“When I was a wee thing and lived wi’ my granny,Oh! it’s many a caution my granny gied me;She said: ‘Now, be wise and beware of the boys,And don’t let yer petticoats over yer knee!’ ”
“When I was a wee thing and lived wi’ my granny,Oh! it’s many a caution my granny gied me;She said: ‘Now, be wise and beware of the boys,And don’t let yer petticoats over yer knee!’ ”
“When I was a wee thing and lived wi’ my granny,Oh! it’s many a caution my granny gied me;She said: ‘Now, be wise and beware of the boys,And don’t let yer petticoats over yer knee!’ ”
As she finished the song, Ellen winked at Micky’s Jim and Jim winked back. Then she hit her thigh with her hand and shouted: “Not a bad leg that for an old one, is it?”
The potatoes were now emptied into a wicker basket, the water running through the bottom into the midden. The men and women sat round the basket, their little tins of milk in their hands, and proceeded to eat their supper. The potato was held in the left hand, and stripped of its jacket with the nail of the right thumb. Gourock Ellen used a knife when peeling, Willie the Duck ate potato, pelt and all.
While they were sitting an old, wrinkled, and crooked man came across the top of the dung-hill, sinking into it almost up to his knees and approached the fire. His clothes were held on by strings, he wore a pair of boots differing one from the other in size, shape, and colour. Indeed they were almost without shape, and the old man’s toes, pink, with black nails, showed through the uppers.
Gourock Ellen handed him three large potatoes from the basket.
“God bless ye, for it’s yerself that has the kindly heart, decent woman,” said the old fellow in a feeble voice, and he began to eat his potatoes hurriedly like a dog. Dermod handed him part of a tin of milk and blushed at the profuse thanks of the stranger.
“It’s a fine warm place that ye are inside of this night,” said the old fellow when he had finished his meal.
“It’s a rotten place,” said Dermod Flynn.
“It’s better nor lyin’ under a hedge,” answered the old man.
“Or under a bridge,” Gourock Ellen remarked, lifting her dress again; then, as if some modest thought had struck her, dropping it suddenly.
“Why do ye lie under a hedge?” Dermod asked, andthe old man thereupon gave a rambling account of his misfortunes, which included a sore back and inability to labour along with sound men. He had come from Mayo years ago and had worked at many a hard job since then, both in England and Scotland. Now that he was a homeless old man nobody at all wanted him.
When the party went up to the byre he stretched out his old thin limbs by the fire and fell into the easy slumber of old age. Suddenly he awoke with a start to find the fire still burning brightly and a beautiful girl with long hair flung over her shoulders looking at him. It was Norah Ryan; the old man thought for a moment that he was looking at an angel.
“God be good to me!” he cried, crossing himself; “but who is yerself?” Then as recollection brought him a face seen at the fire, he exclaimed: “Arrah, sure it’s yerself that is the colleen I was after seein’ sittin’ here a minute ago. Now, isn’t it a good cheery fire?”
“Have ye any home to go to?” asked Norah.
“Never a home,” said the old man, resting one elbow in the ashes. “There is nothin’ but the rainy roads and the hardships for a man like me.”
“But could ye not get inside of some house for the night?”
“God look on yer wit!” said the old fellow, laughing feebly. “Ye’re just new over, I’ll warrant, and ye haven’t come to learn that they have forgotten all about kindness in this country. They do not want the man with no roof-tree over his head here. They’re all black and bitter Protestants.”
“So I heard say.”
“Ye’ll be one of the right sort, I’ll go bail.”
“I’m a Catholic.”
“Ah! that’s it! The Catholics are the best, andI’m one meself just as ye are, girsha. Have ye a penny to spare for one of yer own kind?”
“Are ye goin’ back to Ireland again?” asked Norah, drawing the weasel-skin purse from the pocket of her steaming dress.
“If only I had the price of the boat, I’d go in a minute,” said the man, fixing greedy eyes on the purse which Norah held in her hand. “But I’m very poor, and mind ye I’m one of yer own sort. Maybe ye have a sixpence to spare,” he said.
Norah possessed a two-shilling piece, all the money she had in the world, and she needed it badly herself. But the desire to help the old man overmastered her, and she handed him the florin. Followed by the garrulous thanks of her penniless countryman she hurried back to the byre, feeling in some curious way ashamed of her kindness.
A candle fixed on the top of a stanchion threw a dim light over the byre, and long black shadows danced on roof and wall. A strong, unhealthy odour pervaded the whole building; the tap at one end was running, and as the screw had been broken the water could not be turned off. Micky’s Jim sat in a cattle-trough sewing bags together with a packing needle; these were to be used as a quilt. Dermod Flynn, who was undressing, slipped beneath the blankets with his trousers still on as Norah Ryan came in, but Willie the Duck, stripped to the pelt, stood for a moment laughing stupidly, the guttering candle lighting up his narrow, hairy face and sunken chest.
Old Owen Kelly was already in bed.
“This place is a lot better than where we slept last year,” he called to Micky’s Jim.
“Where did ye sleep last year?” asked Dermod Flynn.
“In the pig-sty,” said Jim. “We were almost eaten alive by the blue lice.”
The women undressed in the shadow at the far end of the stalls, and from time to time Micky’s Jim peeped round the corner. When the women looked up he would shout out: “I see something,” and whistle lightly between the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. The Irishwomen undressed under the blankets, the two strange women, careless and indifferent to the jibes of Micky’s Jim, stripped off to their chemises in full view of the occupants of the byre. Annie and Gourock Ellen had quarrelled about something; they were not going to sleep together that night.
“Ye have to sleep with me, lass,” said Gourock Ellen to Norah.
“All right,” said the young girl quietly, seeing no reason why she should not sleep with a strange woman. As she spoke she went down on her knees to say her prayers.
“Say one prayer for me, just a short one,” said Ellen in a low tone.
“All right, decent woman,” answered the girl.
“I’ll put the light out now,” shouted Micky’s Jim after a short interval. “The women will not be ashamed to go on takin’ off their clothes now.”
The light went out, but Jim suddenly relit the candle, and the guttering blaze again flared weakly through the gloom. There was a hurried movement of naked flesh in the women’s quarters and a precipitate scampering under the blankets.
“That was a mortal sin, Micky’s Jim,” Norah Ryan said in a low voice, and in her tones there was a suspicion of tears.
TONorah Ryan the days passed by, at first remorselessly slow, burdened with longings and regrets, clogged with cares and sorrows which pressed heavily on her young heart. Each passing day was very much like that which had gone before, all had their homesickness and longings. She wanted so much to be back in her own home, picking cockles from the Frosses strand or driving the cattle into the shallow water when the heat of summer put the wild madness into their dry hooves.
All day long she trailed in the fields, her knees sore, and the sharp, flinty pebbles cutting them to the bone; and at night when she undressed she found her petticoats and stockings covered with blood. Gourock Ellen showed a great interest in the girl, bathed Norah’s knees often, and when near a druggist’s bought liniments and ointments which she applied to the wounds. Usually the sores, though they healed a little during the night, broke afresh when work started again in the morning, and six weeks went by before the girl hardened sufficiently to resist the rough pressure of the stones which she had to crawl over when at her work in the fields. Her hands also troubled her for a while; they became hacked and swollen and pained her intensely when she washed them at close ofevening. Gradually these physical discomforts passed away, and with them went many of the girl’s regrets and much of her homesickness. True, she wished to be back with her mother again, and that wish, unable to be gratified, caused her many poignant heartaches which she bravely concealed from her companions. Every Sunday afternoon she sat down and wrote a long letter home, telling her mother of the wonderful land across the water and the curious things which were to be seen there. Her mother, not being able to read or write, answered very seldom, and her letters were all penned by the new master of Glenmornan schoolhouse.
The members of the squad lived a very stirring life, changing almost weekly from one farm to another, travelling on fast trains and wonderful steamers. But in the midst of all this excitement Maire a Glan never forgot to tell her beads, Owen Kelly to save up his money, Micky’s Jim to swear about nothing in particular, and Norah never forgot to speak about home when any of the Frosses people were in the mood to listen. Dermod Flynn, ever eager to hear about all that had passed in his two years’ absence, was a ready talker on matters that concerned the people of Glenmornan and Frosses. But in other respects he was still the same dreamy youth who had spent the greater part of his time at school in gazing out of the window. Even now he would sometimes forget his work for a long while to gaze at a worm which he picked up from the ground and held between his finger and thumb. Whenever Micky’s Jim saw this he would assert that Flynn was rapidly going mad. Norah herself often wished that Dermod would not take such an interest in things which, when all was said and done, were useless and made the boy the laughing-stock of the whole squad. But she always felt sorry for him when the rest of the party laughed at his oddities. Why should she care if everybody in thecountry laughed at a fool who took a great interest in common worms? she often asked herself. But never was the girl able to find a satisfactory answer to this question.
Dermod had a curious habit of going out into the fields and lying down on the green sod when the evening was a good one and when the day’s work was done. Norah noticed this and often wondered what he did and thought of when by himself. The youth fascinated the girl in some strange way; this fascination she could not explain and dared not combat. She even felt afraid of him; he thronged into her mind, banished all other thoughts and reigned supreme in her imagination. Sometimes, indeed, she wished that he were gone from the squad altogether; he made her so uncomfortable. He said such strange things, too. Once he remarked that there was no God, and Norah knew instinctively that he meant what he said; not like Micky’s Jim, who often said that there was no Creator, merely with the object of startling those to whom he was speaking. If Dermod did things like other people, if he played cards, passed jests, she would not fear him so much. Even now, when he spoke to her of home, there was a strange intensity in his voice that often unnerved her.
ONEevening in September Dermod Flynn stole away from the fire as was his custom and sat down in a field near the sea, where he was speedily buried in the quiet isolation of his own thoughts. Norah Ryan followed him; why, she did not know. Something seemed to compel her to go after the youth: a certain wild pleasure surged through her, she felt as if she could run and sing out to the light airs that fanned her cheeks as she moved along. Presently, looking through a row of hazelbushes that hemmed the farmhouse, she espied him, lying on the green grass, seemingly lost to everything and gazing upwards into the blue heavens where the first early star was flickering faintly through the soft loom of the evening. Below him the Clyde widened out to the sea and a few black boats were heaving slowly on the tide. As if under the spell of a power which she could not resist, Norah Ryan parted the boughs of the hazel copse and stood before Dermod Flynn.
“Is it here, Dermod, that ye are, lookin’ at the sea?” she asked involuntarily.
“I was lookin’ at the star above me,” he replied.
Norah wore a soft grey tweed dress that became her well. She had bought it in Greenock a week before, and when Dermod looked at the dress with a critical eye she wondered why she had put it on. But his look turned to one of admiration when his eye fell on the sweet face of the young girl, the eyes gentle and wistful, the white neck and the pure brow half hidden by the brown ruffled tresses. Something leapt into the heart of the young man, a thought which he could not put into words flashed through his mind, held him tense for a moment and then flitted away.
“Why do you keep watchin’ me?” Norah enquired.
“I don’t know,” Dermod answered, lowering his eyes. “D’ye mind the night on the Derry boat?” he asked. “All that night when you were asleep I had your hand in mine.”
“I mind it very well,” she said, and a slight blush stole into her cheeks. They clasped hands, the girl’s fingers stole over Dermod’s and their eyes met. For a moment it seemed as if one or the other was going to speak, but no voice broke the stillness. The fear had now gone from Norah’s heart; it seemed quite natural to her that she should be there clasping the hand of that ragged youthwho always attracted and fascinated her. That she should desire to sit beside him, to press his hands so very tightly, did not appear strange to her and above all did not appear wrong. Dermod saw in her eyes a childlike admiration, a look half a child’s and half a woman’s. A vague longing, something which he could not comprehend and which caused him a momentary pang of fear, rose in his heart. What he had to be afraid of he did not know, as he knelt there in spirit before the most holy sanctuary in the world, the sanctuary of chaste and beautiful womanhood.
Many evenings they met together in the same way; they became more intimate, more friendly, and Norah found that her fear of Dermod was gradually passing away. When evenings were wet they sat in the byre or cart-shed, where the fire burned brightly, and talked about Glenmornan and the people at home. One day Micky’s Jim said that he himself had once a notion of Norah Ryan. When Dermod heard this he flushed hotly. Norah’s cheeks got very red and Jim laughed loudly.
“I have no time for them sort of capers now,” said Jim. “Ye can have her all to yerself, Dermod, and people like yerselves will be always doin’ the silly thing, indeed ye will!”
MICKY’s Jim was telling the story of a fight in which he had taken part and how he knocked down a man twice as heavy as himself with one on the jaw. Owen Kelly, Gourock Ellen, Dermod, and Norah were the listeners. The squad had just changed quarters from a farm on which they had been engaged to the one on which they were now, and it was here that they were going to end the season. The farm belonged to a surly old man named Morrison, a short-tempered fellow, always at variance with the squad, whom he did not like.
Jim was telling the story in the cart-shed. A blazing fire lit up the place, shadows danced along the roof, outside a slight rain was falling and the wind blew mournfully in from the hayricks that stood up like shrouded ghosts in the gloomy stack yard. Presently a man entered, a red-haired fellow with a limp in one leg and a heavy stick in his hand. He was a stranger to Norah and Dermod, but the rest of the squad knew him well and were pleased to see the man with the limp. Owen Kelly, however, grunted something on seeing the stranger, and a look, certainly not of pleasure, passed across his face.
“How are ye, Ginger Dubbin?” Micky’s Jim shouted to the visitor. “By this and by that ye look well on it.”
“The bad are always well fed,” said Owen Kelly in a low voice.
“Have ye the devil’s prayer-book with ye, Ginger?” asked Micky’s Jim.
“Here it is,” said the man, drawing a pack of cards from his pocket and running his hands along the edge of it.
“We’ll have a bit of the Gospel of Chance,” said Murtagh Gallagher.
“It’s no game for Christians,” remarked Owen Kelly, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood.
“D’ye know why Owen Kelly doesn’t like Ginger Dubbin?” Gourock Ellen asked Dermod Flynn in a whisper. “No? Then I’ll tell ye, but never let dab about it. Four years ago Ginger, drunken old scamp that he is, came here and played cards with Owen, and Owen won at first, three shillin’s in all. Then he began to lose and lost half a crown of the money that he had won. ‘My God!’ said old Owen, and he was nearly greetin’; ‘My God! that I have ever lived to see this day!’ He has never played since that. D’ye play, Dermod?”
“I used to play for buttons in Ireland.”
“It’s a bad thing they are, the cards,” said Norah Ryan.
“Turn it up or I’ll gie ye a dunt in the lug!” Micky’s Jim was shouting to Willie the Duck, who was helping to turn the body of a disused cart upside down.
“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck, but as he spoke he fell prostrate on his face, causing all who were watching him to burst into loud peals of laughter.
When the cart was laid down a game of banker commenced and most of the squad joined in the game. Dermod Flynn watched the players for a little space; then he rose to his feet.
“Where are ye goin’?” Norah asked.
“To look at the card-players.”
“Don’t, Dermod!”
“Why?”
“Maybe ye’ll learn to play.”
“And if I do?” There was a note of defiance in the boy’s voice, and it was evident that Norah’s remarks had displeased him.
“Well, do as you like,” said the girl in an injured tone. “But mind that it’s a sin to play cards.”
Dermod stretched himself, laughed and approached the table. Norah felt a sudden fear overcome her: she wanted him back, and she was angry with the cards—little squares of cardboard—that could lure Dermod away from her side.
He bent over the shoulder of Micky’s Jim, who was smoking and shouting loudly. All the players, with the exception of Ginger Dubbin, were very excited: Ginger hummed tunes with equal gusto whether winning or losing. Most of the players used pence, but a few pieces of silver glittered on the table, and Micky’s Jim had changed a sovereign. Dermod had never gambled, although he had often played cards before; then the stakes were merely buttons, that was not gambling; no one feels very vexed at having lost a button. Something thrilled Dermod through as he looked at the coins on the board; the two pieces of silver attracted him strongly. He had one hand deep in his trousers’ pocket closing tightly over the money in his possession. How exciting it would be to put something on that card; he was certain that it would win! Dubbin turned up the card which Dermod’s imagination pictured to be a good one, and showed an ace, the winning card. If only he had staked a penny on it, Dermod thought! He sat down beside Micky’s Jim and gazed across the board.
“Another cut—for me,” he said, and his voice was a trifle husky. “I’m going to play.”
He put down a penny and won.
THEfarmer’s son came into the shed. He was a strongly built, handsome lad of twenty-one, and was employed as a bank clerk in Paisley. It was now Saturday. He always returned home on week-ends and spent Sunday on his father’s farm. Eamon Doherty was very pleased to see young Morrison, who was a great friend of his, and sometimes, when the squad went home at the end of the year, Eamon stopped with Morrison senior and worked over the winter on the farm.
The squad interested young Morrison. “These strange, half-savage people have a certain fascination for me,” he told his friends in town—young men and women with great ideals and full of schemes and high purposes for the reformation of the human race. Morrison belonged to a club, famous for its erudite members, one of whom discovered a grammatical error in a translation of Karl Marx’sKapitaland another who had written a volume of verses,Songs of the Day. Young Morrison himself was a thinker, a moralist, earnest and profound in his own estimation. Coming into contact with the potato diggers on week-ends, he often wondered why these people were treated like cattle wherever they took up their temporary abode. Here, on his father’s farm, kindly old men, lithe, active youths and pure and comely girls were housed like beasts of burden. The young man often felt so sorry for them that he almost wept for his own tenderness.
Before entering the shed on this evening he had looked in at them from the cover of the darkness outside. Henoticed the fire shining on their faces, saw old Maire a Glan telling her beads, the card-players bent over the cart, the young women knitting, and the two harridans, Gourock Ellen and Annie, holding out their hacked hands to the blaze.
The gamblers were so interested in their game that they took very little notice of the young man when he entered the shed; even Eamon Doherty who was playing had scant leisure to greet the new-comer. Morrison sat down on an up-ended box beside Gourock Ellen, who was stretching out her lean, claw-like fingers to the fire.
“Good-evening, Ellen!” he cried jovially, for he knew the woman, and sitting down, stretched out one delicate hand, on the middle finger of which a ring glittered, to the stove.
“It may be a guid e’en, but it’s gey cold,” said Ellen.
“There are many new faces here,” said Morrison, looking into the corner where Norah Ryan was sitting, sewing patches on her working dress. The girl was deep in thought.
“Why has Dermod gone away and left me for them cards?” she asked herself and for a while sought in vain for an answer. Then when it came she thrust it away angrily and refused to give it credence, although the answer came from the depths of her own soul. “He cares more for the cards than he cares for me.”
She looked up and saw the glint of the fire on the ring which the visitor wore, and noticed that he was looking at her. She had not noticed the man before. Never had such a well-dressed person visited the squad.
“It’s Alec Morrison, the farmer’s son,” old Maire a Glan, who was sitting beside the girl, whispered. “He just comes in here like one of ourselves, as the man said. Just think of that and him a gentleman!”
Norah bowed her head, for Morrison’s eyes were fixedon her still. Why did he keep staring at her? she asked herself and felt very uncomfortable, but not displeased. And how that ring sparkled, too! It must have cost a great amount of money.
A wave of tenderness swept across Morrison as he looked at Norah. “She’s too good for this sort of life,” he said inwardly as he noticed her white brow, and the small delicate fingers in which she held the needle. “It’s criminal to condemn a girl like her to such a life. The sanitary authorities will not give my father permission to house his cattle in the stall where that girl has now to sleep. That maiden to sleep there! I, a man, who should be able to bear suffering and privation, sleep in soft clothes that are clean and comfortable, and she has to lie in rags, in straw, in a place that is not good enough for cattle. And all these people are like myself, people with souls, feelings and passions....”
“Have you just come to this country for the first time?” he asked Norah, and when he put the question a sense of shame surged through him.
“The first time,” answered the girl.
“And you’ll not think much of Scotland?” he said.
“People like yerself may like it,” said Maire a Glan; “but as for us, it’s beyont talkin’ about.... In the last farm we had to sleep in a shed that was full of rats. They ate our bits of food, aye, and our very clothes. The floor was alive with wood-lice and worms.... The night before we left the shed was flooded, and there was eighteen inches of water on the floor. We had to rise from our beds in the bare pelt and stand all night up to our knees in the cold water.... There’s Norah Ryan getting red in the face as if it was her very own fault.”
“Norah! What a pretty name,” said the young man. “And did she sleep in that shed?”
“The farmers think that we’re pigs,” said Maire a Glan harshly. “That’s why they treat us like pigs.”
“It’s wrong, very wrong,” said the young man, and his eyes were still fixed on Norah. The girl wondered why he stared at her in such a manner. He was handsome to look upon, clean-skinned, dark-eyed, and well-dressed. She had never spoken to such a well-dressed man in all her life before; but she felt frightened at something which she could not understand and wished that the man was gone. An idea came to her that she was doing something very wrong, and with this idea came fear, fear of the unknown.
Gourock Ellen, elbows on knees, her hands crossed over her breast and her thumbs propping her chin, began to tell a story of one of her early love affairs; how a man would not pay and how she took away his clothes and vowed to send him out naked into the streets. Morrison listened attentively and Norah, who did not understand the story fully, and who was shocked at all she understood, wondered why the farmer’s son was not horrified at this episode in the life of Ellen.
About ten o’clock he rose to go and stood for a moment talking to Micky’s Jim at the card-table. Norah examined him attentively. He was well favoured and vigorous, and he spoke so nicely and quietly too!
“Dermod Flynn is makin’ a fortune,” Jim was saying. Alec Morrison went to the door; there he stood for a moment and looked back into the shed. Norah glanced at the youth; their eyes met and both felt that this was something which they desired.
Morrison’s simplicity, his interest in the squad and his kindly remarks, established a bond of sympathy between himself and Norah; but even yet she could not understand why such a well-dressed youth had visited the squalid shed in which the squad was staying. He seemedout of place; he could not feel at home in such dirty surroundings. And he had gazed so earnestly at her: in his eyes was a look of appeal, of entreaty. It seemed to Norah that it was in her power to bestow some favour on the youth, give him some precious gift that he desired very earnestly. Filled with a mixed emotion of pleasure and natural modesty, the girl wondered if all that had happened was real and if it had any significance for her.
“The way he looked at me!” she murmured in a puzzled voice. “And him a gentleman talking to us as if we were of his own kind! He must be very learned. And why didn’t Dermod Flynn stay with me here, not runnin’ away to them old cards!”
She glanced at Dermod, whose face was flushed and whose fingers trembled nervously as he placed a silver coin down on the gaming-table, and instinctively it was borne to her that something black and ugly had crept into the purity of the passion which attracted her towards the Glenmornan youth.
“The blame’s all on me,” she whispered, hardly realising what she was saying, and began to turn over in her mind every incident of the evening from the time when she first noticed Alec Morrison sitting by the fire up till the present moment.
“Did you see the way that the farmer’s son was watchin’ ye, Norah Ryan?” Maire a Glan asked. “His two eyes were on ye all the time. He’ll be havin’ a notion of ye.”
“That he will,” said Gourock Ellen, and both women laughed loudly.
“And Maire a Glan, the decent woman, says that,” Norah whispered to herself and blushed. “And them laughin’ as if there was nothing wrong in it. Then there’s no harm in me speakin’ to the farmer’s son.”
At the table the game was now fast and furious. None of the players heard the women’s remarks.
SUNDAYafternoon of a week later.
Alec Morrison was walking along a sheltered lane towards the house, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, a cigarette between his lips, and his mind dwelling on several things which had taken place the week before. On Sundays he liked to walk alone when there was nothing extraneous to distract his mind, and then to ponder over thoughts that thronged his brain from time to time. He was a Progressive, and the term, which might mean anything to the general public, to Morrison meant all that was best in an age that, to him, was extremely reactionary and lacking in earnestness of purpose and clarity of vision. The young man believed that he, himself, realised all the beauty and all the significance of life and the importance of the task allocated in it to man. He also imagined that he possessed unlimited powers and that in the advance of humanity towards perfection he was destined to play an important part. Most young men of sanguine temperament, who read a little, paint a little, and write a little, have at times hallucinations of this kind. The young man’s pet idea was that he, by some inscrutable decree of Fate, had been appointed to show the working classes the road towards a better life, towards enlightenment and prosperity.
Up till very recently (he was now twenty-one) he had taken no notice of the great class to which he did not belong. He lived in middle-class society, was cradled in its smug self-conceit and nourished at the breasts of affectation. He spent many years at school and now realised that he had wasted his time there. After leaving school he entered a bank in Paisley and spent a number of hours daily bending over a desk, copying interminable figures with a weary pen.
Seeing the conditions under which labourers wrought on his father’s farm caused him to think seriously. Once when he was at home two persons, a man and a woman, Donal and Jean, supposed to be husband and wife, got employment in the steading. These two people were very ragged, very dirty, and very dissolute. The woman’s face was hacked in a terrible manner; her nose had been broken, and her figure looked more like a maltreated animal’s than a human being’s. The man was low-set, stunted, and weedy. Both drew their wages daily and got drunk every night. One night when they had returned from a neighbouring village Morrison saw them in their sleeping quarters. A disused pig-sty, no longer tenable for animals, was handed over to these creatures. A pile of dirty straw lay on the floor and on this the man and woman were sleeping, the man snoring loudly, the woman lying face upwards; the blunt nails of her bleeding fingers showed over the filthy bags which covered her body. A guttering candle was dying in the neck of a beer-bottle beside them and the smell of beer pervaded the place.
“It must be an awful life, this,” he said to his father, who accompanied him.
“These kind of people think nothin’ of it,” his father said. “They get drunk every night and are very happy. Whisky is the only thing they want.”
“Yes, they want something like that to live in a place like this.”
What struck the young man forcibly at that moment was that the people were like himself; that under certain conditions he might be just as they were, even like the man lying under the dirty bag by the side of the pockmarked harridan; and that man under favourable conditions might be himself, Morrison, and full of glorious dreams for the betterment of the race to which he belonged.
That night Morrison slept little, and when sleep came he dreamt that he lay with the old harridan under the dirty coverlet, his arms round her and his lips pressed against the dry and almost bloodless lips of the woman. In the morning the remembrance of the dream filled him with horror. That such people should exist; that, under certain conditions, he might be the man lying there in the pig-sty! He began to think seriously of things. Then he came across a woman in Paisley—a woman who belonged to the club of which he was a member—a woman whom he thought was different to all others. She was progressive and pronounced in her views and explained to Morrison how society from top to bottom, from hall to hovel, from robes to rags, was an expression of injustice, of wrong, of vice, of filth and moral decrepitude, and that in the interest of the future race the social system had to be changed and society to be renovated. Because she was very clever and good looking Morrison fell in love with this woman. She was a typist in a merchant’s office.
THINKINGof many things, he sauntered towards the farm. The cigarette went out; he threw it away and lit another. The evening was calm and quiet; a fewlate birds were chirruping in the hazel bushes and somewhere in the distance a dog barked loudly. The grey twilight that links day and night was over everything.
Suddenly Morrison perceived Norah Ryan coming towards him. She wore her grey tweed, which showed to perfection the outlines of her slender figure. In one hand she carried a book, the other hand hung idly by her side.
“Are you going for a walk, Norah Ryan?” Morrison asked when he met her.
“I am,” she answered, hardly knowing whether she should stop and talk to him or continue on her way.
“You’re reading, I see.” He took the cigarette from his mouth as he spoke, held it between finger and thumb and flicked the ash off with his little finger.
“Yes, I’m readin’,” she said, but did not tell him what book she held in her hand; he could see, however, that it was a prayer-book.
“When do the squad go to Ireland?”
“Next Friday, if all goes well,” she answered.
“So soon!” Morrison exclaimed, and in his voice there was a vague hint of regret. “Are you glad to get home again?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And the rest of the squad—what are they doing this evening? Are they playing cards?”
“The men are; the women are singin’, some of them; and Gourock Ellen and Annie are mendin’ their clothes.”
“It is getting dark quickly,” said Morrison. “Are you coming back now?”
“Is it time?” she asked, then said, “I suppose it is.”
He was going to the farm and it would be nice to have his company. She had seen him going out and anticipated meeting him coming home. Perhaps that was why shehad come; if so she did not dare to confess it, even to herself. She now thought that she should not have come; a tremor shook her for a moment, then she turned and went back along the lane with the young man.
A car drawn by a white pony came up behind them, and they stepped nearer to the line of hazel bushes to let it pass. They were now very close to one another.
“Some of the people on the next farm, coming home from church,” said Morrison as the car was passing. “Watch that the wheels don’t catch you. The lane is very narrow.... There!”
He caught hold of her by the waist, drawing her close to him and pressing her very tightly.
“The car was almost running over you,” he said.
“Don’t!” she cried, striving to get free. “Don’t now; it’s not right.”
“The wheel ...” he said in a husky voice. “The lane is so narrow.” He knew that he was telling a lie, but at the same time he felt very pleased with himself. He had dropped the cigarette, which could be seen glowing red on the dark ground. He released the girl, but would have liked to catch her in his arms again. The vehicle went rumbling off into the distance. “It is so very dark, too,” he muttered under his breath.
They walked along together, both busy with their own thoughts, the girl hot and ashamed, but curiously elated; the young man in some way angry with himself for what he had done, but at the same time desirous of clasping Norah again in his arms.
“If I had someone to tell me what to do,” she said under her breath, but knew instinctively that there was no one but herself to determine what action should be pursued in an event like this. Even if advice were proffered to her she knew that it would be useless. Something wasdriving her to the brink of an unknown which she feared, and from which there was no retreat and no escape.
“You are stumbling,” said Morrison, and again caught hold of her. She had not stumbled; it was a pretext on his part; he merely wanted an excuse to hold her in his arms. She could see his hand on her sleeve and noticed the gold ring sparkling in the darkness.
In man there are two beings, the corporal and the spiritual; one striving after that happiness which ministers to the passion of the individual to the detriment of the race; the other which seeks for happiness according to divine laws, a happiness that is good for all. Yesterday, to-day, ten minutes before, this spiritual being presided over Morrison’s destiny; now as he walked along the crooked lane, a lone wind sighing in the hazel bushes and a few stars out above him, he felt the animal man come and take possession of him. The rustling of Norah’s petticoats as she walked beside him, the slight pressure of her little rough fingers on his large smooth hand filled him with an insatiable animal desire which held him captive.
This was no new experience, and it possessed for him a certain charm which in his saner moments he loathed, but now he could neither conquer nor drive it away.
“I like the bow in your hair,” he said in a hoarse voice that startled the girl. “It suits you.”
“I must be off and away now,” she said, freeing her hand from his, but not drawing it away quickly enough to prevent him getting possession of it again. “Let me go,” she said in a low voice. “Ye must let me go. What would yerself be talkin’ to the likes of me for? There’s the farm!”
“Don’t hurry away,” said Morrison, bending down and placing both arms round her waist. For some reasonwhich he could not fathom he felt ashamed of himself, but he clasped her more tightly as he spoke. “Why are you in so great a hurry? You’re better here. Is that young fellow—Flynn they call him, I think—waiting for you? Micky’s Jim was telling me all.”
“He had no right to,” said the girl angrily, but refrained from drawing herself away. “Dermod Flynn is nothin’ to me.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Why?”
Morrison did not answer. It would be unwise to commit himself in any way, he thought, and for a moment he mastered the passion which filled his body. The lights of the farm sparkled in front. The open shed was facing them. The fire glowed red inside, and against it dark forms came and went. He stooped down and kissed her three times and she could feel his warm body press passionately against her own.
Someone passed near them and Morrison let her go. She hurried off towards the shed, and he could hear the patter of her boots as she ran. She passed Dermod Flynn on her way; no doubt he had seen Morrison kiss her, she thought. When she entered the shed Gourock Ellen, who was bending over the card table, looked up and saw the flush of colour in Norah’s face. Then Ellen noticed Dermod coming in and saw the troubled look in the boy’s eyes.
“Dermod’s been kissin’ ye, lass, I’ll warrant,” she whispered to Norah, then turning round to Micky’s Jim, she opened his shirt front and ran her fingers down his hairy chest. “Come on now, Jim, for that’ll gie ye luck,” she cried.
“Yes, decent woman, it’s sure to give me luck,” said Jim, throwing down the cards and putting a match to his pipe.
“WHAThave I done, what’s Alec Morrison to me?”
Norah asked herself as she looked in her little cracked hand mirror ten minutes later. “He’s nothin’ to me, nothin’, nothin’; no more than Dermod Flynn is. The two of them might so well be strangers to me. Now why did he kiss me? Dermod never kissed me. I’m glad of that.”
Norah looked round the byre, at the bunks in the stalls, the cattle troughs and the candle burning on the iron stanchion. She was alone, the other women were still out with the card-players in the shed.
“I must be very good-lookin’,” she whispered to herself as her eyes sought their reflection in the cracked mirror; then she blushed at her girlish vanity and innocent pride. “And him so grand, too, a gentleman!” But in some indistinct and indefinite way she felt that she would be raised to his level. “And he kissed me—here.” She put her fingers over her red lips. “But he’s nothin’ to me, nothin’. Dermod Flynn is nothin’ either.” She knew that the first assertion was not true; the repetition of the second gave her a certain pleasure.
“Do I love two of them? Can one love two people?” she asked herself. “But I’m not in love and never was. I like Dermod, but all the girls in the squad like him.... Why did Alec Morrison kiss me, and him a gentleman? It wasn’t my fault, was it?” She looked round and addressed an imaginary person, a look of bewilderment settling on her face.
“Did I go out to meet him this evenin’? Did I like his kisses? Is Dermod Flynn angry? I couldn’t help liking Dermod; he is so good, so kindly. But I’m a bad girl, very bad; all my life was full of sin. Pride and vanity,what the Catechism condemned, are my two sins. I used to be vain at school. I had two shoes and I was proud, because other people wore only mairteens. I used to dress my hair and try and look nicer than any other girsha; because I was vain. And now I’m vain because a well-dressed gentleman talks kindly to me. God forgive me! Ah, this looking-glass, I hate it! I’ll just have one look at myself and then never get hold of a glass again.”
She sat down on the bed and her fingers toyed with the potato sacks that served as quilt.
“Yes, he’s very nice and talks to us so kindly,” she whispered, and again her eyes sought the mirror. “Oh, it was a fine evening, one of the nicest ever I had.... They’re not too red, just pale, and when the blush is in them I’m better lookin’ than at any time. Has any one in the squad cheeks like mine?... Why did he want to kiss me? And my boots to one side at the heels and the toe-cap risin’ off one of them. I wish I had money, lots of it, gold, a crock of gold like the fairies leave under the holly bush.... I could buy new dresses and maybe rings. Norah, don’t let your hair hang down so far over your forehead, it doesn’t become ye. A wee bit back there, no, here; that’s it. Now ye’re very good lookin’.” “And to think of it as the first time and he has won fifteen shillin’s!” said Maire a Glan, who had just entered the byre. “Fifteen shillin’s, Norah!”
“What?”
“He won!”
“Who?”
“Who but Dermod Flynn?” said the old woman. “And him playin’ for the first time!”
INa week’s time the squad was to break up: Gourock Ellen, Annie and the two men who joined at Greenock, were leaving for Glasgow; Dermod Flynn who, despite the initial success, had lost all his money at the card-table, was going to remain in Scotland and earn his living at the first job that came to hand. Such a little boy! Norah felt sorry for him, but now he hardly deigned to look at her. When at work the far-away look was always in his eyes and at night he played for hours on end at the gaming-table. Most of the players said that he was awfully plucky and that he would stake his last penny on a card and lose the coin without turning a hair.
For the whole week prior to departure Norah, who was now very restless, laughed nervously when a joke was passed, but seemingly took no heed of the joke. She was not unhappy, but in a dim, subconscious way felt that she had done something very wrong. Before knowing Dermod intimately he frightened her; it was only after knowing Morrison so well that she became frightened of him. Dermod had never kissed her; she and the boy were only friends, she said to herself time and again. Dermod was only a friend of hers, nothing more. Sometimes when alone she said so aloud, as if trying to drownthe inner voice that told her it was not true. If Dermod only ceased playing cards things might right themselves, she thought, but deep down in her heart she wished everything to go on just as at present.
Morrison went to town on the day following the episode in the lane, but, before leaving, told Norah that he would come back to see her prior to her departure for Ireland.
“Don’t tell anybody that I am coming back,” he said, and, while wondering at his words, she promised not to tell.
The squad was going on Friday; on Thursday night Morrison returned, a rose in his buttonhole and a silver-handled stick in his hand. She saw him enter the farmhouse as she returned from the field, her knees sore, her clothes wet, and straggling locks of hair falling over her brow. At supper she ate little but took great care over her toilet; scrubbed her hands, which were very sore, until they bled, and spent nearly half an hour before the little looking-glass which she had brought from Ireland. She sorted her tresses, and put in its place an erring lock that persisted in falling over her little pink ear.
She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist, laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled.
Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What would he dowhen all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident that he would not return to Ireland that winter.
Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together and a look of hesitation on her face.
“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort.
“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you glad?”
“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.” Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him on Sunday evening surged through him again.
“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table. Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes.
“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on ajagged stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day; his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his boots had risen from the soles.
Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking.
“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again. Such a long time!”
“It’s not much comfort we have in this country anyway,” said Maire a Glan, who was turning the heel of a stocking, stopping for a moment to run one of the needles through her hair.
“I have got to go into the house now,” said Morrison, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to the fire. “I hope you’ll all have a good voyage across to-morrow night.”
“The Lord will be with us,” said Biddy Wor, who had just come in from the byre carrying a small frying-pan in one hand and a pot of porridge in the other.
“How long does it take to cross from Greenock to Londonderry?” Morrison asked Biddy Wor, meanwhile fixing his eyes on Norah Ryan.
“Derry, ye mean,” said the old woman. “We always say ‘Derry,’ but it’s the foreigner, bad luck be with him! that put London on to it. From Greenock it takes ten hours, more or less.”
Morrison drew a cigarette from a leather case which he took from his pocket. As he was lighting the cigarette he dropped the case and it fell beside Norah’s feet. He bent down hurriedly.
“Come out into the open, for I have something to say to you,” he whispered in a low voice to Norah as hestooped; then he went out, taking leave of the party in one “Good-night,” and five minutes later Norah rose from her seat and followed him.
“Where are ye goin’, girsha?” asked Maire a Glan.
“Down to the byre,” said the girl without turning round.
Morrison was standing in the shadow which fringed the fan-like stretch of light thrown from the shade.
“Is that you, Norah?” he asked, knowing well that it was she, and as he spoke he took her into his arms and kissed her. To Norah there was something dreadful in this kiss, and while not knowing that it gave expression to the pent-up passion of the man, she felt nervous and afraid. She looked back to the shed, saw the faces round the gaming-table, old Maire knitting in the corner, her needles showing brightly as the firelight played on them. A disused cart-wheel hung from the wall; she had never noticed it before.... Here in the dark beyond the circle of light something terrible threatened her, something that she could not comprehend but which her beating heart told her was wrong, and should be avoided. Why should she be afraid? Norah had all the boldness of innocence: her virtue was not armed with that knowledge which makes it weigh its every action carefully. Morrison was speaking, asking her to come further out into the darkness, but she still kept her eyes fixed on the shed. Safety lay there; freedom from what she could not comprehend. The man had hold of her hands, pressing them tightly, entreating her to do something. She freed herself from his grasp and ran back to the shed, half glad that the whole incident had taken place, and more than a little desirous to go out again. Her love for the well-dressed youth imparted a recklessness to her timid nature. When she went to her sleeping quarters two hours later old Maire a Glan accompanied her. The gamblers werestill playing, the fire blazed merrily, and Ginger Dubbin held the bank and was winning heavily.
“What’s that, that’s shinin’ in front of us?” asked Maire a Glan as she came out. “Maybe it’s only seein’ things that I am, for me old eyes play tricks in the darkness.”
“It looks like a live spark lyin’ on the ground,” said Norah.
“That’s not on the cold ground,” answered the woman. “See, it’s movin’! It’ll be the farmer’s son with the gold ring on his finger. Now what will he be after waitin’ for there?”
“How am I to know?” said Norah, but in such a low voice that the old woman had to draw near to catch the words. “I’m sleepy,” she said after a pause; “it’s time we were in bed.”
ONthe morning of the day following, the squad prepared for their departure, and gathered up all their spare clothes, their pans and porringers, and packed them in woollen handkerchiefs and tin boxes. The blankets, eighteen in all, were tied up in a parcel, ready to be sent off to the merchant in town.
“God knows who’ll sleep in them next year!” said Willie the Duck in a pathetic voice, and everybody laughed, some because they enjoyed the remark and others because it was the correct thing to laugh at every word uttered by Willie the Duck.
Dermod Flynn watched the preparations with impassive face. He was not going home; in fact, he had not as much money in his possession as would pay the railway fare to the nearest town. All his wages had been lost on the gaming-table; he had nothing now to rely onbut the labour of his own hands and the chance of getting a job.
“What will ye do, Dermod?” Maire a Glan asked.
“I’ll try and.... But what does it matter to you what I do? One would think to hear you talk that I was a child.”
“I suppose there’ll be a lot of drunk people on the boat this night,” said Micky’s Jim as he tied a tin porringer in a rag and placed it in his box. “There’ll be some fightin’ too, I’ll go bail.”
“The Derry boat is the place for fightin’, as the man said.”
“Aye, sure, and the Irish are very fond of fightin’ when they’re drunk.”
“It’s more in the blood than in the bottle, all the same,” said Eamon Doherty.
“I mind one fight on the Derrier,” said Micky’s Jim, biting a mouthful from the end of his plug. “I was in the fight meself. (If the cork comes out of that bottle of milk, Owen Kelly, it’ll make a hell of a mess on yer clothes.) It started below. ‘There’s no man here,’ said I, ‘that could——’ (Them trousers are not worth taking with ye, Eamon Doherty. No man would wear clothes like that; a person would better be painted and go out bare naked)—‘that could put up his fives to me.’ (If ye dress yer hair like that, Brigit Doherty, I’ll not be seen goin’ into Greenanore with ye.) Then a man drove full but for my face and I took the dunt like an ox. (Willie the Duck, are ye goin’ to take that famine fiddle home again? Change it for a Jew’s harp or a pair of laces!) ‘That’s how a Glenmornan man takes it,’ says I, and came in with a clowt to the jowl——”
“Stop yer palaver about fightin’, Micky’s Jim, and let us get away to the station,” said Maire a Glan. “We’ll not auction time while we’re waitin’, as the man said.”
“If we go off now we’ll only have three hours to wait for the train,” remarked Jim sarcastically.
“And poor Dermod Flynn,” said Maire a Glan, tying her bundle over her shoulders with a string. “Not a penny at all left him. Where’s Norah Ryan? She’s the girl to save her money.”
At that moment Norah was outside with Morrison and the young man was asking a question. The wish to find an answer to it had kept him awake for nearly half the previous night.
“Why did you run away from me yesterday evening, Norah?”
“I was frightened.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I certainly don’t know what caused you to run away.”
Morrison knew that, innocent though Norah was, some subtle instinct warned her the night before to hurry off to the safety of the shed.
“I would like to know why you did it, why you ran away, I mean?” he asked, knowing in his own heart that, if she understood, she had good reason to be afraid. “Does the girl understand?” he pondered. He had heard them talk of most things in Micky’s Jim’s squad, but perhaps the girl paid no heed to the talk.
“Are you coming back next year?” he enquired.
“It’s more nor likely.”
“Do you care for the life in the squad?”
“It could be worse.”
“That’s no recommendation,” said Morrison with a laugh, but seeing that Norah failed to understand him, he went on: “I don’t think you could have a life much harder than this.”
“I did not even kiss you last night,” he said after ashort silence, “and now you are going away and maybe never coming back again. I would kiss you now, only some of the squad might see us, and you wouldn’t like that.”
But for the squad Morrison cared nothing. He was just on the point of kissing Norah when he noticed his father looking at him through a window of the farmhouse. Although not respecting his father overmuch, for old Morrison was a hard-drinking and short-tempered man, the son did not want the little love affair to be spoken of in the house.
“If you stay to-night in Greenock, Norah, I’ll go down with you,” said the young fellow. “Will you stay?”
“Why should I stay?” asked Norah, who did not understand what Morrison’s words meant.
“Because—well, you see—” stammered the youth. “Oh! I think you’d better go with the rest. I’ll see you next year.”
He held out his hand, clasped hers almost fiercely and without another word turned and went towards the house. On the way he lit a cigarette, rubbed a speck of dirt from the knee of his well-creased trousers, and wondered why he wanted to take possession of the innocent girl. Despite his high-flown views on the equality of man, Morrison never thought of marrying Norah. Besides, there was Ellen Keenans, the advanced woman and author ofSongs of the Day, and it was Ellen who taught him what man’s conception of duty towards the race should be. At the present moment Morrison did not see how he could fit in with Ellen’s teachings.
That night most of the squad sailed for Ireland; Gourock Ellen and Annie took their way to Glasgow, and Dermod Flynn set out on the open road, ragged, penniless, and alone.
A year had passed; the potato season was over, but old Morrison, who was making considerable improvements in his steading, had kept the squad to work for him two months longer than usual, and all the party of the previous year, with the exception of Dermod Flynn, Ellen, and Annie, was there. Nobody in the squad knew where Dermod had gone, but rumour had it that he worked during the previous winter as a farm hand on a farm near Paisley. It was also said that he had done very well and had sent ten pounds home to his people in Glenmornan.
Norah Ryan had spent the winter and spring at home; her mother was still alive, but seldom ventured outside the door of the cabin. “The coldness of the dead is creeping over me,” she told Norah when the girl was leaving for Scotland. “My feet are like lumps of ice, and when the cold reaches my heart it will be the end, thanks be to God!”
Norah felt deeply for her mother; the old woman had none now but her daughter in all the world. Fergus had not been heard of for the last three years; some said that the boy was dead, others that he was alive and making a big fortune. Norah always prayed for him nightly when she went down on her knees, asking the Virgin tosend him safe home, and “if he is dead to intercede with her Son for the repose of his soul.”
At the end of each fortnight the girl, who earned twelve shillings weekly, sent sixteen home to her mother. In four months Norah sent six pounds eight shillings to Frosses, and a pound of this went towards the expense of the priest’s mansion. The same amount had been paid the year before and Norah was well-pleased, because now her father would rest easily in his grave. “He’ll rest in peace now that all his lawful debts are paid,” the old parish priest said.
Micky’s Jim had fallen in love with Oiney Dinchy’s daughter and it was said that he was going to get married to her when he went back to Ireland. Owen Kelly was as niggardly as ever. Once during the year he had bought a pennyworth of milk and at night he left it in a beer-bottle beside his bed. In the morning the milk was gone and Owen wept! So Micky’s Jim said; and Jim also circulated a story about a rat that drank the milk from the bottle.
“But that couldn’t be, as the man said.”
“But it could be. I saw it while all the rest of ye were snorin’.”
“There’s no standin’ your lies, Micky’s Jim.”
“True as death ’twas a rat that drunk the milk,” Jim explained. “I saw it meself. Stuck its tail down the neck of the bottle and licked its tail when it took it out. Took two hours to drink the whole lot. I once had a great fight and all about a bottle of milk——”
It was Christmas Eve. Norah sat beside the coal fire which burned in the large stove in Morrison’s cart shed, seeing pictures in the flames. Outside there was no moon, but a million stars shone in a heaven that was coldly clear. To-morrow the squad was going home.
“I haven’t seen that fellow, young Morrison, for awhole year,” said Maire a Glan, who was sewing patches on her dress. “I don’t like the look of yon fellow; it makes me sick to see him sittin’ here, askin’ us about how we do this and how we do that, what we do at home and how many acres of land have we got in Ireland, and hundreds of other things that the very priest himself wouldn’t ask ye.”
“He’s a good youngster, for all ye say,” remarked Owen Kelly, who once got a shilling as a tip from the young fellow. “That’s no reason for ye takin’ such an ill will against him, Maire a Glan.”
“I don’t like him atall, atall,” said the old woman doggedly. “There’s something about him that I care little for.”
“We all have our faults, Maire,” said old Biddy Wor. “And it goes against the grain with me to speak ill of anybody, no matter who they are. Ye’ve noticed that yerself.”
“I couldn’t fail to, seein’ you’ve told me so often,” said Maire a Glan.
“There are faults and faults,” remarked Eamon Doherty. “And some faults are worse at one time than another. D’ye mind the beansho?” he asked, turning to Biddy Wor. “Of course ye mind her. Well, the man that was the cause of—ye know yerself—he got drounded at the fishin’ before he could get married to Sheila. Her fault was not a great one atall, atall.”
“She was a brazen heifer, anyway,” said Biddy Wor.
“Where is she now?” Eamon Doherty enquired.
“No one knows atall, atall,” said Judy Carrol. “Maybe she’s a—a one like Gourock Ellen, God be good to us all!”
“I hear that she’s in Glasgow,” said Murtagh Gallagher.
“Glasgow is the town to be in,” remarked Micky’sJim, scraping the wet tobacco from the bottom of his pipe. “By the hokey! It was a great place for fightin’. One night I had seven fights hand running. A fellow named Droughty Tom was shootin’ out his neck on the Docks. ‘What are ye chewin’ the rag for, old slobber chops?’ I ups to him and says, shovin’ my fist under his nose: ‘There’s a smell of dead men off that fist,’ I said——”
“We’re sick to the bottom of the grave of hearin’ about yer fightin’, Micky’s Jim,” said Dora Doherty, who entered the shed at that moment. “D’ye know who’s out there?” she asked.
“No.”
“It’s that youngster, Morrison,” said the woman. “I saw somethin’ black in the darkness, and I thought it would be the farmer’s son.”
Norah Ryan started forward in her seat, turned round, looked at Maire a Glan, rose, and went outside.