Atthe extreme south-eastern end of the island, upon the same step or level of rock, but about half a mile farther on than the O’Malleys, lived the Duranes. Their cabin was the smallest and worst, next to Shan Daly’s, on Inishmaan, but then they were Duranes, and Durane is one of the best established names on the island. The family consisted of a father, a mother, five children, a grandfather and an orphan niece. There was only one room in the whole house, and that room was about twenty feet long by twelve or perhaps fourteen feet wide. The walls had, seemingly, never been coated with plaster, and even the mortar between theblocks of stone had fallen out, and been replaced from the inside by lumps of turf or mud as necessity occurred.
When the family were collected together, space, as may be guessed, was at a premium, since even upon the floor they could hardly all sit down at the same time. There was, however, a sort of ledge, covered with straw, about three feet from the ground, upon which four of the five children slept, and where, when food was being distributed, all that were old enough to sit alone were to be seen perched in a row, with tucked-up legs and open mouths, like a brood of half-fledged turkeys. At other times they gathered chiefly upon the doorstep, which, in all Irish cabins, is the coveted place, and only ceases to be so in exceptionally cold weather, or after actual darkness has set in.
There was no land belonging to the cabin beyond a strip of stony potato-ground, andPeter, or Pete, Durane was forced therefore to earn what he could as day-labourer to his luckier neighbours. Not much employment was given, as may be imagined, on Inishmaan, and had there been Pete would hardly have been able to profit by it. He was a thin dried-up little man, looking old already, though he was not yet forty, with soft appealing eyes and a helpless, vacillating manner. His wife Rose, or Rosha, on the contrary, though in reality a year or two older than himself, was a fine-looking woman still, with hard red cheeks and round black eyes, who had only accepted him, as she often loudly asserted, for the sake of charity, and to hinder the creature from throwing himself into the sea.
Poor Pete had certainly not been regarded as the pearl of bachelors, and had had to seek far and ask often before finding anyone willing to accept him. He was a well-meaning,harmless little man, full of the best intentions, and incapable of hurting a fly. Unfortunately for himself he bore a poor reputation in the somewhat important matter of honesty, and it was this that had made Grania think of him in connection with the stolen turf.
About a year before there had been a scandal about some straw which had been missed by one of the neighbours, and which was finally traced to Pete’s door, and although the amount taken had been a trifle, still in so small and so poverty-stricken a community as Inishmaan small things, it will be understood, are readily missed. No steps had been taken to prosecute the culprit—indeed, the ties of kindred are so closely woven and interwoven all over the island that the law is rarely resorted to. The straw had been duly returned to the owner’s door early one morning, and it was one of the many jokes against Pete Durane that he had been soundlythrashed by his wife for the theft—possibly because of the detection of it.
When Grania entered, the children were still eating their midday meal, an old table having been pushed against their ledge for the purpose—a very old table, almost shapeless from years of ill-usage, but still solid, and the chief article of furniture in the house. Rosha was busily ladling out a fresh supply of potatoes from the big black pot, laying them down in heaps upon the table in sizes varying according to the age, or possibly the merits, of the recipient. They were not allowed to get cold, the children snatching them up and beginning to eat them almost before they were out of the pot.
What with the all but total absence of glass in the paper-patched windows, and what with the smouldering eddies of turf-smoke which rolled overhead like some dull domestic cloud, it was at first so dark that Grania could seenothing except the piles of potatoes and the children, or rather the children’s hands, which, being fitfully lit by the fire, kept darting into the light and out again, like things endowed with some odd galvanic existence of their own. After awhile, as her eyes got more accustomed to the atmosphere, she made out that besides the mistress of the house, there were two other women sitting there, one of them an aunt of Rosha’s from the opposite side of the island, the other our previous acquaintance, Peggy Dowd, who had dropped in as usual about meal time.
No sooner was that meal snatched up and swallowed down than the children rushed out of doors again in a body, tumbling one over the other as they did so, the eldest girl clutching up her mother’s flannel petticoat as she went. A spare petticoat—one, that is to say, not invariably worn upon the person of the mistress of the house—is a highly importantarticle in an Irish cabin, and fulfils more functions than could be guessed at first sight. It is a quilt by night, a shawl by day, a head-gear, an umbrella for an entire brood of children to run out under in the rain—nay, the man of the house himself will often not disdain to take a turn of it, especially on occasions which do not bring him too directly into the light of publicity. This last, by the way, was a privilege which poor Pete Durane had never dared to claim.
Even after the children had been got rid of Grania felt it impossible for her to enter upon the subject of her visit—a delicate one in any case—while there were strangers present. Accordingly she did not remain in the cabin many minutes, contenting herself with begging Rosha to ask Pete to come over and speak to her that evening as soon as his day’s work was finished.
Hersilence did not hinder her from becoming the subject of vigorous controversy and criticism the instant her back was turned.
‘Auch, my word, just look at the length of her! My word, she is the big girl that Grania O’Malley, the big girl out and out!’ Rosha exclaimed, looking after her as she ran down the steep path, her tall vigorous figure framed for a few minutes by the doorway of the room she had just left. ‘It is the mighty queer girl that she is, though! God look down upon us this day, but she is the queerest girl ever I knew on this earth yet, that same Grania O’Malley. Yes, indeed,yes!’ A long-drawn smack of the palate gave emphasis and expansion to the words.
‘Auch, Rosha Durane, don’t be overlooking the girl! ’Tis a decent father’s child she is any way,’ said the aunt from the other side of the island, apparently from an impulse of amiability, in reality by way of stimulating Rosha to a further exposition of what Grania’s special queerness consisted in.
‘Did I say Con O’Malley was not a decent man? Saints make his bed in heaven this day, when did I say it?’ the other answered, apparently in her turn in hot indignation, but in reality perfectly understanding the motive of her aunt’s remark. ‘What I do say, and what is well known to all Inishmaan, and that it is no invention of mine nor yet thought of by me, is that he was a very wild queer man. And Grania is just the same; she is a very wild queer girl, and a bold one too, and so I suppose I may say even in myown house and before you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, though youaremy poor mother’s sister that’s these seven years back gone to glory! I tell you there is no end to her queerness, and to the bold things she does be doing. It is well known to all Inishmaan, yes and to Aranmore, too, that she goes out to the fishing just like a man, so she does, just like a man, catching the plaice and the mullets and the conger eels, and many another fish beside I shouldn’t wonder; and if that is not a very bold thing for a young girl to do, then I do not know what a bold thing is, although Iamyour own niece, Mrs. O’Flanagan. But that is only the half of it. She has no fear of anything, not of anything at all, I tell you, neither upon the earth nor under it either—God keep us from speaking of harm, amen! She will as soon cross a fairies’ ring as not! just the same and sooner, and it is not two months, or barely three at the most,that I saw her with my own eyes walk past a red jackass on the road, and it braying hard enough to split at the time, and not crossing herself, no, nor a bend of the head, nor spitting even! It is the truth I am telling you, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am, though you may not choose to believe me, the truth and no lie!’
‘Ugh! ugh! ugh!’Tis a bad end comes to such ways as those, a bad end, a bad end,’ said old Peggy Dowd, who up to this had been busily occupied in eating up the scraps left in the pot, but had now leisure to take her part, and accordingly entered upon the subject with all the recognised weight of her years and authority. ‘Did I ever tell you women both, about Katty O’Callaghan, that lived over near Aillyhaloo when I was a girl? From the time she was the height of that turf kish there she would not be bid by anyone, no, not by the priesthimself. The first time ever I saw her she was close upon eighteen years old, for she was not born on the island, but came from Cashla way to help an uncle of hers that had a small farm up near Aillyhaloo. A fine big girl she was, just the moral of that Grania there, with a straight back, and a wide chest, and the two eyes of her staring up big and bold at you—the very same. But, Man Above, the impudence of her! She had no proper respect not for anything, so she had not. She would laugh when you talked of the good people, and she would say that she would as soon go up at night to the Phooka’s hole as not, which everyone knows is all but the same as death. As for thecohullen druith, with my own two ears I heard her say she did not believe that there was such a thing! though my grandfather, God save his soul! saw one once on the head of a merrow hardby the Glassen rock. But, faith! I haven’t the time nor the strength to be telling you the half of her folly and nonsense, nor couldn’t if I took the night to do it! Anyhow, there she was, straight and strong, a fine handsome girl just like that Grania there; and her uncle was to give her two cows when she married, and her father at Cashla, I heard too there was talk of his giving something, I don’t know whether it was pigs or what. In any case there was nothing to hinder her settling, only you may guess if any decent quiet-reared boy would like to go marrying a wife with such ways and such talk in her mouth as that same Katty O’Callaghan! However, she was bid for at last by a harmless easy-going young fellow of the name of Phil Mulcahy, and married him, and went up to live a quarter of a mile or so beyond Aillyhaloo, at the edge of the big west cliff yonder, and a year after she had a child, as fine a boy atthe start as you’d see in a day’s walk. Well, you may think she was going to get off clean and clever, after her goings on; but not a bit of it—so just wait till you hear. One day she went down the rocks by Mweeleenareeava for the sea-wrack, and I dare say she was carrying on as usual with her nonsense and folly, anyway, when she got back the first thing she noticed was that the child looked mighty queer, and seemed shrunk half its size, and its face all weazened up like a little old man’s, and the eyes of it as sharp and wicked as you please. Well, women both of you, from that hour that creature grew smaller and smaller, and queerer and queerer, and its eyes wickeder and wickeder, and the bawl never out of its mouth, and it wanting the breast night and day, and never easy when it got it either, but kicking and fighting and playing the devil’s own bad work. Of course the neighbours saw right enough whathad happened, and told Katty plainly the child was changed—and why not? Sure who could wonder at it after her goings on, which were just as if she’d laid them out for that very purpose! But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, so she wouldn’t, and said it was the teeth, or the wind in its stomach, and God only knows what nonsense besides. But one day a woman was coming along from Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, a real right-knowing woman she was by the name of Nora Cronohan, and as she was going she stopped to ask for a potato and a sup of milk, for she was stravoging the country at the time. So she looked up and down the cabin, and presently she cast eyes on the creature, which was laid in a basket by the fire, that being the place it stayed easiest in, and—
‘“Arrah! what’s that you’ve got at all in there?” says she, staring at it, and it staringback at her with its two eyes as wicked as wicked.
‘“My child, what else?” says Katty, speaking quite angrily.
‘With that the woman gave a screech of laughter so that you could have heard her across the Foul Sound with the wind blowing west, and “Your child!” says she. “Your child! Sure, God save you, woman, you might as well call a blackarth-looghraa salmon any day in the week as that thing there a child!”
‘Well, Katty was going to throw her into the sea, she was so mad! But first she looked at the basket, and with that she began to shake and tremble all over, for the creature was winking up so knowing at her, and opening and shutting its mouth as no Christian child in this world or any other ever would or could.
‘“Why, what ails it now, at all, at all?’ says she, turning to the other, and her face growing as white as the inside of a potato.
‘“Listen to me, woman,” says Nora Cronohan, holding up her hand at her. “That’s not your child at all, you ignorant creature, as anyone can see, and there’s but two ways for you to get your own right child back again. You must either take that up the next time there’s a south wind blowing and set it to roast on the gridiron with the door open, or if you won’t do that you must gather a handful of theboliaun bweeand another handful of theboliaun dhas, and put them down to boil, and boil them both in the pot for an hour, and then throw the whole potful right over it; and if you’ll do either of those things I’ll be your warrant but it will be glad to be quit of you, and you’ll get your own fine child again!”
‘Well, you’d think that would be enough for any reasonable woman! But no. Katty wouldn’t do either the one thing nor the other, but held to it that it was her own child, notchanged at all, only sick; such fool’s talk! as if anyone with half an eye, and that one blind, couldn’t have told the difference! She had ne’er another child, you see, nor the sign of one, and that perhaps was what made her so set on it. Anyhow the neighbours tried to get her to see reason, and her husband, too, though he was but a poor shadow of a man, did what he could. At last her mother-in-law, that was a decent well-reared woman, and knew what was right, tried to get at the creature one day when Katty was out on the rocks, so as to serve it the right way, and have her own fine grandchild back. But if she did Katty was in on her before she could do a thing, and set upon the decent woman, and tore the good clothes off her back, and scratched her face with her nails so that there was blood running along her two cheeks when the neighbours came up, and but for their getting between them in time, Godknows but she’d have had her life. After that no one, you may believe, would have hand, act, or part with Katty Mulcahy! Indeed, it soon came to this, that her husband durstn’t stop with her in the cabin, what between her goings on and the screeches of the creature, which got worse and worse till you could hear them upon the road to Ballintemple, a good half-mile away. Yarra! the whole of that side of the island got a bad name through her, and there’s many doesn’t care even now to walk from Aillinera to Aillyhaloo, specially towards evening, not knowing what they might hear!
‘Well, one day—’ here the narrator paused, looked first at one and then at the other of her listeners, coughed, spat, twitched the big cloak higher round her shoulders, and settled herself down again in her chair with an air of intense satisfaction. ‘One day, it was a desperate wild afternoon just beginningDecember, and the wind up at Aillyhaloo enough to blow the head of you off your two shoulders. Most of the people were at home and the houses shut, but there were a few of us colleens colloguing together outside the doors, talking of one thing and another, when all of a sudden who should come running up the road but Katty Mulcahy, with the bawl in her mouth, and a look on her face would frighten the life out of an Inishboffin pig.
‘“Och! och! och!” says she, screeching. “Och! och! och! my child’s dying! It’s got the fits. It’s turning blue. Where’s Phil? Where’s its father? Run, some of you, for God’s sake, and see if he’s in yet from the fishing.”
‘Well, at first we all stared, wondering like, and one or two of the little girshas ran off home to their mothers, being scared at her looks. But at last some of us began laughing—I was one that did myself, and so I tell youwomen both—you see we knew of course all the time that it wasn’t her own child at all, only a changeling, and that as for Phil he had never been near the fishing, but was just keeping out of the way, not wishing, honest man, to be mixed up with any such doings. Well, when she heard us laughing she stopped in the middle of her screeching, and she just gave us one look, and before anyone knew what was coming there she was in the very thick of us, and her arms going up and down like two flails beating the corn!
‘Och, Mary Queen of Heaven, but that was a hubbuboo! We turned and we run, and our blood was like sea-water down our backs, for we made sure we’d carry the marks of her to our graves, for she had a bitter hard hand, and God knows I’m speaking the truth, had Katty Mulcahy when you roused her! Well, at the screams of us a heap more people came running out of the houses, and amongstthem who should put his head out of one of the doors but Phil Mulcahy himself, with no hat to his head and a pipe to his mouth, for he had no time to take it out, and she thinking, you know, he was away at the fishing!
‘At that Katty stood still like one struck, and the eyes of her growing that round you’d think they must fall out of her head, so big were they, and her mouth working like a sea pool in the wind. And presently she let out another bawl, and she made for him! I was the nearest to him, and there was some three or four more between the two, but you may believe me, we didn’t stop long! It was something awful, women both, and so I tell you, to see her coming up the road with that rage on her face, and it as white as the foam on the sea. Phil stood shaking and shaking, staring at her and his knees knocking, thinking his hour was come, till just as she was within touch of him, when he turned and he ran for his life.He ran and he ran, and she ran after him. Now there’s no place at all, as everyone knows, to run on that side of Aillyhaloo only along by the cliff, for the rest is all torn and destroyed, with great cracks running down God knows where to the heart of the earth. So he kept along by the edge, and she after him, and we after the two of them presently to see the end of it. Phil ran as a man runs for his life, but Katty, she ran like a woman possessed! Holy Bridget! you could hardly see the feet of her as she raced over the ground! The boys cried out that she’d have him for sure, and if she had caught him and this rage still on her God knows she’d have thrown him over the cliff, and you know ’tis hundreds of feet deep there, and never an inch of landing. Poor Phil thought himself done for, and kept turning and turning, and far away as he was now we could see the terror on the face of him, and we all screeched to him to turn away from theedge, but he did not know where he was going, he was that dazed. Well, she was just within grip of him when she stopped all at once as if she was shot, and lifted her head in the air like that! Whether she heard something, or what ailed her I can’t tell, but she gathered herself up and began running in the opposite way, not along by the sea but over the rocks, the nearest way back to her own house. How she got across nobody knows, for the cracks there are something awful, but you’d think it was wings she had to see the leaps she threw in the air, for all the world like a bird! Anyhow, she got over them at last, and into her house with her, and the door shut with a bang you might have heard across the Sound at Killeany.
‘Nobody, you may believe me, troubled to go after her or near herthatnight, and the wind being so cold, after a bit we all went home, and Phil, too, by-and-by come creepingback, looking like a pullet that had had its neck wrung, and the boys all laughing at him for being ’fraid of a woman—as if it was only a woman Katty was, with that black look on her face and she leaping and going on as no woman in this world ever could, if she was left to herself! That night there was no more about it one way or another, nor the next morning either, but by the middle of the afternoon a man that was passing brought us word that he heard a noise of hammering inside of the house. Well, at that we all wondered what was doing now, and some said one thing and some another. But a boy—a young devil’s imp he was by the name of Mick Caroll—peeped in at the end window and came running up to say he had seen something like a coffin standing on the floor, only no bigger he said than the top of a keg of butter. Well, that was the queerest start of all! For who, I ask you both, could havemade that coffin for her, and what could she have wanted with a coffin either? For you’re not so ignorant, women, either of you, as need to be told there wouldn’t be anything to put into it! ’Twasn’t likely that thing she had in the house with her would stop to be put into any coffin! ’Tis out of the window or up the chimney it would have been long before it came to that, as everyone knows that knows anything. Anyhow, ’twas the truth it seems he told, for the very next day out she came from the house herself, and the coffin or the box or whatever it was under her arm, and carried it down did she sure enough to the shore, and paid a man handsome to let her put it in a curragh—as well she’d need, and him losing his soul on her!—and away with her to Cashla over the “Old Sea”! And whether she found a priest to bury it for her is more than I can tell you, but theydosay out there on the Continent there’re none so particular, so long asthey get their dues. As for Phil, he went over only the very next week to her father’s house, the poor foolish innocent creature, but all he got for his pains was a pailful of pig’s wash over his head, and back he came to Inishmaan complaining bitterly, though it was thankful on his two knees to Almighty God he ought to have been it was no worse, and so we all told him. However, there was no putting sense into his head, and not a word would he say good or bad, only cried and talked of his Katty! Lucky for him his troubles didn’t last very long, for the next thing we heard of her was that she was dead, and about a year after that, or maybe two years, he married a decent little girl, a cousin of my own, and took her to live with him up at the house at Aillyhaloo. And, but that he was killed through having his head broke one dark night by Larry Connel in mistake for the youngest of the Lynches, ’tis likely he’d be in it still!Any way, he had a grand wake, the finest money could buy, for Larry Connel, that had always a good heart, paid for it himself, and got upon a stool, so he did, and spoke very handsomely of poor Phil, so that Molly Mulcahy the widow didn’t know whether it was crying she should be or laughing, the creature, with glory! And for eating and drinking and fiddling and jig-dancing, it was like nothing either ofyouever saw in your lives, and a pride and satisfaction to all concerned. But,’—here Peggy Dowd hitched her cloak once more about her shoulders and spat straight in front of her with an air of reprobation—‘but—there was never a man nor yet a woman either, living upon Inishmaan at the time, that would have danced one foot, and so I tell you, women both—not if you’d havepaidthem for doing it—atKattyMulcahy’s wake.’
Thetwo listeners remained silent a minute after the tale had ended. Peggy Dowd filled her pipe and puffed at it solemnly, with the air of one who has fulfilled a social duty and sustained a widely-known reputation. Suddenly Mrs. Durane, glancing towards the door, uttered an ejaculation of annoyance.
‘My conscience! if there is not that Pete Durane! God help the world, but he’s back early from his work this day!’
Almost before she had finished the words the little man came suddenly round the doorway into the cabin, hardly finding room to enter his own house owing to the three women, two of them in their big woollencloaks, who already filled it to the very walls. His face wore a deprecating smile, which hardly ever left it, and which was the more noticeable from the absence of most of his front teeth. His hair, unlike that of most Irishmen of his rank, was very thin, so that he had the effect of being almost bald, and this with his short stature, bent back, and hesitating air, gave a general look of feebleness and ineffectiveness to his whole aspect. A poorpittioguehis wife called him, and as he stood there her two friends mentally endorsed the description.
‘Well now, well now, is this yourselves? Bless me, ladies, but ’tis the proud man I am to see you in my poor house,’ he exclaimed as he entered. ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am! and how is that good man your husband? and your fine girl, too? But it is a sight to see her coming up the road, so it is!’
‘Och! Pete Durane, get along then, with your fine speeches,’ said his wife irritably. ‘What a murrain brings you back at this time of day? Is it to torment me before you need you’re wanting?’
‘Arrah, don’t be speaking to him like that, Rosha Durane!’ said the aunt from the other side of the island, with a short derisive laugh. ‘I tell you, Pete, there has been a very fine girl asking for you yourself, this day, so there has. Och, but a fine girl, as fine as any in Inishmaan. Saints alive! but ’twas herself was disappointed not to find you within. “Will he come to see me this evening, do you think, Mrs. Durane?” says she, putting her head on one side. “’Tis the unfortunate colleen I am to miss him,” says she. So you may be the proud man, Pete Durane, then you may!’
Poor Pete’s face got as red as his wife’s petticoat. His susceptibility was one of themany standing jokes upon Inishmaan, where jokes were rare, and once started lasted long. It was quite true. By one of those humorous freaks of which nature is fond, while his handsome stalwart contemporaries were all but invulnerable in this respect, the poor littlepittioguewas known to be intensely susceptible to the tender passion. It had made him a slave all his life to his wife Rosha, and even now, after years of consistent ill-usage on her part, he was still slavishly devoted to her, and took her buffets, physical no less than verbal, with all the meekness of an attached and well-broken-in house-dog.
‘Ugh! ugh! ’tis going I must be,’ old Peggy Dowd said suddenly, struggling to rise from her low seat. ‘Will you put the cloak around me, Mrs. Durane, ma’am, if you please. Ugh! ugh! ’Tis myself is scarce fit to walk back alone, so I am not.’
‘Will I send the girl Juggy Kelly withyou to help you up the hill? Yes, indeed, but it is a great help, so it is. You must make her go behind you and push—push hard. Trouble? Och! what are the young people for if not to be of some good to those that’s better and older than themselves? But where is she, that girl Juggy Kelly? It is always out of the way she is when she is wanted. Run, Pete, run out down the road and look for her. Quick, man, don’t be standing there like a stuck pig over against the door, taking up all the light.’
Then, as the obedient Pete flew off hatless down the path—‘It is not known the trouble I have had with that girl!’ Mrs. Durane continued, turning for sympathy to her friends. ‘Would you believe it, Mrs. O’Flanagan, ma’am, ’tis sleeping with the chickens now she complains of! There is not a morning of her life but she comes to me with her face all scratched, crying and saying she’ll not stop in it. “Then don’t,” says I; “go sleep with the crows if you like, since the chickens won’t serve you.” That is what I say; yes, indeed! such impudence!’
‘Och! there is no satisfying the young people, do what you will for them these times,’ Mrs. O’Flanagan replied sympathetically. ‘Did you hear of young Macdara Kilbride—Manus Kilbride’s eldest son, him that’s just back from America?—it is not into his own father and mother’s house he will go almost, so it is not. “Phew! phew!” says he; “why, what a lot of smoke!” And so there is some smoke, and why would there not be? It is a very good house, Mary Kilbride’s house is, there is no better house in all Inishmaan. It is true it is built on a bit of a slope, and the door is at the top, so that the rain comes into it in wet weather; God He sends the rain, and it is avery bad season for Inishmaan when He does not send enough—oh yes, a very bad season, everyone knows that. But Macdara Kilbride is just so. His feet do be sticking in the floor of the house, he says, every time he crosses it. It is a soft floor, there is no denying that, and the chimney never was a good one to draw, being fallen in a good deal at the top, and the stones off. But, Man Above! does he think his father can be going into Galway every day in the week for more bricks? Besides, it is a good house; a very good house is Mary Kilbride’s.’
‘Ugh! ugh! what did I tell you just now? ’Tis the same everywhere. Young people they are the same, all the same; there is no good in them at all, so there is not!’ Peggy Dowd again spat vigorously into the fire to emphasise her disgust, then hitched her big cloak about her shoulders, and began preparing with many groans andwheezing sighs to depart without the aid of her proffered assistant.
Just as she had hobbled across to the doorway it was again filled by a figure, and the elder Durane, Pete’s father, came in.
He was a curious contrast to his insignificant-looking little son. A tall, stately old man, with that peculiarly well-bred air not unfrequently still to be seen amongst the elder Irish peasants. His white hair was very thick, and hung over his forehead and around his hat in a dense silky thatch. His eyes were drooping and tired-looking, and his whole air that of a man who has done his work in the world, and asks for nothing now but to be left in peace. By an arrangement common enough in the west of Ireland, when the parent is old, and the son or sons married, he had surrendered all ownership in the house and all rights of possession, with a few trifling exceptions. The single stuffedchair, for instance, was his, so was the one drinking-glass, and an old two-handled black oak mether bound with brass, a relic this of unknown antiquity. These and a few similar articles of personal use were his own private property, and to these he clung punctiliously, and in case of a dispute would doubtless have defended them to the death.
On the whole his daughter-in-law and he got on better than might have been expected. Rosha, to tell truth, was rather in awe of her father-in-law. His old world politeness, combined with a certain power he occasionally showed of being uncomfortably caustic if provoked, were not without effect upon the rough-tongued, coarse-natured woman. In the endless domestic storms between her and her husband—storms, it must be said, which raged almost exclusively on one side—old Durane never took his son’s part, though often appealed to bythat much-bullied person to do so. On the other hand he had a way of dreamily watching Rosha as she raged about the cabin which had more effect upon the virago than might have been expected from so very negative a form of attack. He now stood perfectly silent upon the threshold, and having politely removed his hat, bent his white head first to one and then to the other of the visitors, leaning as he did so upon the big black stick which he held in his hand. He was still in the same attitude when his son Pete returned hastily, without the girl he had been sent for, but dragging two of the children after him by the hand.
‘Augh, then, Pete Durane, will you never get the sense?’ his wife exclaimed furiously. ‘Who bade you bring back the children, and they sent out on purpose? Pulling them up the rocks, too, like that, and Patsy smoking red with the heat this minute,the creature’—passing her hand over her offspring’s forehead, and turning the palm round to the company to prove her assertion. ‘Auch, Mr. Durane, sir, but it is the fool you have for a son, God love you! yes, indeed, the very biggest fool on all Inishmaan, and it was myself was the next biggest ever to go and marry him, so I was, God knows.’
The elder Durane looked at his son, and then at his daughter-in-law, an air of vague disturbance beginning to cloud his face, but he said nothing. Then, equally silently, his eyes began to wander slowly round the cabin, as if he were calculating the probabilities of any food being forthcoming. Not seeing signs of anything of the sort at present, he again lifted his hat with the same air of dreamy civility, and backing cautiously out of the doorway, beyond which he had not yet ventured, retraced his steps a little waydown the pathway, until he had reached a spot where the planes of rock had got accidentally worn away into the likeness of a sort of roughly-hewn arm-chair. Here he seated himself, his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes beginning, evidently from long habit, to seek out one particular spot in the far-reaching, dull-tinted horizon. Gradually as he did so the serenity, disturbed by Rosha’s appeal and by the general sense of disturbance which was apt to surround that vigorous woman, returned to his face, a look of reminiscence, undefined but on the whole pleasurable, settling down upon his handsome weather-beaten old features.
The aunt from the other side of the island had nearly reached her own home again, and even Peggy Dowd had long disappeared, wheezing and grunting up the craggy pathway, before he ventured to leave his arm-chair and contemplative gaze at the horizon, and once more seek out the cabin and that atmosphere of storm which seemed to hang about it as closely and almost as persistently as its veil of peat smoke.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
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