Part 11 (2/2)
That's an iligant fire you have.” He looked at it regretfully, but turned resolutely towards the door, still open, and framing the broad dim whiteness out away to the bounding curtain of gloom. ”It's a grand thing,” he said defiantly, ”to have all the world before you.”
The sentiment was not accepted without qualification.
”That depinds,” said old O'Beirne. ”Somewhiles I question wud you find anythin' in it better than a warm corner and a pipe of 'baccy, if you thramped the whole of it. And you might happen on a dale worse. What do you say, mother?”
She was knocking ashes out of her pipe-bowl against the wall, and nodded in a.s.sent.
”It's no place for people that can keep shut of it,” she said.
”If you've ne'er a chance of gettin' into it,” said Dan, ”I dunno what great good it does you bein' there afore or behind.”
”Or if you knew there was nothin' left in it you wanted to be goin'
after,” said his great-aunt, half to herself.
”Well, whatever way you look at it,” said the strange old man, ”I've a notion I've a right to be gettin' somethin' more out of it be now than boys' wages. Ay, it's time I was. Boys' wages; the lyin' spalpeen.”
”If you axed me, sir,” said old O'Beirne, ”I'd say 'twas time somebody else would be gettin' the wages. Isn't there any childer to be earnin'
for you? Haven't you e'er a son, that you need be thrampin' the counthry that fas.h.i.+on, let alone talkin' about all the world, wild like?”
”I've a son, troth have I, if that was all,” said the old man, turning away, angrily.
”Then it's that much better off than me you are. The only one I had, he took and died on me, himself, and his poor wife a couple of days after him--G.o.d be good to them--when the lad there wasn't scarce the height of that stool, and a less size on his brother, that's away now in the States gettin' all manner of a fine edication. Very dacint poor childer they always was, too; but it was a bad job.”
”He might ha' done worse agin you than that,” said Christie Dermody, ”be the powers he might.” He had retreated as far as the door, but now he faced round, and stood on the edge of the thin snow, leaning his right shoulder against the post, and looking in at the other old man by the fire. ”He might ha' fooled you for years and years, and made a laughin'-stock of you wid everybody about the place--and me wid ne'er a thought of any such a thing--he might so, and bad luck to him....
'Foostherin' about and consaitin' to be doin' a fair day's work, when he's the creep of a snail on him, and the stren'th of a rat.' That's what I heard Tim Reilly sayin' and I goin' home on the Sat.u.r.day night.
But if I come creepin' after him, the young baste, he'd maybe ha' raison to remimber it.... And himself and the wife lettin' on there was nothin'
like me; and he callin' me to come into his room--I heard him plain enough all the while, no fear, but I wudn't be lettin' on. There's ne'er a hap'orth ailin' him. Troth he may call till he's choked afore iver I'll come next or nigh him. And sendin' the little girl s.l.u.therin'
to say her daddy wanted me. I tould her want might be his master. Sure they're all the one pack, and the widest width there is in this world I'll be keepin' between them and me. Shut of them I'll be for good and all--and I'll make me fortin' yet, and no thanks to him. What talk have they of ould men? Boys' wages. Good-night to you all.”
To those in the room it seemed as if he dropped away back into the wan dusk behind him, and next moment they saw him in motion a few paces distant, limping fast, and gesticulating as though he were still carrying on his monologue.
”That old crathur's asthray in his mind, I mis...o...b..,” said old O'Beirne, ”and I wouldn't won'er if he was after gettin' bad thratement among his own people.”
”Goodness pity him,” said his sister Bridget. ”It's a cruel peris.h.i.+n'
night, and snowin' thicker. Where'll he get to at all? And carryin'
nought but an old stick. We'd better ha' kep' him.”
”Sure we couldn't ha' stopped him anyhow,” said the blacksmith, ”no more than one of them fl.u.s.therin' blasts goin' by. When a body's took up wid onraisonable notions, you might as well be hammerin' could iron as offerin' to persuade him diff'rint. But he'll maybe turn in at the Gallahers'.”
They watched him until the dark imprints of his receding steps in the thin snow-sheet could no longer be distinguished, and then Dan closed the door, shutting out the wide world and the fortune seeker. ”Things is quare and conthrary,” he said to himself.
Some two hours afterwards they were all sitting round the fire still. It was nearly nine o'clock, which is late in Lisconnel, but they found it hard to detach themselves from the cordial grasp of the warm glow.
Bridget, however, had put by her needles, and begun to tell her beads, when another knock broke in upon them.
”He's come back belike,” said old O'Beirne; but when Dan opened the door, the person who stood there, though likewise tall and gaunt and ragged, had grizzled black hair, and was not more than middle-aged. His face was hollow-cheeked and drawn, and his eyes glittered while he s.h.i.+vered and panted. The night had grown wilder as the moon sank low, and the snow went past the door like rapid wafts of ghostly smoke. This newcomer stumbled into the room without ceremony, as if half blinded, and said breathlessly--
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