "No, we've got matches;" whereupon another voice, further in the interior, quavered, "Thank'ee kindly, ma'am." So she departed little wiser than she had come. But daylight showed that the party consisted of an old man, and his son, and his son's wife, and her sister, and three small children, besides some cochin-china fowl, and a black cat with vividly green eyes.

This much was apparent on the surface. Also that the old man was frail, bent, shrivelled, and civil spoken, that the son was "a big soft gomeral of a fellow," that both the women were sandily flaxen-haired, with broad, flat cheeks and light eyes, and that two of the children resembled them, while the third--a girl a trifle older--was a dark-haired, disconsolate-looking little thing, "wid her face," Mrs.

Brian said, "not the width of the palm of your hand, and the eyes of her sunk in her head." As for the fowl, there could be no doubt that their "onnathural, long, fluffety legs were fit to make a body's flesh creep," and the cat looked "as like an ould divil as anythin' you ever witnessed, sittin' blinkin' atop of the turf-stack."

Other less self-evident facts came out by degrees--more slowly than might have been expected, as the strangers were generally close and chary of speech. They came from the north, where their affairs had not prospered--in fact, they had been "sold up and put out of it," as the young man divulged one day to Brian Kilfoyle. They were a somewhat intricately connected family, by the name, predominantly, of Patman. The sister-in-law was Tishy M'Crum, which seemed simple enough, but the two light-haired boys were Greens, Mrs. Patman having been a widow, while the little girl was the child of a wife whom Tom Patman had already buried; for though he looked full young to have embarked upon matrimony at all, this was his second venture. "And it's a quare comether she must ha' been after puttin' on him," quoth Mrs. Quigley, "afore he took up wid herself, that's as ugly as if she was bespoke, and half a dozen year oulder than the young bosthoon, if she's a minyit." It is true that at the time when Mrs. Quigley expressed this unflattering opinion she and her neighbours had been exasperated by an impolite speech of Mrs.

Patman, who had said loudly in their hearing, "Well, for sartin if I'd had a notion of the blamed little dog-hole he was bringin' us into, sorra the sole of a fut 'ud I ha' set inside it;" and had then proceeded to congratulate herself upon having prudently left "all her dacint bits of furniture up above at her mother's, so that she needn't be bothered wid cartin' them away out of a place that didn't look to have had ever e'er a thing in it worth the throuble of movin', not if it stood there until it dropped to pieces wid dirt." Mrs. Quigley rejoined (to Judy Ryan) that "it would be a great pity if any people sted in a place that wasn't good enough for them, supposin' all the while they was used to anythin' a thraneen better--maybe they might, in coorse, and maybe they mightn't. It was won'erful to hear the talk some folks had, and they wid every ould stick they owned an aisy loadin' for Reilly's little a.s.s."

But Judy Ryan, with a flight of sarcastic fancy, hoped that Mrs. Patman and her family "were about goin' on a visit prisintly to the Lady Lifftinant, because it was much if they'd find any place else where there'd be grandeur accordin' to their high-up notions."

Skirmishes such as this, however, were a symptom rather than a cause of the Patmans' unpopularity. That sprang from several roots. For one thing, both the women had harsh, scolding voices, and it was even chances that if you pa.s.sed within earshot of their cabin you would hear them giving tongue. Their objurgations were, as a rule, addressed to the young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of local compa.s.sion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an able-bodied man, shrew-ridden through sheer supineness and "polthroonery." But what Lisconnel often said that it "thought badder of" was the stepmotherly treatment which seemed to be the lot of the little girl Katty. Of course the situation was one which, under the circ.u.mstances, would have made people believe in such a state of things upon the slenderest evidence. Still, even to unprejudiced eyes, it was clear that Katty's rags were raggeder than those of her small step-brothers, and that she crept about with the mien of a creature which has conceived reasonable doubts respecting the reception it is likely to meet in society. When the autumn weather began to grow wintry, little Katty Patman, "perishin' about out there in the freezin' win',"

became a spectacle which was viewed with indignant sympathy from dark doorways whence she received many an invitation to step in and be warmin' herself. Her hostesses opined that she was fairly starved just for a taste of the fire, and didn't believe she was ever let next or nigh it in her own place. Often, too, the consideration that she had no more flesh on her bones than a March chucken led to the bestowal of a steaming potato or a piece of griddle-bread; but the result of this was sometimes unsatisfactory to the giver, Katty being apt to dart away with her refreshments, which she might presently be seen sharing among Bobby and Stevie, for whom she entertained a strong and apparently unreciprocated regard.

"I wouldn't go for to be sayin' anythin' to set her agin them," Mrs.

Brian Kilfoyle remarked on some such occasion. "But, goodness forgive me! I've no likin' for them two little brats. I'd misthrust them."

"Ah, sure they've no sinse," said Biddy Ryan. "Where'd they git it? And the biggest of them, I'd suppose, under four year ould."

"Sinse!" said Mrs. Quigley. "Bedad, then, if sinse was all that ailed them, the pair of them is as 'cute as a couple of young foxes. I mind on'y a day or so after they'd been in it, I met the laste one on the road, and I comin' home wid be chance a sugarstick in me basket. So, just to be makin' friends like, I gave it a bit for itself, and a bit for the other that I seen comin' along. Well, now, ma'am, if it had took and ate up the both of the bits, I'd ha' thought ne'er a pin's point of harm--'twould ha' been nathural enough to the size of it. But I give you me word, when it seen it couldn't get the two of them swallied down afore its brother come by, what did it go do but clap the one of them into a crevice in the wall, and cover it under a blackberry laif. And wid that down it squats, and begins sayin', 'Creely-crawly snail--where's the creely-crawly snail I'm after huntin' out of its houle?'--lettin' on to be lookin' for somethin' creepin' in the gra.s.s.

And a while after it come slinkin' back, when it thought n.o.body was mindin', to poke the bit out of the wall where I was gatherin'

dandelions under the bank. So while it was fumblin' about, missin' the right crevice, sez I, poppin' up, thinkin' to shame it, 'Maybe the crawly snail's after aitin' it on you,' sez I. 'Och, yis; I seen it,'

sez the spalpeen, as brazen as bra.s.s. 'Gimme 'noder bit instid.' There's a schemin' young rapscallion for you!"

"They're too like their mother altogether to plase me," said Judy Ryan.

"The corners of their eyes do be as sharp as if they were cut out wid a pair of scissors. Not that I'd mind if they'd e'er a sthrake of good-nathur in them; but I mis...o...b.. they have. The little girl, now, is as diff'rint as day and night."

"If _she_ takes after her father, she's a right to want the wit powerful, misfort'nit little imp," said Mrs. Brian. "For if he isn't a great stupid gomeral and an a.s.s, just get me one. Why, if he was worth the dust blowin' along the road, he'd purvint of his own child bein' put upon."

"Och, they have him _frighted_," said Mrs. Quigley, with scornful emphasis. "They won't let him take an atom of notice of her, they're that jealous. Sure, if he gets talkin' to her outside the house there, one of them 'ill let a bawl and send him off to be carryin' in turf or wather. I've seen it times and agin."

"If he'd take and sling it about their ears some fine day he'd be doin'

right, and it might larn them to behave themselves," said Judy.

"But the ould man would disgust you," pursued Mrs. Quigley, "wid the romancin' he has out of him about his son Tom. You'd suppose, to listen to him, that the omadhawn's aquil never stepped. He'll deive you wid it till you're fairly bothered. Troth, he thinks the young fellow's doin'

somethin' out of the way if he just walks down the street, and expec's everybody to stand watchin' him goin' along. It's surprisin' the foolery there does be in people."

"Och, murdher, women alive!" said Ody Rafferty, whose pipe went out at this moment, "there's no contintin' yous at all. It's too cute they are, and too foolish they are. Musha, very belike they're not so much off the common if you'd a thrifle more exparience of them; there's nothin' to match that for evenin' people. Bedad, now, there's some people _I_ know so well that I can scarce tell the one from the other."

Lisconnel, however, generally declined to fall in with Ody's philosophical views, and the Patmans, whether suspected of excessive cuteness or folly, remained persistently unpopular. There was only one exception to this rule. The widow M'Gurk has a certain fibre of perversity in her which sometimes twists itself round unlikely objects, for no apparent reason save that they are left clear by her neighbours, and this peculiarity renders her p.r.o.ne upon occasion to undertake the part of Devil's Advocate. When, therefore, she had once delivered herself of the opinion that the newcomers were "very dacint folks," she did not feel called upon to abandon it because it stood alone. As grounds for it she commonly alleged that they were "rael hard-workin'

and industhrious," which was obviously true enough, since Mrs. Patman and her sister might constantly be seen tilling their little field with an energy far beyond the capacity of its late tenant. Her neighbours'

unimpressed rejoinder, "Well, and supposin' they are itself?" did not in the least disconcert the widdy, nor yet their absence of enthusiasm when she stated that it was "a sight to behould Tishy M'Crum diggin' over a bit of ground; she'd lift as much on her spade as any two strong men."

As for little Katty, "she'd never seen anybody doin' anythin' agin the child; it might happen by nature to be one of those little _crowls_ of childer that 'ud always look hungry-like and pinin', the crathurs, if you were able to keep feedin' them wid the best as long as the sun was in the sky." In short, something more than talk was usually needed to put the widow M'Gurk out of conceit with any notion she had taken up.

Perhaps the comparative aloofness of her hillside cabin helped to maintain the Patmans at their original high level in her estimation. At any rate they had not sunk from it by the time that they had been nearly three months in Lisconnel, and when Mrs. Patman and her sister were on terms of the very glummest civility with all the other women in the place. Even towards the widow M'Gurk they were tolerant rather than expansive. She said "they had done right enough to not be leppin' down people's throaths."

One morning not long after Christmas, the widow, being bound on an errand down below, called in at the Patmans' with a view to possible commissions. Meal was wanted, and, while Tishy M'Crum st.i.tched up a rent in the bag, Mrs. M'Gurk noticed where little Katty, who had been "took bad wid a could these three days," rustled uncomfortably among wisps of rushes and rags in an obscure corner. Fever made her bold and self-a.s.sertive, for she was wishing nothing less than that her daddy would get her an orange--"An or'nge wid yeller peel round it"--Katty laid stress upon this point--"like the one her mammy got her a long time ago. And daddy'd be a good daddy and get her another now. And she'd keep a bit for Bobby and Stevie and all of them--a big yeller or'nge."

Katty's eyes blazed with excitement as she reiterated these extravagant desires.

"She's got an oncommon fancy for a one," said her daddy, looking wistfully from the child to his wife.

"They have them down below," suggested the widow, "pence apiece."

Mrs. Patman's hand was slipping towards her pocket. "If it was just for wunst," she had begun, when Tishy tweaked her sleeve viciously and interpolated a rapid whisper, "It wont _be_; there'll be no ind to it if you begin humourin' them," so the sentence was badly dislocated. "She'll do a dale better widout any such thrash," Mrs. Patman concluded, and walked off to throw sods on the fire.

Just then the widow became aware that old Joe Patman was grimacing at her from a corner fast by in a way that might have startled her had she not been familiar with such modes of beckoning. But when she obeyed his summons, what she saw did astound her outright, for Joe was stooping low over a leathern pouch which he had drawn from a wall-cranny, and which seemed to contain marvellous depths of silver money, with here and there a golden gleam among it, as he warily stirred it up, circling a hurried forefinger. She had only the briefest glimpse ere he shoved back the pouch and thrust a sixpence into her hand, muttering, "Git her the orange--don't be lettin' on for your life."

As she turned away with a rea.s.suring nod, she perceived that Tishy M'Crum was standing unexpectedly near, and looking towards them over the top of the meal-bag. Tishy was bitting off a loose end of thread, which gave her a determined and ferocious expression, but whether she could have seen anything or not the widow felt uncertain. She thought not.

About ten days after this Mrs. M'Gurk was roused at a very early hour by a thumping on her door. When she opened it she found some difficulty in recognising her visitor, as the dawn had scarcely done more than dim a few stars far away in the east, which is an ineffective form of illumination. "Whethen, now, Joe Patman, is it yourself?" she said, peeringly. "And what's brought you out at all afore you can see a step or a stim? Is the little girl took worse?" For Katty's illness still continued, and had grown rather serious.

"Sure, no," said the old man; "Katty's just pretty middlin'. But it's waitin' I've been the len'th of the mornin', till 'twould turn broad daylight, before I'd be disturbin' of you, ma'am, to tell you the quare sort of a joke they're after playin' on me down yonder."

"Saints above, man, what talk have you of jokin' at this hour of the day or night?" said Mrs. M'Gurk, feeling the unseasonableness acutely as a bitter gust came swooping up the slope and indiscriminatingly ruffled the rime-dusted gra.s.s-tufts and her own grizzled locks.

"Och, bejabbers, it's a great joke they have agin me whatever," said old Patman, who was shivering much, with cold partly, and partly perhaps with amus.e.m.e.nt. "You see the way of it was, last night, no great while after we'd all gone asleep, I woke up suddint, like as if wid the crake of a door or somethin', but, whatever it might be, 'twas slipped beyond me hearin' afore I'd got a hould of me sinses rightly. So I listened a goodish bit, and somehow everythin' seemed unnathural quiet, till I heard Katty fidgettin', and I went over to see would she take a dhrink of wather. The Lord presarve us and keep us, ma'am, if all the rest of them hadn't quit--quit out of it they have, and left us cliver and clane."

"Ah, now, don't be romancin' man," said the widow, remonstrantly. "What in the name of the nation 'ud bewitch any people to go rovin' out of their house in the middle of the black night, wid the frost thick on the ground?"

"Quit they are," said the old man. "Tom's gone, and the wife, and every man-jack of them. They've took the couple of chuckens I noticed Tishy killin' of yisterday. Begorrah, I believe they've took Tib the cat, for ne'er a sign of it I see about the place, that would mostly be sittin'

c.o.c.ked up atop of the dresser. Goodness guide us, sorra a sowl there is in the house but the two of us, me and the child, and she's rael bad.

It's a quare ould joke."

"It 'ud be the joke of a set of ravin' mad people," said the widow.

"But the best of it is," he went on, "do you mind, ma'am"--he looked round him suspiciously and lowered his voice--"the leather pouch you might ha' seen wid me the other day?"

"Whoo!" said Mrs. M'Gurk, "are they after takin' that on you? Sure, man, I thought you had it unbeknownst."

"Aye, it's took," old Patman said, "but how she grabbed it I dunno, onless, I was thinkin', be any chance you mentioned somethin' about it?"

"Divil a bit of me did," the widow averred, with truth, which her hearer accepted. "And how much might you have had in it at all?"

"Troth, I couldn't be tellin' you," he said; "I never thought to count it. 'Tis just for a pleasure to meself I keep it. This long while back I've put ne'er a penny in it, but when we used to be livin' up at Portnafoyle I'd slip in the odd shillin's now and agin, and sometimes I'd think 'twould be handy for buryin' me, and other times I'd think I'd give it to Tom as soon as I'd gathered a thrifle more, on'y some way the thought of partin' wid it 'ud seem to go agin me, and since poor Tom made a match with Martha M'Crum 'tis worse agin me it goes. 'Tis that good-for-nought weasel of a slieveen Tishy's after conthrivin' it on me, I well know, and bad luck to her," quoth the old man, with a sudden spasm of resentment. "Tom 'ud never play such a thrick--I mane it wasn't he invinted the joke; he doesn't throuble himself wid much jokin'; he's too sinsible, and steady, and perspicuous, and oncommon set on me and the child, all the while. There's no better son in Ireland. Och, but the rest of them mane no harm wid it; they're just schemin' to dhrop in prisintly and be risin' a laugh on me."

Steps which were promptly taken to verify old Joe Patman's strange story proved it to be correct in every particular. The only fresh fact which investigations brought to light was the presence of a five-shilling piece lying on the dresser, where Joe had overlooked it in the early dusk. All the other inmates, chuckens and cat included, had disappeared, and with them most of the few movables, the old man and the sick child being left as forlorn fixtures. Lisconnel at large was neither slow nor circ.u.mlocutory in forming and expressing its opinion as touching the nature of the joke, a firm belief in which old Joe resolutely opposed to his troubles as they thickened around him. For no tidings came from the absentees, nor were any heard of them, while Katty's fever ran so high that it seemed likely her grandfather would be at small further charges on her account--a prospect which, however financially sound for a capitalist of five shillings or under, none the less filled his soul with grief. Then, one night, when Katty was at her worst, a great gale came rushing and roaring across the bog, and when the day broke it discovered the Patmans' brown thatch-slope interrupted by a gaping creva.s.se, over which a quick-plashing rain-sheet quivered.

The widow M'Gurk had less spare room than heretofore at her disposal now that she harboured a co-tenant, with a slight accession of tables and chairs. Yet she made out a dry corner for the child and her grandfather, who accepted these quarters in preference to any others, because the widow, whatever may have been her private views, was prevented by a mixture of contrariness and magnanimity from joining in the general denunciation of her former allies, compromising as were the circ.u.mstances under which they had elected to take their departure. In her society, therefore, he was not obliged to overhear trenchant criticisms upon his Tom's behaviour, and could dilate, at least uncontradicted, upon those gifts and graces in the young man, which recent events had certainly placed in some need of exposition.

Other disquieting voices there were, however, which he could not dodge, and they spoke louder every day. For his five shillings were melting, dwindling--had vanished; and Lisconnel, with the best will in the world, could ill brook a burden of two incapables more laid upon its winter penury. No word on the subject had reached the old man's outer ears; but as Katty struggled slowly and fractiously towards convalescence, it became clearer in his mind that unless something happened, she must, when well enough to be moved, seek change of air away at the big House.

Perhaps this prospect was now more constantly before him than even the thought of Tom's filial virtues, as he sat drearily on the bank by the widow M'Gurk's door. He might often be seen to shake his head despondently, and then he was probably saying to himself: "Belike he thought bad of me, keepin' the bit of money unbeknownst."

By that time he had abandoned the joke theory, and fixed his hopes upon the arrival of a letter to explain the mysterious nocturnal flitting, and say whither they had betaken themselves after pa.s.sing through Duffclane, the furthest point to which the detective forces of the district had tracked the party. Young Dan O'Beirne, whose work brought him daily up from down below to the forge a long way on the road toward Lisconnel, had safely promised to convey this letter so far whenever it came; and on many a day the neighbours nodded commiseratingly to one another as they saw "the ould crathur, goodness may pity him, settin'

off wid himself" in quest of it. The prompt January dusk would have already fallen before he struggled up the Knockawn, to be greeted by the widow in the tone of marked congratulation which our friends sometimes adopt when all reason for it is conspicuously absent: "Well, man alive, there wouldn't be ere a letter in it this day anyway."

"Och tub-be sure, not at all," he would answer cheerfully, "I wouldn't look to there bein' e'er a one sooner than to-morra. I hadn't the notion of expectin' a letter whatever. 'Twas just for the enjoyment of the bit of a walk I went."

"Why tub-be sure it was. But be comin' in, man, for you're fit to dhrop, and be gettin' your ould brogues dhried. Och man, you're dhrownded entirely; 'tis a mighty soft evenin' it's turnin' out."

"And here's Katty lookin' out for you this great while," Big Anne would say, "she's finely this evenin', glory be to goodness."