Strangers at Lisconnel Part 17

CHAPTER XIII.

A RETURN.

Affairs were much in this posture, when the widow M'Gurk was one day perplexed by the occurrence of two small incidents. In the first place, as she was starting on an expedition to the Town she saw at a little distance something run across the road which looked uncommonly like the Patmans' black cat Tib. Lisconnel owns no other cats for which she might have mistaken it; still, as she was puzzled to think how the creature should have hidden itself away for more than a fortnight, she concluded that she had been deceived by some fluttering bird or glancing shadow.

In the next place, she happened in the Town upon one Larry Donnelly, who in the course of conversation remarked: "So you've that young Patman back wid yous agin. What took him to be leggin' off wid himself that way?"

"And what put that in your head at all?" said the widow. "Light nor sight we've seen of him, or a one of them, or likely to. It's off out of the counthry he is belike, and he after robbin' his ould father, that's niver done talkin' foolish about him, and lavin' his innicent child to go starvin' into the Union--bad luck to him." She found a free expression of her sentiments rather refreshing after the restrictions under which she was placed at home.

"Well now," said Donnelly, "I'd ha' bet me best brogues I seen that chap a couple of nights ago streelin' along the road down about our place; but 'twas darkish enough, and I might aisy be mistook."

The widow pondered much over this statement on her homeward way, but had the forbearance to say nothing about it. She was still undecided whether or no she would communicate it to anybody, when, next morning, on her way for a can of water, she saw the black cat, unmistakable this time, run across the road, and, as on the day before, make off over the bog towards the little river. Widow M'Gurk stood staring after it for a few minutes, and came to a resolution. Then she looked about her, and was aware of Andy Sheridan's head leaning against his doorpost. Of Andy her opinion was, as we have seen, rather low, but she could descry no other person available for her purpose, so she called to him: "Andy, lad, I'm goin' after me two pullets that's strayed on me; come and be givin' me a hand." Andy lounged over to her goodnaturedly, and they turned into the bog, where Ody Rafferty presently joined them. The widow thought her fowl might be among the broken ground, where the stream runs at the back of the Knockawn, and the three went in that direction. It was a mild soft grey morning, and they met with neither stir nor sound, till they came abruptly upon a gra.s.sy hollow, shut in by furzy banks, and fronted by the running water, and then the widow, who alone had been expecting the unexpected, uttered a suppressed screech, and said: "Och, boys dear, goodness gracious guide us!"

What they saw was the figure of a man in a long great-coat, "crooched all of a hape" under the bank. Near him were ranged in a row half a dozen oranges, strikin' up a wonderful golden glow. A small grimy sc.r.a.p of paper was spread out near them, covered with several piles of shillings and pennies, and a silver thimble. Beside these Tib the black cat sat severely tucked up, apparently dissatisfied, and irked by the situation. At the widow's exclamation the man raised his head, and was seen to be Tom Patman, looking haggard and dazed, and as hollow-eyed as little Katty herself. Widow M'Gurk and Ody and Andy stood in a line facing him.

"Whethen now, Tom Patman," said Ody, "and what might _you_ be doin' wid yourself?"

"I'm sittin' here," said Tom.

"Och musha, tell us somethin' we don't know then. Sittin' there you are, sure enough, but what the mischief are you after, might I politefully ax? or what you mane _by_ it at all at all?"

"I'm sittin' here," said Tom again, "and starvin' I am; and sittin' and starvin' I'll be morebetoken till the ind of me ould life. Sure what else 'ud I be doin', and meself to thank for it, wid niver a sowl left belongin' me in the mortal world, nor a place to be goin' to?"

"Well tub-be sure," said Mrs. M'Gurk, "if that talk doesn't bate all that iver I heard! And himself after trapesin' off as permisc-yis as an ould hin that won't sit on her eggs, and lavin' his own flesh and blood behind him as if they were the dust on the road. And then he ups and gives chat about niver a sowl bein' left him."

"'Twas Tishy--bad cess to her," said Tom. "Och, but it's the mischievious ould divil-skins is Tishy M'Crum, and it's herself stirred up Martha, that wouldn't be too bad altogether if she'd be let alone, till the two of them had me torminted wid tellin' me th' ould man had pots of money he'd niver spend as long as he had us to be livin' on; and that we'd all do a dale better if some of us slipped away aisy widout risin' a row, and left him for a bit, while we'd be sellin' Martha's things, and seein' about gettin' into a dacint little place, instid of the whole of us to be starvin' alive up at Lisconnel, that's nothin'

more than a bog bewitched; and he after lettin' us be sold up, they said, and all the while ownin' mints of money, so that we'd no call to be overly partic'lar about lavin' him to make a shift along wid the child, if 'twas a convanience; on'y he'd be risin' a quare whillabaloo, if he knew we were goin' off anywheres. Troth, I couldn't tell you all the gabbin' they had day and night--and showin' me the place he kep' his bag hidden in, and this way and that way. Och bedad themselves 'ud persuade the hair on your head it grew wrong side out, if they'd a mind to it."

"They might so," said Ody, "supposin' I was great gomeral enough to be mindin' a word they'd say, or the likes of them." In his subsequent reports of the interview, Ody always alleged that he had replied: "Aye, very belike, supposin' it grew on the head of an a.s.s," which was certainly neater. But Ody Rafferty's repartees, like those of other people, are occasionally belated in this way.

"So the ind of it was," Tom went on, "nothin' else 'ud suit them except gettin' all readied up for us to be slinkin' out in the evenin' late.

Faith, I'd twenty minds in me heart agin quittin' little Katty, and she that bad. Howane'er they swore black and white that me father'd be spendin' all manner of money on her when he got us out of it, and we were to be writin' for them to come after us as soon as we were settled, and iverythin' agreeable--so I went along. But if I did, ma'am, sure when they'd got the bits of furniture sold, the on'y notion they had was to be settin' off to make fortins in the States, and ne'er a word about Katty and th' ould man. Och they had me disthracted; outrageous they were; and that ould thief of the world, Tishy, allowin' me sorra a penny, so as I mightn't ha' been bound to stop wheriver they was. But one day they thought they had me asleep in the room-corner, and the two of them was colloguin' away at the table, so all of suddint Tishy whips out me poor father's bag, that I knew the look of right well, when he used to keep his 'baccy in it, and down she slaps it, and it jinglin'

wid money. 'What's that for you?' sez she, and: 'The laws bless us,' sez Martha, 'is it after takin' that you are? And what's to become of them crathurs up at Lisconnel?' 'Och blathers,' sez Tishy, 'you needn't be lettin' on you didn't well know all this while I had it. Sure th'ould one might ha' plinty more hidden away on us. Anyway, I left them somethin' to get along wid,' sez she."

"The five shillin's," said the widow. "Och but that one's a caution."

"Rael hard-workin' and industhrious she is," observed Andy.

Tom resumed his narrative: "'Them two'll do as well inside as out,' sez Tishy. 'I'll just be countin' the bit of silver,' sez she. But bedad I was fairly past me patience, and up I leps, and I grabbed a hould of the little bag. Och it's a quare fright I gave them that time, and they not thinkin' I was mindin', rael terrified they were," said Tom, sitting up more erect, and recalling this rare experience with evident complacency.

"And 'Lave that, you omadhawn,' sez Tishy, wid the look of a divil on her,' what foolery are you at now?' 'You thievin' miscreant,' sez I to her, 'it's shankin' off to the polis I'll be, and layin' a heavy charge agin you for robbin' and stealin', and you after lavin' the innicent child there and th' ould man to starve widout a penny to their names,'

sez I. 'Faugh!' sez she, 'for that matter the fever's liker to have took her off agin now wid no throuble to be starvin', and maybe a good job too for iverybody.' And 'Be this and be that,' sez I, 'if I thought there was e'er a fear of it, 'tis wringin' your ugly neck round I'd be this instiant.' 'Let go of that bag,' sez she, sweepin' up some of the shillin's that was spilt. 'The polis,' sez I, 'and a heavy charge, if there's another word out of your hijjis head.' 'I vow and declare,' sez Martha, 'I believe 'twould be the chapest thing we could do wid him, to let him take it and go. Sure he'd be divil a ha'porth more use for an immigrant than the ould cat there I was ape enough to bring along to pacify the childer.' So then Tishy gave some more impidence, but the last ind of it was we come to an agreement that I'd take the note and the silver, and they'd keep what bits of gould was in it, and they'd go off wid themselves wheriver they plased at all, and I'd thramp straight back here to be lookin' after the child and th' ould man. Ay, bedad, we settled it up civil enough. And afore I went Martha handed me out th'

ould thimble, and bid me bring it to Katty. ''Twas her mother's,' sez she, 'I was keepin' for her; and thick it is wid houles be the same token; but don't say I'd be robbin' it off her.' And they tould me to take Tib along, or else they'd be lavin' her to run wild; so I put her in the basket. Begorrah, I believe Bobby had a notion to be comin' wid me and the cat, for he was lettin' sorrowful bawls the last thing I heard of him.

"So away I come wid the best of me haste; och I knocked the quare walkin' out of meself entirely. And I stopped at the last big place I was pa.s.sin' to get Katty the oranges. And I was thrampin' it all the night after, till just when there was a sthrake of the mornin' over the bog, I come into Lisconnel. But och wirra wirra--the roof's off of the house--och the look of the black houle wid the rafters stickin' thro'

it, and ne'er a breath of smoke, till me heart was sick watchin' to see might there be an odd one; and the door clap-clappin'. Sure be that I well knew the child was dead, and me father quit out of it, or maybe buried himself, and I after lavin' them dyin' and starvin'. So for 'fraid somebody'd be comin' out and tellin' me, off I run away into the bog, till I was treadin' here in the could wather. And then I tumbled th' ould cat out of the basket, that was scrawmin' and yowlin' disp'rit, and I took and slung the basket into the sthrame--there's the handle among them rushes--and down I sat under the bank. I dunno how many nights and days it is at all--but here I'll stop; niver a fut I'll stir to be lookin' for bite or sup, or lettin' on I'm in it--and anybody may take the bit of money and welcome; I'd as lief be pickin' up the dirt on the road--for I'll just give me life a chance to ind out of the world's misery and disolation."

"Now, may goodness forgive you," said the widow M'Gurk, "it's a poor case to want the wit. Troth, and yourself's the quare ould child-desertin', mane-spirited, aisy-frighted slieveen of a young bosthoon; but what sort of a conthrivance is it you have on you at all at all be way of a head that you couldn't have the sinse to considher the roof blowin' off a body's house 'ud be raison enough for them to be quittin' out of it, and no signs of dyin' in the matter? D'you think the win' was apt to be waitin' till there happened to be n.o.body widin, afore it got scatterin' the thatch? G.o.d help us all, you've little to do to be squattin' there talkin' about disolations and miseries, wid the two of them this instiant minyit sittin' be the fire up at my place, and sorra a hand's turn ailin' them, forby Katty's a thrifle conthrary now and agin, thro' not bein' entirely strong yet."

"And bedad at that hearin'," reports of the occurrence used to proceed from this point, "the lep he gathered himself up wid, and the rate he legged it off--musha, he was over the hill while we were pickin' up his things for him. And as for th' ould cat that he tripped over, it rowled three perch of ground before it got a hould of its four feet."

"Sure we were sittin' there as quite as could be consaived"--the conclusion of this precipitate rush was thus recounted--"when all of a suddint we couldn't tell what come bouncin' in at the door, as if it had been shot out of the inds of the earth, and had us all jumpin' up and screechin', till we seen it was on'y Tom Patman, and he in such a takin'

you might suppose he thought somethin' 'ud swally up ould Joe and the child on him before he could get at them."

Lisconnel's opinion was divided as to whether Tom would actually have stayed and starved in his hiding-place had he not been discovered. Mrs.

M'Gurk thought it likely enough. "The cat goin' back and for'ards that way," she said, "gave her an idee there was somethin' amiss in it, and that was why she took Andy along. 'Deed and she got a quare turn when first she spied the chap croochin' under the bank--she couldn't tell but he might ha' been a corp."

Brian Kilfoyle's view was: "Divil a much! Sure if he'd had e'er a notion to be doin' anythin' agin himself, there was plinty of deep bog-houles handy for him to sling himself into, and have done wid it." Whereupon Mrs. Sheridan crossed herself and said deprecatingly: "Ah, sure, belike the crathur wouldn't have the wickedness in him to go do such a thing."

Her husband didn't know but he might. "Them soft sort of fellers 'ud sometimes stick to anythin' they took into their heads, the same as a dab of morthar agin a wall." And Ody Rafferty supposed the fact of the matter was, "that if be any odd chance they got a notion of their own, they mistook it for somebody else's."

On one point, however, the neighbours, Mrs. M'Gurk not excepted, were practically unanimous, the utter flagitiousness, namely, of Tishy M'Crum. There was a tendency to begrudge her the trivial merit of having voluntarily left behind her the five-shilling piece. For this marred that perfect symmetry of iniquity which is so pleasant to the eye when displayed by people of whom we "have no opinion." Only Mrs. Brian said it was a mercy she had that much good nature in her itself. But even she added that the fewer of them kind of folks she saw comin' about the place, the better she'd be pleased, and she hoped they'd got shut of them for good and all.

This aspiration seemed the more likely to be fulfilled, when within a week or so the Patmans heard from the family of Tom's first wife, who held out prospects of work for himself, and a home for Katty and his father--a proposal which was gladly accepted. Their departure left as the single trace of their sojourn in Lisconnel, Tib the cat, which remained behind, a somewhat unwelcome bequest to the widow M'Gurk.

Indeed, I fear the creature became a source of some annoyance to her, because Andy Sheridan contracted a habit of addressing it by the name of Tishy, and bestowing upon it the same laudatory epithets with which the widow had been wont to justify her admiration for the energetic sisters.

It was on a hushed February morning that the Patmans finally departed.

The smell of spring was in the air, and filmy silvery mist had begun to float off the dark bogland in vanishing wreaths, soft and dim as the frail sloe-blossom, already stolen out over the writhen black branches up on the ridge. A jewel had been left in the heart of every groundling trefoil and clover-leaf, and the long rays that twinkled to them were still just tinged with rose. Here and there a flake of gold seemed to have lit upon the clump of sombre green furze-bushes, by which neighbours in a small knot stood watching the three generations of Patmans dwindle away down the road with its narrow dewy gra.s.s-border, threading the vast sweep of sky-rimmed brown. Father and son walked, while little Katty bobbed along, balanced in a swaying donkey-pannier.

The widow M'Gurk, who felt a good deal of concern about the destiny of her late lodgers, hoped "they were goin' to dacint people, for there wasn't as much sinse among the three of them as you'd put on a fourpenny bit." And Mrs. Quigley thought "'twould be hard to say which the young man or ould one was the foolishest; for the blathers ould Joe talked about Tom, and the gaby Tom made of himself over the child, now that he had his own way wid her, was past belief."

"And I can tell you," said Ody Rafferty, "there's folks goin' about that you'll want all the wits you iver had, and maybe a thrifle tacked on, to get the better of rightly."

"Augh, I question will they iver do any great things, goodness help them," said Mrs. Sheridan. "'Twill be much if he keeps them outside the House."

"Well, anyway," said Biddy Ryan, "I'd liefer be in their coats, for fortin or no fortin, than like them two ugly-tempered women, settin' off to the dear knows where, after robbin' and plunderin' all before them."

"Thrue for you, then, Biddy," said Mrs. Brian, turning away from her wide outlook, "we're none so badly off, when we're stoppin' where we are, instid of streelin' about wid the notion of such black villinies in our minds. For sure enough," she said, as she faced round towards the grey-peaked end-walls, and smoke-plumed thatch of Lisconnel, "the world's a quare place to get thravellin' thro', take it as you will."

CHAPTER XIV

GOOD LUCK

Although Laraghmena is no great distance from Lisconnel as the crow flies, but little intercourse takes place between the two hamlets. For the crow's flight would be over a rugged mountain ridge, sinking into a trackless expanse of bog, which often spreads rough and wet walking before wayfarers who have to experience it at closer quarters than those who merely throw down a flapping shadow as they pa.s.s. And round by the road is a good long tramp, not to be lightly undertaken. So it does not happen half a dozen times in the year, perhaps, that anybody comes from thence to Lisconnel, and our visits thither are fewer still. The neighbours say that the people up there do be very poor entirely, and are wont to use a commiserating tone when speaking of them. But their knowledge of the locality and its inhabitants is by no means intimate, and would be even less so, were it not that Theresa Joyce and her brother Mick, the remnant of Mrs. Kilfoyle's family, are now living there, which makes a connecting link.

Laraghmena is scattered rather wildly over the slopes of a grey mountain that shoulders the sea at the point where its foam comes nearest to Lisconnel. Some of the cabins stand so low along the sh.o.r.e that the shingle knocks clatteringly at their doors when the tide is full and rough; and other some are perched so high up on the hillside that they constantly disappear from view behind a curtain of the pale mists which haunt its summit, creeping to and fro. When one of these little white dwellings, with its field-fleck beside it, emerges from the clouds, you feel as if the slightly improbable had happened, since at such a height you would have expected nothing but the appropriate rocks and swampy patches. There was once a French princess who would no doubt have wondered why on earth any people should choose to live and farm in such unchancy places. Rather than that she would have ploughed herself up a little bit of the rich green land which spreads in broad tracts round about, with sometimes sheep nibbling over it, and here and there a few deer. But the views of this young lady are represented as having been so far in advance of her age that she seems hardly possible as an historical personage, and withdraws into the myth-mists. To that region certainly belongs the ancient chronicle in which we read how the Irish Nemedians, revolting against the intolerable deal of cream and b.u.t.ter and wheaten meal exacted from them by their oppressors, the Fomorians, those ferocious African pirates, emigrated to h.e.l.las, in hope of better things, but were at last driven back home to escape the heavier yoke of the Athenians, who compelled them to: "Dig clay in the valleys, and carry it in leathern bags to the top of the highest mountains, and the most craggy rocks, in order to form a soil upon those barren places, and make them fruitful, and able to bear corn." That history should repeat itself is, of course, to be recognised as merely a commonplace fact; but a myth reproducing itself in the shape of events happening visibly before our eyes, is a rarer phenomenon. And it seems to be occurring whenever a string of Laraghmenians come plodding up their winding mountain-path under the burden of heavy creels filled with earth, or oftener with slippery brown sea-wrack and leathery weed. For it is in this way that whatever scanty foothold their starveling crops may find, has been fashioned and maintained in the stony little fields. Year by year, as the bl.u.s.tery days of late autumn darken into winter, the steep-ledged path is wetted all along with sea-water, and bestrewn with dark trails and tough tawny pods out of the dripping creels, until it grows as sharply ocean-odorous as the beach, while the many bare feet are continually toiling slowly up and quickly pattering down it. Yet their efforts are rewarded by only meagre and stunted growths; so intractable is the material upon which they are expended. Micky Joyce has been heard to declare, as he took a despondent bird's-eye view of his holding, that "you might as well be thryin' to raise crops in the crevices of the stone walls."

However, as we were just now shown, these dwellers at Laraghmena have another resource to fall back upon. In fact, they have nothing less than the wide sea as a supplement to their bit of land. The queer small boats hauled up on the strand, and the dark-brown net festooning the rafters, betoken that, as does also the bit of salt-fish hung against the wall, pallid and juiceless, a shadowy, wraith-like looking viand. But the bounty of the sea has limits; it does not yield up its stores for nothing, but takes as well as gives. And it helps itself sometimes on a liberal scale. Some years ago, for instance, it took poor Thady Joyce and several of his companions, who had gone off in a couple of luggers after the herrings. The event is remembered with awe at Laraghmena, because in that wild March gloaming Con the Quare One had met Thady himself face to face stepping up the winding path, and had given him good evening, and asked him how he had got all dripping wet, just at the very time when the unlucky lad must have been lying drowned miles and miles from there, among the surges of Galway Bay. Other such toll has often been levied since then; for the curraghs and pookawns in which Laraghmena goes to sea are frail craft to cope with the billows come rolling, maybe, from the fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the sh.o.r.e. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few subst.i.tutes for them, are not far wrong in speaking of the people up there as "rael poor entirely."

Yet they themselves would not by any means have it supposed that they "think bad," as they call it, of their fortunes and habitation. On the contrary, whatever their private opinion may be, they are disposed to uphold the merits of the place in public, and to prove themselves sudden and quick in resentment of any outsiders' disparaging criticism. The most deadly insult that can be offered to a Laraghmenian as such, is an allusion to the libellous report which has somehow become current to the effect that his Riverence at Drumroe, the nearest parish, always sends over a special messenger on Sat.u.r.day night to remind them of the morrow's Ma.s.s; the innuendo being that Laraghmena's out-of-the-way situation, and general want of culture, preclude its inhabitants from knowing the day of the week. This is why an innocent-seeming remark such as, "Well, boys, it's Tuesday this mornin'," has been known to set blackthorns whirling wildly.

Something of the sort occurred at Sallenmore fair, one day in last September, when Matt Doyne and Andy Sheridan from Lisconnel fell in with their acquaintances, Larry Sullivan and Felix Morrough, from Laraghmena.

After they had fought as long as seemed good to them, they exchanged what news they had. The most important piece was that Larry and Felix were presently setting off to the States. They were rather urgent in advising the other two lads to join their party; but Andy said that everything would go to sticks at home if he was out of it, and Matt averred that his mother would be of the opinion she was lost and kilt entirely, if he so much as mentioned any such an idea. "And herself wid your brother Terence at home to be keepin' her company," objected Felix.

"Sure there's me mother wid ne'er another crathur in the world, you may say, but meself, and she's never done this last six months persuadin' me to go along."

"Then it's the quare woman she must be, bedad," said Matt, "unless it's yourself's the quare bosthoon on her entirely, and maybe that's liker;"

a rejoinder which brought on a renewal of hostilities.