Up at Lisconnel, meanwhile, as the idle hours loitered by, Ody Rafferty's aunt grew tired of her solitary housekeeping, and late in the afternoon she made her way down as far as the Joyces'. Here a number of the neighbours were sitting about in almost the same place where Theresa had sustained the loss of her cherry-coloured knot. But to-day there were no rough breezes stirring to bring about such disasters by their unmannerly pranks. The sun-steeped air was so still that the thick bushes stood as steady as the boulders, and even the rushes nodded slightly and stiffly. As the old woman hobbled down the slope she saw Denis O'Meara's scarlet uniform gleaming martially against a background of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton, which lay in a great heapbefore him on a flat-topped boulder, with a big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and towards the scrap of road that lay within her ken. Joe Egan was at his cousin's elbow, and a few other lads and lasses made a rough circle. But old Mrs. Joyce, and old Mrs. Ryan, and old Paddy Ryan, and old Felix O'Beirne had established themselves on a low grassy bank at a little distance. It was kept so closely cropped by the Ryans' goat that its dandelions grew dwarfed and stalkless, and were set flat in the fine sward like mock suns. All this day the real sun had shone on it so strongly that the air was aromatic with the odour of its dim-blossomed herbs, and to touch it was like laying your hand on the warm side of some sleek-coated beast. Old Paddy said you might think you were sitting on the back of an ould cow, but his wife rejoined that "you'd have to go far enough from Lisconnel, worse luck, before you'd get the chance of doin' such a thing." And she shook her head over the reflection so regretfully that a matter-of-fact person might have inferred her to have beenformerly much in the habit of enjoying seats on the backs of cows.
These elders, from where they sat, commanded a comprehensive view of the crops of Lisconnel, its potatoes and oats, green and gold, meshed in their grey stone fences, and flecked with obstructive boulders and laboured cairns. In the middle of the Ryans' neighbouring field there is a block of quartzite, as big as a small turf-stack, which gleamed exceedingly white from amongst the deep muffling greenery of the potato-plants. Mrs. Joyce had been praising their thriving aspect to old Paddy, who, however, was disposed to express a gloomy view of them.
"It's too rank they're growin' altogether," he said; "ne'er a big crop you'll get under that heigth of haulms. 'Heavy thatchin' and light liftin',' as the sayin' is."
To Felix O'Beirne the smooth leafy surface recalled a far-off incident of the War, when the dense foliage of a certain potato-field had permitted the execution of a curious military manœuvre. It was one of old O'Beirne's favourite stories, and he often related it at full length, but to-day it was cut short by the arrival of Ody Rafferty's aunt, whom Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ryanwere prompt to greet, making room for her between them on the bank with an alacrity which somehow conveyed an impression of uneasiness lest she should establish herself elsewhere.
Presently she said: "And what at all is Theresa busy wid over yonder—and young O'Meara? Is it bogberries they're after pullin'?"
Mrs. Joyce said: "No, ma'am, it isn't bogberries;" and left further explanations to Mrs. Ryan, with the air of one who refrains from self-glorification, but counts upon its being done for her, more gracefully, by deputy.
"Sure wasn't he out on the bog the len'th of the day, since early this mornin', he and little Joe, gadrin' her the bog-cotton?" said Mrs. Ryan. "The full of a pitaty-creel he brought her. They have it there in a hape."
"'Twas because he heard her sayin' last night she wished she had a good bit of it to stuff the pillow she's makin' me," put in Mrs. Joyce. "Off he went after it the first thing this mornin'."
"Whethen now, is that the way of the win'?" said Ody Rafferty's aunt, with a pleased smile, striking out unfamiliar paths among her wrinkles. "Troth, but I'm rael glad to hear it. Bedad, it's a grand thing for little Theresa."
"He's a very dacint poor lad," Mrs. Joyce said, looking over with pride at the handsome young sergeant, and thinking that Ody Rafferty's aunt must have some good nature in her after all, since she was so evidently glad of their good luck.
"'Deed but there's not a finer young man in the kingdom of Connaught this day," said Mrs. Ryan, who could, of course, be frankly laudatory. "And wid everybody's good word, high and low, and drawin' grand pay, and the colonel in his rigimint ready to do a turn for him any time, and a rael steady kind-hearted lad to the back of that. But sure he's after as nice a little girl as he'd ha' found anywheres, wid all his thravellin', and as good as gould. He'll be very apt to be spakin' out to her prisintly, for it's gettin' near his lave's ind, and what for would they be waitin'? But to my mind it's as good as made up after what he's done to-day."
In a little while after this Ody Rafferty's aunt slipped away, and set off hobbling along the road towards Duffclane. She wanted to intercept her grand-nephew on his way home and tell him this news. For all day she had been haunted by an apprehension that Ody meant to return with a fairing for Theresa, the presentation of whichmight bring about a crisis in his courtship very disastrous from her own point of view. Old Moggy surveyed her world rather steadily at all times from that particular outlook, finding in her solitary superfluousness little to deflect her gaze. The disappointment which, on her own theory, these tidings would bring to Ody did not do so now, and she put her best foot foremost, animated by the pleasure of telling some new thing, one, moreover, that threw a reassuring light upon her situation. With even her amended opinion of the lad she could hardly imagine that he would have a chance against magnificent Denis O'Meara, whom nobody would have ever expected to look for a wife in poor little Lisconnel—but you never could tell, and she felt that it still behoved her to be on her guard against all possible perils. Therefore she at present thought it expedient to waylay Ody, and let him know that if he had any notion of Theresa Joyce, he was a day after the fair.
Hobbling on bent and breathless, wrapped in her rusty black shawl, with her shadow flitting far out over the level bog amid the slanted beams, she looked a not inappropriate messenger of woe, symbolically impotent and insignificant; a little dark speck in the wide westering light; a feeblestir of life creeping on the verge of a vast silent solitude; and full, withal, of baseless fears and futile plots, concerning the withered shred of existence that remained to her. She was just in the nick of time, she said to herself, when she saw the trio presently coming over the top of the hill. Ody was pointing out conciliatingly to the morose Rory how they'd be at home now nearly in the time he'd be waggin' his tail; and Hugh McInerney was resolving that he would go on straight to his own place, and defer the presentation of the ugly yellow ribbon until to-morrow. All three were hot and fagged and dusty.
"Well, lad, and what's the best good news wid you?" Ody's aunt said to him, as they met.
"Little enough," said Ody.
"And you comin' out of a fair?" she said. "Bedad now, we make a better offer at it ourselves up here for the matter of news."
"What's that at all?" said Ody.
"Sure amn't I just after hearin' tell of a grand weddin' there's goin' to be prisintly?" said his aunt, "and that doesn't happen every day of the year."
"Och, a weddin'," said Ody. "I was thinkin' maybe there was somethin' quare at our littleplace beyant yonder. But as long as it's nothin' worser than weddin's you're hearin' tell of, I'm contint, if you listened the two ears off your head."
"It's Denis O'Meara and Theresa Joyce has made a match of it," said his aunt, conscious that she was slightly overstating facts; "settled up it is on'y this evenin'. And the weddin's bound to be before his lave's out—so there's for you."
"Sure good luck to the both of thim," said Ody, "Theresa Joyce is a plisant little bein', I'll say that for her, and divil a bit of harm there is in O'Meara aither. A fine chap he is for a sodger; not that they're any great things as far as I can see—just pólis a thrifle smartened up."
Ody's thoughts were for the moment running on the police, a couple of whom he had lately espied at a short distance coming across the bog.
"Well, if you wanted to see the two of thim," said his aunt, raising her voice as he began to drive Rory on, "there they are, just at the back of her place, sortin' the stuff he's after gettin' her on the bog. He brought her the full of the pitaty-creel. Her mother's as plased over it as anythin', and sot up too, aye is she bedad."
The old woman was for the time being almostas much disappointed as relieved by the equanimity with which Ody had received her tidings; yet if she had but known, they had not failed to produce a strong sensation. Only she never thought of considering how they might affect that quare big gawk Hugh McInerney. What did occur to her in his connection as he begun to trudge alongside her after the pony, was that "he was as ugly as if he had been bespoke." For Hugh's long tramp under the sultry sun had scorched him a deeper and more uniform red brick than usual, and his shock of tow-coloured hair jutting from beneath an unnoticeable round cap, looked more than ever like thatch over his blinking blue eyes. When they had gone a few yards in silence he suddenly said musingly—
"I dunno why he wouldn't have as good a right to be bringin' her anythin' she had a fancy for off the bog in a pitaty-creel, as me to be buyin' her len'ths of hijis-coloured ribbons to make a show of herself wid. But all the same, I'd as lief he'd let it alone. For some raison or other I've the wish in me mind I was slingin' the whole of it into one of thim bog-houles out there—and that 'ud be no thing to go do on her.... And that was a quare story the ould woman had about thimgettin' married. Somebody was apt to be makin' a fool of her. Who was it would be tellin' her I won'er?"
But old Moggy partly overheard and said: "Thim that knew what they was talkin' about, supposin' it's any affair of yours."
So he did the rest of his meditating inaudibly. He said to himself that he was steppin' home straight—continuing the while to walk in quite the opposite direction—and that he wouldn't be goin' to the Joyces' place to-night at all; what 'ud bring him there, and it gettin' so late? But of course he went there, as surely as a swimming bubble goes over the cataract's smooth lip, or a fascinated little bird down the snake's throat.
For the sensation which he had begun to experience, and which was a strong one, and strange to him, was nothing less than jealousy. He was jealous of that pitaty-creel.
When he came to the place Ody's aunt had told of, he found a group of young Joyces and Ryans and others gathered among the boulders and bushes in a circle of which the heap of bog-cotton formed the centre; and a glance having showed him that it included Denis and Theresa, he sat down facing them, and said to himself:
"If I'd known, now, it was bog-cotton she was wantin', I could ha' been gadrin' her plinty last night after I come home. There's a gran' big moon these times, wid lashin's and lavin's of light to be gettin' thim kind of glimmerin' things by. I seen a black place below between the sthrame of wather and the roadside all waved over white wid it, like as if it was a fall of snow thryin' could it flutter off away wid itself agin out of the world. I'd have got her enough to fill a six-fut sack. What for didn't the crathur tell me?"
Pursuing these and other such reflections Hugh's attention, which at all times had a long tether, strayed far afield. He did not hear Denis O'Meara inquire of him twice whether Ody Rafferty had got his fine price for the old pony; not yet Peter Ryan rejoin after an interval that he supposed it was such a big one, anyway, Hugh McInerney couldn't get it out of his mouth—that was sizable enough. No doubt it was this symptom of absentmindedness that emboldened Thady Joyce to set about twitching out of Hugh's pocket the flimsy paper parcel seen protruding from it, a feat which he achieved undetected, while his surrounding accomplices nudged one another and whispered: "Och he has it now—whoo-oo he'll do it."
Thady conveyed what he had filched to Molly and Nelly Ryan, who manipulated it for some time amid much giggling; and then Nelly, with dexterous audacity pinned their handiwork on to the cap of her neighbour Denis O'Meara, who sat all unawares. Thus it came to pass that when Hugh was at last roused to a vague sense of tittering all round him, which reached him much as the clacking chirp of sparrows gets meaninglessly into our frayed morning dreams, and looking up out of his reverie, stared about him for an explanation, the first thing his eyes lit on was Denis's smart cap surmounted by a mass of gaudy yellow ribbon in immense bows and loops and streamers, flapping and waggling absurdly at every movement made by their unsuspecting wearer. And the spectacle caught his breath, and dazzled his sight with a sudden scorching blast of wrath. For it seemed to him that Denis was not making merely a mock of him and his fairing, which he thought intrinsically of small amount, but through it of Theresa herself and her foolish little fancies. And there sat Theresa looking on, with a quick pink flush, and shining eyes, and a quiver about her mouth. The next moment Hugh had hurled at the bedizened cap what he happened to be holding inhis hand. And this was Paddy Ryan's new reaping-hook.
Thereupon followed a terrible confusion and clamour, which seemed to fill at a sweep all the spacious drowsy light of the sunsetting. For the missile had gone surely to its mark, and had not simply knocked off Denis's cap, but made a shocking gash in his temple, so that there were only too sufficient reasons for the rising shrieks of "Holy Virgin, he's murdhered—he's kilt!" Amid all the turmoil, with Denis fallen on the ground, and Hugh standing staring, and everybody else rushing through other like crows in a storm, one person alone appeared to act with a definite purpose, and that was little Joe Egan. The event had made him like one possessed with rage and despair. To Joe, weakly and timorous and not over-wise, his valiant, handsome, good-natured soldier cousin had come as the most splendid apparition that had shined upon him in the dim course of his fifteen years; and he had spent the past three months in adoring it very devoutly. So that now to see him laid low suddenly in this savage fashion was a sight that might well cause a burning thirst for vengeance upon the miscreant who had dealt the stroke. Joe generally had toget his revenges wreaked by deputy; and now, as he darted away, his intention was to find the pólis somewhere, and bring them to take up "that great bastely murdherin' divil, Hugh McInerney," and if by any means possible get him hung. He attained his object sooner than might have been expected, as not far down the road a pair of constables were run into by a small tatterdemalion figure, who, choking and stammering and writhing in an ague fit of fury, proceeded to inform them that "Big Hugh McInerney was just after murdherin' Denis O'Meara up above there—takin' the head off him wid a rapin'-hook," and, further, that "if they looked in the dirty thief's little place at the fut of the hill, they'd find that every other stone in the walls of it was nothin' else but a crock of poteen."
This was the cause of the police's prompt arrival on the scene, where nobody resented Joe's action. Denis's injury, though so grave, happily did not seem to be mortal, in fact, on this occasion young Dan O'Beirne, albeit scarcely more than a spalpeen, displayed a handiness and resource about bandaging and other remedies, which foreshadowed his future reputation throughout the district for knowledgableness in surgery and medicine. Hugh McInerney was, of course, at once arrested, withoutany resistance on his part, or any sympathy from the indignant neighbours. He appeared to be what old Will Sheridan termed, "fallen into a serious consternation," and was heard to make only one remark. It was when people were saying that Theresa Joyce had took a wakeness, and her brothers had carried her indoors. "Och, the crathur," he said, "and it might aisy have hit her, very aisy. Miself's the quare divil."
Once the police and their prisoner had gone, Denis having been brought into the Ryans' house, a deep and melancholy hush settled down upon Lisconnel, as if a murky wing had flapped out its brief flare of excitement. The whole thing had happened so quickly that the rich light from the west was still bronzing the edges of the flat-ledged furze boughs, and rosing their white stems, when the little hollow behind the Joyces' house rested quiet and deserted, with no traces left of the company lately there assembled, except a litter of silky white bog-cotton tufts, soon to be swept away by the breeze, and the unchancy yellow ribbon, which had been torn out of Denis's cap, and lay coiling among the rough grass, whence, as the dusk thickened, it glinted like the wraith of a lost sunbeam or a ray from an evil star.
But that night fell very dark, with a moon so closely veiled that the flaggers and bulrushes waving their swords and spears fast by, dwindled into mere rustlings and murmurs—the air was full of them. At the dimmest hour anybody who had stolen out of a neighbouring door, and passed between the faintly glimmering white boulders, as if in search of something lost there, might have seemed only one of the whispering shadows. And these might have begun so say, "Sorra aught can I do at all, at all. And ne'er a soul is there to spake a word—all of thim agin him, and it no fau't of his, when he would be torminted that way. They'd no call to go play such a thrick on him, and he didn't mane it a' purpose, I very well know; but the other chap was intindin' to annoy him, sittin' there wid a great ugly grin on his face. I wish he'd never come next or nigh Lisconnel." But be that as it may, when the next morning's light twinkled among the dewy blades, the yellow ribbon had disappeared.
After this the days seemed to drag heavily at Lisconnel, where a dulness and flatness had come over society. Dr. Hamilton had carried off Denis O'Meara to Ballybrosna, and there was nothing to fill up the blank he left except speculations abouthis chances of recovery, and censures upon Hugh McInerney, monotonously unanimous. In his favour, indeed, no one seemingly had a word to say. People declared that "they'd never have thought he'd take and do such a thing, for though he might ha' been a quare sort of bosthoon, he was always dacint and paiceable." But cancelled praise is the bitterest of blame; and they added that "it was rael outrageous of him to go do murdher on the likes of Denis O'Meara, and no credit to Lisconnel for it to be happenin' him there. Iligant charácters it 'ud be givin' them if he wint back to the rigimint wid his eyes slashed out of his head, as much as to say he hadn't a fair chance among us unless he'd come wid his side-arms."
The neighbours were of opinion, too, that "it was no wonder little Theresa Joyce had got a bit moped and quiet, after her sweetheart bein' as good as destroyed before her eyes, and it hard to say if she'd ever see a sight of him again."
"It was a misfort'nit thing," Mrs. Con Ryan remarked one day, when the subject was under discussion, "that young O'Meara hadn't actually spoke out before it happint thim. 'Twould ha' made her a dale aisier in her mind now, Iwouldn't won'er. Because the way the matter stands, he might take up wid some diff'rint notion, and just be off wid himself like a cloud blown out of the sky, and she couldn't be sayin' a word, if she was ever so sure of what he was intindin'."
Young Mrs. Keogh, to whom she made the observation, refused to entertain this view, and replied, "Sorra a fear is there of that. It was aisy to see he'd ha' gone to the Well of the World's End after her, let alone steppin' up from the Town, if he's spared to get his health. Ay, he'll be comin' back for her one of these fine days, sure enough, plase God."
But the fulfilment of her confident prediction looked several degrees more doubtful in the light of one of the two pieces of news which Mrs. Carbery, accompanied by her daughter Rose, conveyed to the Joyces' on a bright September morning a short while after. Her son had come home with it from the Town too late the night before. One of them was that Hugh McInerney, who had been awaiting the assizes in Moynalone Jail, had died of the fever there on last Friday. There was nothing very surprising in this event, as Hugh's open-air life could have but ill acclimatisedhim to the atmosphere of the unclean little jail; and it was not likely to be very deeply deplored at Lisconnel, where he had not been known long, nor, as we have seen, much to his advantage.
As Mrs. Carbery sat in the three-cornered arm-chair, with the sun-dazzle off a burnished mug on the dresser shimmering into her eyes, and making her blink quaintly, she said, with rather severe solemnity, that "she hoped the young fellow had had time to repint of his sins, or else it was very apt to be a bad look-out for him, and he after comin' widin a shavin' of takin' another man's life no time at all ago, so to spake—ne'er a chance but it would be clear in everybody's recollection."
Mrs. Joyce, however, said: "Ah, sure maybe the crathur wasn't intindin' any such great harm all the while, God be good to him. And, anyway, where he's gone he'll find plinty ready to be spakin' up for him, and puttin' the best face they can on the matter."
"Ay will he," said old Biddy Ryan, who was calling too, "and bedad it's one great differ there is, be all accounts, between that place and this. For here if a misfort'nit body does aught amiss, the first notion the rest of us have, God forgive us,is to be axin' what worser he was manin', like as if it was some manner of riddle, that there's bound to be an answer to, if one could find it."
"'Deed, and I dunno if they haven't very far to look, ma'am," said Mrs. Carbery, with dignity, "when a chap does his endeavours to take the head off another man wid a rapin'-hook, ma'am."
"AndIdunno, ma'am, for that matter," said old Biddy, also with dignity, "if it's any such a great dale better to have one's mind took up wid invintin' other people's bad intintions than if it was wid one's own."
"Ah, well! I wouldn't be thinkin' too bad of poor Hugh McInerney, at all events," said Mrs. Joyce. "'Twas maybe a sort of accident, for he seemed a dacint crathur afore that. Och now, to think it's on'y a few odd weeks since he was creepin' about over our heads up there, mendin' th' ould thatch! You'd whiles hear him hummin' away, talkin' to himself like some sort of big bee—and in his grave to-day! But isn't it a lucky thing that he's lavin' nobody belongin' to him to be breakin' their hearts frettin' after him? Theresa, child dear, you've ne'er a stim of light to be workin' in, sittin' there in the corner."
But Theresa said she had light enough to blindher, and was only winding a skein, and could see better to do that in the dark. So Mrs. Carbery passed on to her second piece of news, which, though less tragical than the first, was not likely to sound very cheerfully in the ears of some among her audience. It ran that her son Ned was "after seein' Denis O'Meara down beyant, and that he was doin' finely, next door to himself again: and that the people in the Town did be sayin' he was coortin' Mary Anne Neligan, the people's daughter that he was lodgin' wid—a terrible fortin she was said to have—and that he'd be very apt to be takin' her along wid him prisintly when his lave was up." Mrs. Carbery supposed they were none of them ever likely to see him again up at Lisconnel. And the rest of the neighbours, having heard her tale, supposed so likewise, and said among themselves that Theresa Joyce was to be pitied.
Yet not many days after this, while the early autumn weather was still soft-aired and mellow-lighted over our blue-misted bogland, where the leaves and berries were brightening, and even the little frosty-grey cups on the lichened boulders getting a scarlet thread at the rim, on one clear, dew-dashed morning, who but Denis O'Mearahimself should come stepping into Lisconnel? The neighbours who saw him go by were glad to notice that he looked as well as ever he did in his life, and he greeted them all blithely though briefly, eluding every attempt to entangle him in conversation, and making very straight for the Widow Joyce's house, which was by these same observers considered to betoken a healthy frame of mind.
Only Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Kilfoyle were in the little brown room when he arrived, but they gave him a cordial welcome, and he took a seat from which he could keep a watch on the door while they talked about different things. One of these, naturally, was the melancholy end of Denis's assailant—poor Hugh McInerney—and Mrs. Joyce said it was little enough they'd have thought a while ago that it would be Denis who'd come back. "But indeed," she said, "if anythin' had took you, we'd ha' been in no hurry ever to set eyes on the other unlucky bosthoon."
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 poteenat his place, the pólis 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 pólis come up next day; but they thought they'd git somethin' out of him. The little jackass 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 sunshine 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 nobody 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: "Ifshedoes, 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 courtship 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 brotherMick 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 nobody 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 ofall 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."
It was to an accidental circumstance 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 theO'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 massive, 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 itmust 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 shirt 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 Riverenceat Mass—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 descripshin of fever?"
"Ah sure, what 'ud we do at all if poor Barney was took that way?" said Peter Keogh, "and nobody able to tell was it ravin' he was, or settin' up to be talkin' raisonable for any differ they could see."
Barney cleared his throat disconcertedly, and the old man, recalling his responsibilities as a host, and perhaps not admiring his sarcasm thus elaborated, said conciliatingly, "Och, he'll do right enough if he niver raves any worse than Mr.Polymathers. All that ails him is that we want to git a bit used to his manner of spakin'."
"Polymathers?" said Peter.
"To be sure, Polymathers. Did you say it any better than I?"
"Well, I nivir heard tell of anybody called that way before. It's a quare she-he soundin' sort of name," said Peter.
"Faix, then, there may be plinty quarer in it, we niver heard tell of, if that was all," said Felix. "Anyhow, it's his name, and his people's afore him. Himself tould me his father was the ouldest of all the Polymatherses there was in the counthry he came out of—somewheres down south, I think he said—and the head of the whole of thim forby."
"Ay, he did so," said Dan. "Sez you to him, there was a dale of water run down hill since the time there was O'Beirnes blacksmiths in this part of the counthry; and your father was a one, sez you. And sez he to you, he couldn't be any manner of manes purtind to be the aquil to whathisfather was. And sez you to him, what was he? And sez he, it was one of the Polymatherses he was, and well known for his larnin' through the len'th and breadth of the county Sligo. Anda name it was, he sez, any man might be proud of ownin'."
"Be jabers, himself has the great consait of it, at all ivents," said Peter. "But he might find people could be tellin' him there's Keoghs as good as any Polymatherses iver was in it—ivery hair."
The stranger's patronymic having thus been ascertained, it was desirable to fix his calling, and, despite his disclaimer of inherited erudition, several circumstances bespoke him a schoolmaster, even before the question seemed settled by the first act of his convalescence being an inquiry into the amount of book-learning which Dan and Nicholas had amassed during their sixteen and fourteen years. This was not large, though as much as could be expected, considering that in all Lisconnel there were not just then, I believe, more than four volumes, one of which being merely the index to a non-existentEncyclopædia, can scarcely rank as literature. The boys themselves, and their grandfather, were deeply interested in the examination, and very anxious that it should have a creditable result. For learning and the learned have at all times been held in profound respect among us away on our bogland, where the devotion to something afar springs perhaps the more abundantly because so many things are remote. On this occasion Mr. Polymathers opened his most sizable bundle, and it was seen to be filled with books, not fewer, doubtless, than a score, in leather bindings, ragged and battered, and brownly time-stained all over their margins, as if the river of years had for them run no metaphor, but a russet bog-stream. They comprisedHomer,Virgil,Livy, and other ancients; likewise two Latin lexicons, which looked extravagant until you observed how each did but supplement the other's deficiencies, and this so imperfectly that their owner was still liable to search in vain for words betweenMoandNa.
These, however, were evidently not the most prized portion of Mr. Polymathers's library, though he displayed them with some complacency, reading out here and there a sonorous "furrin" phrase, at which his audience said, "More power," and "Your sowl to glory," and the like. It was when he handled the shabbiest of the volumes, with broken backs and edges all curling tatters, that his touch grew caressing. The lookers-on, contrariwise, thought but poorly of them because they set up, seemingly, to beillustrated works, and their pictures, mostly of uninteresting round and three-cornered objects, struck Lisconnel art critics as very feeble efforts. To be sure Mr. Polymathers called themdygrims, but that was no help to the overtaxed imagination. Only young Nicholas O'Beirne listened intently to the explanation which he gave of one of them. Nicholas was a long, thin lad, with melancholy grey eyes and a square forehead, whose capacity his grandfather had held in some esteem, since it had been discovered, years ago, that "the spalpeen could make out an account for four sets of shoes, and half a stone of three-inch holdfasts, and a dozen of staples, and two gallon of the crathur, and allow for a hundredweight of ould iron, all in his head, and right to a farthin'." Now the melancholy eyes darkened and brightened with excitement as Mr. Polymathers discoursed of right lines and angles and circles, and expounded the mysterious signification of certain Ah Bay Says. And he had thenceforward an unweariable pupil in Nicholas, companied, albeit with less ardent zeal, and at a slower rate of progress, by his elder brother, Dan.
More general interest, however, continued to be taken in the stranger's classical attainments.Everybody—the O'Beirnes themselves, their neighbours in the cabin-row close by, now long since an untraceable ruin, and the people of Lisconnel proper, a couple of miles further on—felt uplifted by the residence among them of a man, who they boasted would talk Latin to you as soon as look at you. But as we never enjoy our own happiness fully until it has been looked at through other men's envious eyes, they could not here remain content with simply possessing this privilege, or even with dilating upon it to their less favoured friends down below and down beyant. They longed to make a parade of it, to give a demonstration of it. And the method of doing so which they came to consider most desirable was the bringing about of a conversation in Latin between Mr. Polymathers and Father Rooney, the Parish Priest. For if that took place they could easily imagine his Reverence riding home to report in the Town what a wonderful great scholar entirely they had stopping above at Lisconnel. Moreover, the conversation itself would be a rael fine thing to have the hearing of. Terence Kilfoyle, for instance, said that it would be as good as a Play, which, as he had never seen one, was to entertain unbounded expectations.And at last, after they had wished the wish for some weeks, a prospect of its fulfilment came into sight together with Father Rooney's cream-coloured pony jogging along through the light of a fiery-zoned July sunset, in which Mr. Polymathers was basking by the O'Beirnes' door. In those days his Reverence was a youngish man, ruddy, and of a cheerful countenance, a substantial load for his sturdy nag, and altogether, in his glossy black cloth, a figure very different from their gaunt, sad-visaged, shaggily-garbed old guest. He was at the time of Father Rooney's approach seated on a two-legged, three-legged stool, propped precariously against the ray-rosed cabin wall, and was teaching Dan and Nicholas the twelfth proposition of the second book of Euclid. Dan had not yet grasped it, but it all lay as clear as a sunbeam athwart Nicholas's brain, and he was fidgeting like an impatient horse at the slowness of his fellow.
Several of the neighbours chanced to be about, for the forge saw a good deal of company in those long empty days before the potato-digging could begin. They all drew together into a small crowd, and closed in step by step to watch the first meeting between these two notable persons,much admiring the deftness with which old O'Beirne secured it by pronouncing one of the pony's shoes in need of tightening, and the felicitous opening he made by assuring his Reverence that "divil a bit need he be mindin' the delay, because Mr. Polymathers there had enoughfurrin languagesto keep thim all divarted, if the baste owned as many feet as a forty-legs, wid the shoes droppin' off ivery pair of thim. That was to say, in coorse, supposin' he got the chance of convarsin' a bit wid somebody aquil to answerin' him back iligant, the way there wasn't e'er a one of thim could make an offer at doin' no more than thim little weevils of chirpin' chuckens."
Yet the interview turned out disappointingly after all. If such a thing had not been, of course, exceedingly improbable, one might have fancied that each scholar stood in awe of the other's reputation, they steered so clear of all recondite subjects; keeping to the merest commonplaces about rain and potatoes and turf—which anybody else could have discussed quite as knowledgably. In vain, whenever there was a promising pause would the bystanders nudge one another, whispering, hopefully, "Whist, boys—they'll be sayin' somethin' now." Only the plainest English followed, and at last, when Father Rooney rode on, his parting joke, which referred to the difficulty his pony would now find in the way of becoming a barefooted pilgrim, left for a wonder solemnly irresponsive faces behind it.
Michael Ryan said, with a touch of resentment, "Ah, well, one couldn't maybe expec' it of thim to be throublin' thimselves talkin' fine for the pack of us, as ignorant as dirt, in the middle of th'ould bog."
And his wife said, "'Deed, now, I wouldn't won'er meself if the raison was his Riverence 'ud think bad of usin' his Latin words for anythin' else on'y prayers and such. It might be somethin' the same as if he went and took his grand vistments to go dig pitaties in; and that 'ud be a great sin, God knows."
But old Felix, who was, as we have seen, a rather touchy person, construed this suggestion into an implied censure on his own wishes in the matter, and he said, huffily—
"Sorra the talk of sin I see in it at all, ma'am. 'Tis a dale liker they just couldn't get out wid it convanient offhand. The same way that I'd aisy enough bate out a shoe on me anvil there, when it's bothered I'd be if you axed me to make aone promiscuous here of a suddint on the roadside."
Mr. Polymathers himself meanwhile was perhaps dimly conscious that he had disappointed hopes, and failed to rise duly to the occasion; and this may have been why he slipped indoors, and fetched out a small book he had never produced before, bound in a dingy greenish blue, with a white paper label.
"D'you know what that is, sir?" he questioned, rhetorically, handing it to Felix O'Beirne. "It's the Calendar, let me tell you, of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,juxtaDublin. There's a print of the Front of the Buildings attached to the fly-leaf. I'm after pickin' it up this spring at Moynalone. 'Twas new the year before last, and comprises a dale of information relative to terms, examinations, fees, and so forth."
"Begor, then, it looks to be a wide house," said Felix, confining himself to the picture as a comprehensible point. "It's apt to be an oncommon fine place, sir, I should suppose."
"You may say that, me man," said Mr. Polymathers, emphatically. "Not its match in the kingdom of Ireland. The home of literature andthe haunt of science. And it's there I'll be, plase God, next October."
"Musha, and will you be thravellin' that far—to Dublin?" said Felix.
"Ay will I, and would have gone last month on'y for the fever delayin' me till after the midsummer entrance. Me savin's amount to somethin' over thirty pound, so I may venture on the step, and prisint meself at the Michaelmas term. In short," said Mr. Polymathers, re-poising himself upon his rickety stool, "I might describe myself as an unmatriculated candidate undergraduate of the University of Dublin."
"And what at all now would that be, sir, if I might be axin'?" said Felix, humbly, after the awe-stricken pause which followed Mr. Polymathers's proclamation of his style and title.
"It's a necessary preliminary," said Mr. Polymathers, "to proceeding to the Degree ofBaccalaureatus in Artibus, orIn Artibus Baccalaureatus—theordo verborumis, I take it, immaterial, to judge by the transposition of initials in the case of ——."
"Faix, but it's the fine Latin you can be discoorsin' now, and his Riverence half-ways home," said Felix reproachfully.
Mr. Polymathers, glancing round a circle of deeply impressed faces, felt that his prestige was restored, and even began to enjoy a foretaste of the triumph, which had been one part of his dream through the long laborious years. But he was puzzled how to bring the full grandeur of his design clearly before this uninstructed audience, and after reflecting for a while in quest of concise yet adequate definitions, he launched out into an eloquent description of the ceremonial observed in conferring degrees at Dublin University. It may be surmised that many of the details were due to his own fondly brooding fancy. For not only did the highest learning in the land crowd the Hall in their academic robes, but the Lord Lieutenant himself took a prominent part in the proceedings, which were enlivened by military music and thunderous salutes. Mr. Polymathers nearly toppled off his tricky stool more than once without noticing it in his excitement as he rehearsed these splendid scenes, declaiming with great unction the formulas long since learned by all his heart, especiallyEgo, auctoritate mihi concessa, and the rest, until he came to his peroration: "And all this pomp and ceremony, mind yous, to the honour and glory of science and finescholarship. It's a grand occasion, lads; it's an object any man might be proud to give——" Here he pulled himself up, warned by an unusually violent lurch that his theme was running away with him. But having by no means worked off his enthusiasm, he expended some of it, as a schoolboy might have done, in throwing a small bit of turf at a stately white hen, who just then sailed across the dark doorway, like a little frigate under the most crowded canvas. She immediately took flight with floundering screeches, which drowned what the old man was muttering to himself. However, it was only "Admitto te—admitto te."
After these revelations Mr. Polymathers was looked up to more than ever, as one not only endowed with rare gifts, but destined by their means to scale heights of hardly realisable exaltation. "Be all accounts there was no knowin' what he mightn't rise to be at Dublin College," the neighbours said. They also often remarked that it was "a surprisin' thing to see a great scholar like him spendin' his time over taichin' thim two young O'Beirnes." If the speaker happened to be afflicted with a twinge of envy about those educational advantages, he was apt to say "thimtwo young bosthoons" or "gomerals." But Dan and Nicholas were not, in fact, any such thing. Nicholas, indeed, quickly proved himself possessed of what Mr. Polymathers called "a downright astonishin' facility at the mathematics," far out-stripping Dan, not quite to Dan's satisfaction, as he had always enjoyed the pre-eminence conferred by superior physical strength and a practical turn of mind. So well pleased was the old man with his eager pupil that he would have liked to do his teaching, "nothing for reward," but his host's hospitality, and his own ambition, would not permit this. Now and then he rather puzzled Nicholas by an apologetic tone in answering questions about his University career. And once at the end of a lesson he said, as if to himself: "May goodness forgive me if I'm takin' what he'd have done better with. But sure he's young—he's plenty of chances yet." However, as the time for his departure drew on, all his misgivings, if such he had, seemed to vanish away, and his thoughts became very apt to journey off blissfully to Dublin in the middle of the most interesting problems. Nicholas had to wait till they came back.
Mr. Polymathers left Lisconnel on a fineautumn morning, when the air was so still that the flashing and twinkling of the many dewdrops seemed to make quite a stir in it. The sky was as clear as any one of them, and in the golden light the wavering columns of blue smoke rose with curves softly transparent. He started with a buoyant step, as well he might, since he was setting out on the enterprise into which he had put all the spirit of his youth. He felt some regret at parting from his Lisconnel friends, but his plans and prospects were naturally very pre-occupying, whereas they had the ampler leisure of the left-behind to deplore his flitting, which seemed likely enough to be for good. Nearly four years, he had explained, must elapse before the crowning height of the B. A. Degree could be won, and it was only just possible that he might manage to tramp back on a visit meanwhile, during some Long Vacation. This doubtful chance was cold comfort for that ardent scholar Nicholas O'Beirne, who grieved more than anybody else. Most ruefully did he help Dan to carry the candidate undergraduate's library as far as the Town; nor could he take more than a downcast pleasure in Mr. Polymathers's farewell gift to him of the raggedestEuclid. And as hestood watching the car out of sight, his eyes were as wistful as if a door briefly opened on glimpses of radiant vistas had been inexorably barred in his face.
Yet after all Mr. Polymathers's absence was not to be measured by years or months. One evening on the threshold of December, Lisconnel was lying roofed over by a massy livid-black cloud, which came lumbering up and up interminably, and which the weatherwise estimated to contain as much snow as would smother the width of the world. The north wind moaned and keened dismally under the toil of wafting on this portentous load, and its breath was bitingly sharp, so that when the lads came in from the forge, their grandfather said, "Ah, Dan, shut over the door, for there's a blast sweepin' through it 'ud freeze ten rigiments as stiff as staties." We usually take a large view of things at Lisconnel. Dan went to carry out this order, but instead of doing so he suddenly shouted: "Murdher alive! Here's Mr. Polymathers."
Through the grey gloaming came a Mr. Polymathers, very different from what he had been on that brilliant, hopeful morning only a few weeks ago, when he had stepped lightly, and held hishead up as if he were looking a friendly fortune in the face. Now his feet stumbled and dragged as he fared slowly against the wind's blustering, with his eyes on the ground, and his movements seemingly guided more by the weight of the bundle he carried than by his own will. Before he came within even loud shouting distance, everybody felt a presentiment of disaster; but he had not spoken a word to justify or discredit it by the time he got indoors.
"Musha, and so it's yourself, sir," old Felix then repeated, in a congratulatory tone. "Ah, but it's a hardy evenin', and it's perished you are, sir. Come in be the fire."
"Ay, I'm back," Mr. Polymathers said slowly, after a hesitating pause, as if the remark had been interpreted to him by some second person, "I was bringin' the books, thinkin' the lad might use them—he's young enough. But I'm not come to stop on you," he added, speaking faster, "on'y just for this night. Early to-morra I must be off to Ardnacreagh, and try for the taichin' there again. 'Twas on'y on account of bringin' the books I came this way. I'll be on the road quite early."
His insistence on this point made, somehow,a very melancholy impression on Felix; but he replied jovially: "Is it to-morra? Bedad then, sir, don't you wish you may slip off on us that soon, and we after gettin' a hould of you agin? What fools we are. Not if you was as slithery, ivery inch of you, as a wather-eel."
The wraith of a relieved smile at this came over Mr. Polymathers's face; still it looked so grey and withered, and his eyes were so sunken, and his large, bony hands so shaky, that all with one consent refrained from questions which they were agog to ask; and when Mrs. Keogh by and by dropped in, and being an inquisitive and not very quick-witted person, said, "Saints among us—it's Mr. Polymathers. And how's yourself, sir? And are you bringing home the grand Degree?" though they all listened eagerly for the reply, they wished she had held her tongue.
"The divil a Degree, ma'am," said Mr. Polymathers, "and niver will."
There was a short silence, and then he turned round on his stool—it was the same from which he had made his boast in the summer sunset, but Dan had meanwhile mended its broken leg with the handle of a worn-bladed spade. "I've given up," he said to them. "I no longer entertain the projectof becomin' a graduate, or for the matter of that an undergraduate of Dublin University; and if I'd done right, I'd niver have taken up such an idea. I've put it out of me head. But it's been in me mind a great while—a terrible long while."
"Look you here, Mr. Polymathers, sir, are you after gittin' any bad thratment from any people up in thim places?" said Felix, who always liked better to lay a grievance on some human and possibly breakable head than to believe it the work of the vengeance-baffling demon bad-luck.
"Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Polymathers, when the question reached him. "I've nothin' to complain of. They're very respectable people in Dublin, and it's a fine city. But me head's a bit giddy yet wid the drivin' they have in the streets, that makes one stupid. I mind there was a car tatterin' along, and I crossin' over the College Green, had me down on the stones, on'y a dacint lad gript a hould of me, and whirled me inside the College gates. There I was before I rightly knew anythin' had happened me, and I after spendin' the best part of me life gettin' to it. 'Twasn't the way I thought it 'ud be.... But the College is as grand as any notion I had of it; on'y since I've seen it, 'tis like a drame to me that ever I set futin it, just a sort of drame.... Great ancient places the squares are; I walked round the whole of them before I found the Hall. A couple of chaps in uniform like came axin' me me business, but I tould them fast enough that I was a candidate—ah, goodness help me.... And the Hall's a spacious and splendid apartment. On'y it was strange, now, to see it full of nothin' but young fellows, scarce oulder than the two lads there. I might, sure enough, have known the way it 'ud be, if I'd come to considher, but somehow it seemed to put me out, as if I'd no call to be there at all. There was one of them began pricin' me ould hat, and another of them tripped him up against a black marble construction with a pair of angels atop of it, that there is on the wall—sure they were just spalpeens. But I'll give you me word, when they called me up to the examiner's table, there was a young gintleman sittin' at it in his black gown and his cap wid the tassel—bound to be one of the College Fellows, and ivery sort of a fine scholar—and for all the age there was on him he might ha' been me son or me grandson.
"So he handed me over a little blackVirgilwid the page opened where I was to exhibit me acquaintance wid the text. It was merely a bitof an oration of Queen Dido's that I've known ivery line of these forty years as well as I know me own name, and better. And what came over me is more than I can tell, but the minute I took the book in me hand, it seemed to me as if ivery atom of sinse and manin' slipped out of the words, or out of me head—I couldn't say which, and I just stood starin' at them and starin', till iverythin' else got whirlin' round about me, fit to shake the panes out of the big windows, and the pictures off the walls.... Belike himself persaived I was flusthered, for, 'Take your time,' sez he; and after a while they stood steady enough. But, the Lord be good to me—sorra a syllable of the sinse come back. And be that I well knew it was all up wid me; and I was thinkin' me father's son had no business to be standin' there makin' a show of meself in the middle of Trinity College. So the lad in the cap said again, 'Take your time, sir, take your time.' But I said to him, 'God help me, sir, I've taken very nigh all I'll get, for I declare to you, lad, I'm over seventy years of age. But as for your time, sir,' I said, 'I'll be wastin' no more of it.' And wid that I put down the book, and out I wint. I mind the sun in the square nearly dazzled the eyes out of me fool'shead. I niver seen it blazin' brighter—and there was a big bell somewhere boomin' away, as if they'd set the heart of the world tollin'; it's ringin' in me ears yet.... And a couple of days after that I quit out of Dublin, and I've been trampin' back to this counthry, takin' me time, as he said—there's no hurry now about anythin'. So that was the ind of me University Degree."
"I just wish I could git discoorsin' wid that young feller," said old Felix, vindictively, "himself and his tassel in his cap."
"Sure, man, 'twas no fault of his," said Mr. Polymathers, "and I can live widout a Degree, if that's all. Me betters did before me. To tell you the truth, I've thought often enough as I was comin' along now, that I dunno how at all I'd have had the face to meet me poor father one of these days, and I cocked up with aBaccalaureatus in Artibus, and he wid not so much as a dacint stone over his grave to commemorate his name, that was the most illusthrious Polymath in the county Sligo, wid more larnin' in the tip of his ear than ever I got into me ould skull. Never a hap'orth of good was I at anythin' except the trifle of mathematics, but he was as great at the Classics.... I used to humbug meself somewhileslettin' on I hankered after it because it would ha' gratified him maybe to hear of the event. But little I ever done to plase him, God forgive me. Let alone goin' and makin' an ould fool of meself up at Trinity College.... 'Twas a terrible upset to him when I turned again the Priesthood, after he had the money saved up for the seminary and all. Words about it we had, and the ind of it was he put it all into me brother Ned's little farm. Ned had no more fancy for larnin' than the bastes of the field. A trifle of it would ha' come in very handy sometimes for buyin' me books; howane'er it was not to be.... And the books there—I on'y brought them along to lave wid you for the youngest lad—ay, Nicholas. He has a head on his shoulders for the mathematics, I can tell you; he might do something yet, if he got his chances. They're no use to me now, and I'd as lief be shut of the sight of them. And to-morra I'll be off to Ardnacreagh."
So the gaunt old man talked on, groping his way out of hesitating pauses, and straying into dreamy meditations, as if he sometimes forgot his story, and sometimes its hearers. They did not know what a life-wreck it outlined, but they saw and surmised enough to make them think of himas "the crathur," and speak to him with more deference than if he had returned in a radiant glow of success, symbolised as some of them had anticipated, by scarlet robes as splendid, at least, as Father Rooney's at High Mass. And Felix O'Beirne took occasion of a madly skirling gust to say, "Listen now to that, sir, and don't be talkin' wild of thravellin' off to-morra. If I might be sayin' so, you'd a dale better stay quiet where you are this minyit. And as for taichin', sure it's proud and thankful the two boyos 'ud be for e'er a bit more. There's Nicholas mopin' about like an ould hin that's lost her chuckens iver since you quit."
Mr. Polymathers did stop quiet—very quiet—but he taught the boys no more. In fact, he did nothing except sit all day staring into the fire, as if he had lost something in it. Once after Nicholas had sat looking very hard at him for a long time with the raggedEuclidostentatiously open at a crux, he seemed to rouse up, and putting out a hand for the book, began an explanation. But it died away unfinished in an aimless muttering, which both shocked and saddened Nicholas, and the experiment was not repeated. Then towards Christmas time all the neighbours were sayingthat Mr. Polymathers was greatly failed to what he had been. And Bridget O'Beirne reported that you might as well be argufyin' wid a scutty wren to swally down the full of the ducks' dish as persuadin' him to take a raisonable bite and sup. Dr. Hamilton from the Dispensary, who was consulted on the case, "consaited," Bridget told inquirers, "that he might be after gettin' a sort of stroke like unbeknownst;" but her own opinion was that "he had, so to spake, lost the knot off his thread, and 'twould be much if he didn't slip away out of it on them, afore they seen e'er another green laif on the bushes."
It was, at any rate, more than happened. One snowy afternoon, when he had been busy for some time "scrawmin' a manner of letter," which related, he said, to the disposition of his property, Mr. Polymathers grew so much worse that Dan and Nicholas ran off for the Doctor and the Priest, and before their arrival could possibly be expected, it became evident that he could not wait to receive them. Bridget O'Beirne, deploring the hap by his bed in the small room off the kitchen, thought a few minutes before he went that she heard him murmuring something coherent, and she called to little Rosy Corcoran,"Child alive—me head's bothered—come in here and listen, can you make out at all what he's sayin'?"
Rosy came reluctantly and listened. "I think," she whispered, "it's some sort of prayers like what his Riverence sez."
"Ah, then, glory be to God for that itself," said Bridget, "there might be a good chance for him after all."
But she had been misinformed. The words Mr. Polymathers was muttering over and over to himself were:Admitto te—admitto te.