Part 7 (1/2)
Denis said: ”Faith, ma'am, I'd give six months' pay the thing had never happint. Divil a bit of harm I believe there was in poor McInerney; and I spoke to Dr. Hamilton to spake to Mr. Nugent and the other magistrates for him; but they said, after what me cousin Joe let out about the poteen at his place, the polis would be wishful to keep him convanient to thim for a while; and to be sure, they kep' him too long altogether.
I know, ma'am, young Rafferty and the rest had his shanty pulled down before the polis come up next day; but they thought they'd git somethin'
out of him. The little jacka.s.s ought to ha' held his tongue. It was a pity, bedad. Hard lines it is on a man to be losin' his life, you may say, along wid his temper, just be raison of a bit of a joke.”
Still as he looked out into the suns.h.i.+ne he could not help thinking that he would have had a greater loss of his life than poor Hugh McInerney, who, it was evident, would always have met with a cold reception from everybody at the Joyces'. Then he said to Mrs. Joyce: ”And how's Theresa, ma'am?”
Mrs. Joyce was in the middle of replying that she was grandly, and had just run over to Mrs. Keogh on a message, when Theresa herself came in.
Denis jumped up quickly, saying: ”Ah, Theresa, it's a great while since I've seen you.”
But Theresa only lifted her head without turning it, and walked straight on as if n.o.body had accosted her.
”Arrah, now, Theresa darlint, don't you see Denis O'Meara?” said her mother, puzzled and rather dismayed.
And then Theresa did turn and look at him. ”Yis, I see him,” she said--and, indeed, she might as easily have overlooked the red flame in a lantern as the tall scarlet lancer in her mother's little misty-cornered room. ”I see him,” she said, ”and I hate the sight of him.” And thereupon she turned again, and walked out of the door, leaving a dead silence behind her.
This was one of the very few harsh sayings that Theresa Joyce has uttered in the course of her long life, and it came like a shock upon her hearers.
Mrs. Joyce at last said blankly: ”What at all has took the child?”
And Bessie Kilfoyle said to Denis, who stood dumbfounded: ”But indeed now, you may be sure there's not a many up here, at any rate, who do that.”
But he replied: ”If _she_ does, it's many enough for me, Mrs. Kilfoyle.
And I won't stop here to be drivin' her out of the house. So I'll say good-bye to yous kindly, for I'll be off now to Dublin to-morra or next day.”
”And in coorse,” Mrs. Joyce remarked ruefully, after he had departed, retreading his steps through the bright fresh morning with so crestfallen a mien that all the neighbours knew things had not run smoothly, ”you couldn't raisonably expec' him to stay here to be hated the sight of. And indeed, what wid one thing and another, it's none too good thratement the poor lad's got up at Lisconnel, more's the pity.”
Theresa herself never had any explanation to offer of ”why she would be that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara.” Her mother accounted for it by pique at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courts.h.i.+p of Mary Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little old tin box which contained Theresa's treasures, a roll of bright yellow ribbon wrapped up very carefully; and thenceforward she silently ceased to hope that things might all come right yet, if Denis O'Meara came back again on leave.
So, although Mrs. Joyce may have drawn wrong inferences, the results were much as she had foreseen. Theresa never married, and when her mother died she went to live with her brother Mick at Laraghmena, where she is living still, notwithstanding that it is so long since all this happened--since the fine summer when Denis O'Meara was at Lisconnel, and Hugh McInerney, who luckily left n.o.body to be breaking their hearts fretting after him, died in Moynalone Jail.
The yellow ribbon lies safely in her box, and with it a grimy bit of paper, brought to her one day by a trusty hand, to which Hugh found out a way of committing it ”before he was took bad entirely.” Theresa herself has never deciphered its wild scrawls, being an unlettered person, but its bearer read it over to her until she knew it by heart every word. ”For your own self the yella ribin is,” the letter ran, ”but don't be wearin' it unless you like it. And I'm sorry the man got hit; but I do be dhramin' most nights that it's you I'm after rapin' the little black head off of; and I'd liefer lose me life than think I'd be after hurtin' a hair of it. But the Divil was busy wid me that evenin'.
And I'm very apt never to get the chance to set fut again out on the big bog. It 'ud do me heart good to see the sun goin' down in it a great way off, for this is a quare small place. It's a long while. But sure, to the end of all the days of me life,” it said to her, like an echo beaten back from the walls of the great abysm, ”it's of yourself I'll be thinkin' off away in contintmint at Lisconnel.”
CHAPTER VII
MR. POLYMATHERS
It was to an accidental circ.u.mstance that Lisconnel owed the prolonged sojourn there of perhaps the most distinguished scholar who has ever visited us. For when he arrived at O'Beirne's forge one misty June evening, the night's lodging only was all he asked or desired. But in those times, now some fifty years since, we had ”a terrible dale of sickness about in the country,” and next morning the stranger was down with the fever, which, although so mild a case that even Bridget O'Beirne never gave him over more than twice in the same day, brought his journey perforce to a halt. At the beginning he was very loth to believe that he must relinquish his intention of reaching Dublin by a certain date--the first Monday in July; however, having once recognised the impossibility of doing so, he showed no haste to quit his quarters, and his stay with the O'Beirnes lengthened into months as the summer slipped away. At this time the forge was owned by Felix O'Beirne, blacksmith, shebeener, and ex-whiteboy, and with him lived his orphan grandsons, Daniel and Nicholas, his very old, ancient mother, who still drew enjoyment in whiffs through the stem of her black dudeen, and his elderly sister, Bridget, who had taken little pleasure in anything since the redcoats shot her sweetheart in the War. The missing third generation was represented occasionally when Mrs. Dooley, Felix's married daughter, came on a visit. It was conjectured among them that ”the fancy the ould gintleman had for larnin' all manner to young Nicholas continted him to stop.” And this may have had something to do with it, though less, probably, than the vaguer fact that he from the first ”took kindly” to the O'Beirnes, and they to him. His appearance puzzled them a little. He was of a ma.s.sive, large-boned frame, such as nature seems to design for rough uses; but, as Felix remarked, ”you could aisy tell be ivery finger and thumb on him that hard work wasn't the handle he'd took a hould of the world by.” He wore a very long, grey frieze coat, and a chimney-pot hat so old and tall that it looked as if it must have grown slowly to its great height. When he took it off he uncovered a shock of soft white hair, like the wig of a seeded groundsel, about a face which was furrowed and wrinkled ruggedly enough, in a different pattern somehow from what is commonly seen at Lisconnel, where sun and wind have a large share in the process. His baggage consisted of two bundles, very unequal in size and weight. The contents of the smaller one were mainly a s.h.i.+rt and three socks, knotted loosely in a blue cotton handkerchief; the other was done up carefully in sacking, and he liked to have it under his eye.
Of course the O'Beirnes' visitor was often talked about among the groups gathered of an evening, much as they are nowadays, for gossip and poteen within the broad-leaved forge doors, through which on dark nights the fire still blinks as far across the bog as the amber of the sunset, or the rising glow of the golden harvest moon. Even from Felix's first report it appeared that the stranger was no ordinary person.
”Won'erful fine discoorse he has out of him, anyway,” he told the neighbours a few nights after the arrival; ”ivery now and agin he'll out wid a word as grand like and big as his Riverence at Ma.s.s--goodness forgive me for sayin' so. Sometimes we've been hardset to tell what he's drivin' at. But that's the way it is wid thim words that has a power of manin' in thim. They're apt to bother you a bit when you're used to spakin plain.”
”Belike it's the fever in his head sets him talkin' oddly,” said young Barney Corcoran. ”I mind me brother Joe when he was bad wid it would be ravin' wild. Sorra the sinsible word there was out of him for the best part of a week.”
This way of accounting for his guest's fine language rather affronted Felix, and he consequently said, ”Musha now, was there not? And how long might yourself be under that descrips.h.i.+n of fever?”
”Ah sure, what 'ud we do at all if poor Barney was took that way?” said Peter Keogh, ”and n.o.body able to tell was it ravin' he was, or settin'