Part 16 (2/2)
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 s.h.i.+vering 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 s.h.i.+llin'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-s.h.i.+lling 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 s.h.i.+llings or under, none the less filled his soul with grief. Then, one night, when Katty was at her worst, a great gale came rus.h.i.+ng 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-plas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+llings 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.”
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