Part 14 (1/2)

”Whethen now but yourself's the quare man, Con,” said Ody Rafferty's aunt, ”to be takin' up wid that notion these times, when ne'er a differ it'ill make to her. There might ha' been some sinse in it, if you'd done it to plase her, but now you're more than a trifle too late wid that. A day after the fair you are. Sure she'll never set eyes on you or your old caubeen agin,” she said, as if announcing some unthought-of discovery of her own, ”no matter what ould thrash you might take and stick in it. You might be wearin' a young haystack on your head for anythin' she could tell.”

”That may be or mayn't be,” said Con. ”But at all evints the next body that goes there out of this countryside 'ill be very apt to bring her word. Discoorsin' together they'll be of all the news, and as like as not he--or it might be she--'ill say to her--'I seen Con the Quare One goin' the road a while back, and he wid ne'er a thraneen of anythin' in his hat, good or bad; the same way the other boys are; lookin' rael dacint and sinsible.' Belike she might be axin' after me herself, and that 'ud put it in the other body's head. Yourself it may be, Moggy.

Faix now, I wouldn't won'er a bit if it was, for there must be a terrible great age on you these times. Sure you looked to be an ould, ould woman the first day I ever beheld you, and that's better than a dozen year ago.”

”Troth then there's plinty of oulder ould people than me, let me tell you,” protested Moggy, who was about ninety, ”that you need be settlin'

I'm goin' anywheres next. Musha c.o.c.k you up. And your own hair turned as white as sheep's wool on a blackthorn bush.”

She seemed so much put out by Con's statement and inference that young Thady Kilfoyle, always a good-natured lad, sought to soothe her.

”Sure there's no settlin' any such a thing, and for the matter of goin', the young people often enough get their turn as fast as anybody else.

It's meself,” he said, ”might be sooner than you bringin' news of yous all, and Con's ould caubeen, and everythin' else to Heaven the way he sez.”

”I dunno if you've any call to be talkin' that fas.h.i.+on,” said the Widdy M'Gurk, disapprovingly, ”as if you could be walkin' permisc-yis into Heaven widout wid your lave or by your lave. Maybe it isn't there any of us'ill be bringin' our news.”

”Might you know of e'er a better place then, ma'am?” said Con.

”Heard you ever the like of that?” said Ody Rafferty's aunt, not unwillingly scandalised, ”I should suppose n.o.body, unless it was a born haythen, 'ud know of any place better than Heaven.”

”That's where she is then,” said Con, stroking his feather. ”For the best place ever was is none too good for her, G.o.d knows well.”

”And thrue for you, man,” said the Widdy M'Gurk. ”But she's one thing, and we're another. It's not settin' ourselves up we should be to have the same chances.”

”Ah, well, sure maybe we're none of us too outrageous altogether,” said Mrs. Kilfoyle, looking hopefully round at her company. ”And if they can put up wid us at all at all, they will. We'll get there yet, plase G.o.d.

And anyway I'll be takin' good care of your feather, Con. Ay will I so; same as if it was dropped out of an angel's wing.”

”So good-night to you kindly, ma'am,” said he. ”I'll be steppin' back to Laraghmena. I on'y looked in on you to bring you that, and give you news of Theresa. And I question will I ever set fut agin in Lisconnel.”

He did not, however, leave it quite immediately. A little later, when Brian Kilfoyle was escorting Norah Finnegan home, they saw him sitting on the bank near the O'Driscolls' roofless cabin. Its mud walls were fast crumbling into ruin. Already the little window-square had lost its straight outline, and would soon be as shapeless as any hole burrowed in a bank. Con sat with his back turned to it until the dusk had m.u.f.fled up everything in dimness, and then he stole an armful of turf-sods from the nearest stack, and groped his way in through the deserted door. The shadows within were folded so heavily that he could scarcely more than guess where the hearth had been. One of Con's peculiarities was a strange horror of a fireless hearth. At the sight of its h.o.a.rily sprinkled blackness he always felt as if he were standing on the verge of some frightful revelation; a vague reminiscence, no doubt, from the scene of his life's tragedy, all distinct memory of which had been blurred away by his illness. Now he piled and crumbled his sods with practised skill, and set them alight in well-chosen places. But he stayed only for a minute or so, till the little fluttering flames had fairly taken a hold, and were sending golden threads running along the netted fibres. Then he groped his way out again, and returned to his seat on the bank. Presently, as he watched, he saw a red light beginning to flicker through window and door, and growing steadier and stronger. When it was at its brightest, he got up and turned away.

”That's the very way it would be s.h.i.+nin',” he said, ”and I comin' along the road to see Herself and Himself and the childer--G.o.d be good to them all, wherever they may be. And that's the notion of it I'll keep in me mind.”

And Con the Quare One came no more to Lisconnel.

CHAPTER XI

MAD BELL

Not so very long before the sound of Con the Quare One's fiddle ceased to enliven Lisconnel any more, Mad Bell's singing had begun to be heard there occasionally, as it has been at intervals ever since she arrived with her two housemates, Big Anne and the Dummy, and took up her abode in the last of the cabins that you pa.s.s on the left hand, going towards Sallinbeg. Perhaps Lisconnel should not reckon her among its residents, so much of her time is spent on the tramp as an absentee. Still, she sometimes has tarried with us for a long while, and she is understood to have some property in the house-furniture, so it seems natural to consider the place her home.

From the first it appeared obvious to all that the dementedness which characterised the little wizened yellow-faced woman was of a much more p.r.o.nounced type than Con the Quare One's. Any attempt to spare people's feelings by ignoring the fact would have been very futile, and it was therefore lucky that the three new-comers, Mad Bell herself included, were quite content to accept the situation. The neighbours were at first inclined to commiserate Big Anne, who was p.r.o.nounced to be ”a dacint, sinsible, poor woman,” for the oddities of her household, the incalculable flightiness of Mad Bell, and the impenetrable silence of the Dummy. But to their condoling remarks she was wont to reply in effect--”Ah sure, ma'am, that's the way I'm used to them, the crathurs.

Why, if Mad Bell said anythin' over-sinsible, or poor Winnie said anythin' at all, it's wond'rin' I'd be what was goin' to happin us next.” And Big Anne evidently looked upon this as an uncomfortable frame of mind. At first, too, they speculated much about the circ.u.mstances which had brought the curious trio together beneath one thatch, and found it especially hard to conjecture how the daft little vagrant had come into possession of sundry tables and chairs. All its members, however, being incommunicative persons, no satisfactory elucidation of these points was arrived at in Lisconnel.

The coalescence of Big Anne's and the Dummy's fortunes is a simple history enough. Anne Fannin, while yet a youngish woman, was left alone in the world to do for herself in her little wayside cabin. Without a dowry to recommend her rough-hewn features and large-boned ungainliness, she never had any suitors, and she found it as much as she could contrive to make out her single living by means of her ”bit of poultry”

and her pig. Nevertheless, when her nearest neighbours--the Golighers--died, leaving their daughter Winnie, ”who had niver got her speech, the crathur,” to live on charity or the rates, what else was a body to do except take her in? Anne would have put this question to you with a sincere want of resource. So Winnie Goligher transferred to Anne Fannin's house, herself and all her worldly goods, which consisted of the clothes she had on, and a prayer-book, and a lame duck, and thenceforward the two ”got along the best way they could.”

Mad Bell's history has more complications in it. They began one pleasant April day when she was only a slip of a la.s.s, who had taken a little place at the Hunts' farm near her home, for the purpose of saving up a few pounds against her marriage with Richard McBirney. She had been given an unexpected holiday, and was running home across the fresh, spring-green gra.s.s-fields, thinking to take her people by surprise, when she came to a hedge-gap whence you look down into a steep-banked lane.

And at the foot of the bank Richard McBirney was sitting with his arm round her sister Lizzie's waist.

To a dispa.s.sionate observer this transference of his attentions might have seemed a matter of small moment. Most of their acquaintances, for example, were just as well satisfied that he should court Eliza as Isabella. But the sight turned all the current of her life awry. For it set her off rus.h.i.+ng away from it across the same sunny green fields, and she never came home again. Nor ever again would she settle down quietly anywhere. She had a strong, clear voice and a taste for music, and this led her to take to singing ballads about the country at markets and fairs. The harder she was thinking about fickle Richard McBirney, the louder and shriller she sang. A very few years of such wandering shrivelled up her plump ”pig-beauty,” so that in her little sallow, weather-beaten face her own mother would scarcely have recognised pretty Isabella Reid. Then, after a long spell of illness in a Union infirmary, she began to grow noticeably odder and stranger in her looks and ways; until at length the children shouted ”Mad Bell” as she pa.s.sed, and that became her recognised style and t.i.tle.