BUTthe dancing was in full swing now, despite the vehemence of the proprietor. He looked round helplessly, and finding that his wife was already dancing with old Eamon Doherty he seized hold of the servant girl and whirled her into the midst of the party with a loud whoop that surprised himself even as much as it surprised the Donegal dancers.
Micky’s Jim was dancing with Norah Ryan and pressing her tightly to his body. The youth’s breath smelt of whisky and his movements were violent and irregular.
“Ye’re hurtin’ me, Jim,” said the girl, and he lifted her in his arms and carried her to a seat.
“Now are ye better?” he asked, not at all unkindly. “Will I get ye a glass of cordial?”
“Don’t bother about cordial,” said the girl; “but go out and look for Dermod Flynn. Ye said that ye’d go out a good while ago.”
“Why are ye so anxious about him, girsha?” asked Jim. “One would think that he was a brother of yours. Maybe indeed——”
He paused, looked round, then without another word he rose, went out into the street’ and took his way to the wharf, and there, when he could not find Dermod Flynn after a few minutes’ search, he sat down on a capstan, lit his pipe and puffed huge clouds of smoke up into the air.
“Now I wonder why that Norah Ryan is so anxious about Dermod Flynn?” he muttered. “Man! it’s hard to know, for these women are all alike.... By Cripes, she’s a fine built bit of a lassie. So is old Oiney Dinchy’s daughter ... Frosses and Glenmornan for women and fighters!... And the best fighters don’t always get the best women. Now, that Norah Ryan will have nothin’ at all to do with me as far as I can see; it’s Dermod Flynn that she wants.... I’ll have to look round for another wench, and girsha Oiney Dinchy (Oiney Dinchy’s daughter) is a soncy slip of a cutty.”
When Dermod Flynn came along Jim had to look at him very closely before realising that this was the youth whom he had known in Glenmornan two summers before. Dermod stood sturdily on his legs; his shoulders were broad, his back straight, and his well-formed chest betokened great strength even now at the age of fourteen. A bundle dangled on his arm; one knee was out through his trousers, and he carried a hazel stick in his hand.
“Patrick’s Dermod!” exclaimed Jim, a glance of glad recognition coming into his eyes when he had stared for a moment at Flynn. “By Cripes! ye’ve grown to be a big healthy bucko since last I saw ye.”
Dermod flushed with pleasure. Jim began to ply him with questions about his work in Tyrone, his masters, whether they were good or bad, and—above all—if he had ever had a fight since he left home.
Dermod assured him that he had had many a hard, gruelling fight; knocked down a man twice his size with one blow of his fist and blackened the eyes of a youth who was head and shoulders taller than himself.
“And who have ye with ye, Jim?” he asked. “Any of the Glenmornan people?”
“Lots,” answered Jim. “Willie the Duck, Eamon Doherty, Judy Farrel, Maire a Glan, Norah Ryan—but she’s not from Glenmornan, she’s a Frosses girsha.”
He looked sharply at Dermod as he spoke.
“She was at Glenmornan school with me,” said Flynn. “Where is she now?”
“There’s a dance goin’ on in the Donegal House; that’s where we had our bit and sup, and she’s shaking her feet on the floor there.”
“Can we go there and see the dancers?”
“There’s not much time now,” said Jim. “And there’s the boat, that big one nearest us, that we’re goin’ on this very night. She’s a rotten tub and we’ll be very sick goin’ round the Mulls of Cantyre.”
“Will we?”
“What I mean is that ye and all the rest of the men and women will be sick. I was never sea-sick in my life.”
“When is it going away?”
“In about half an hour from now.”
“How long will it take us to get across?” asked Dermod. “Ten hours?”
“God look on yer wit!” exclaimed Jim. “If there’s a fog on the Clyde it will maybe take three days—maybe more. Ye can never know what a boat’s goin’ to do. Ye can no more trust it than ye can trust a woman.”
THEdance came to an end, and, worn out with their exertions, the women picked up their shawls and wrapped them round their shoulders. Then getting their bundles they went towards the wharf, Willie the Duck leading, his fiddle under his arm and his bundle tied over his shoulders with a string. Coming to the quay they passed through a gloomy grain-shed, where heating bags of wheat sent a steam out into the air. Suddenly, gazing through the rising vapour, Norah saw horses up in the sky and she could hear them neighing loudly. For a moment she paused in terror and wondered how such a thing could be, then recollected that in a town, where there was no God, anything might be possible. Once out in the open Maire a Glan pointed to the fall-and-tackle, hardly distinguishable at a distance, which was lifting the animals off the pier and lowering them down to the main deck of the boat. The horses were turning round awkwardly and snorting wildly, terrified by the sound of the sea.
Bags of grain were being lifted on long chains; dark derricks shoved out lean arms that waved to and fro as if inviting somebody to come near; cattle lowing and slipping were being hammered by the drovers’ blackthorns into the hold; a tall man with face fierce andswarthy, eyes bright as fire, and mouth like a raw, red scar, was roaring out orders in a shrill voice, and suddenly in the midst of all this Norah saw Micky’s Jim leaning against the funnel of the boat, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets and the eternal pipe in his mouth, apparently heedless of all that was going on around him.
Beside Jim stood one whom Norah knew, but one who had changed a great deal since she had seen him last. As she went up the gang-plank, stepping timidly, cowering under the great derrick that wheeled above, she felt that a pair of eyes were fixed upon her, piercing into her very soul. She turned her gaze towards the deck and found Dermod Flynn looking straight at her as she made her way aboard. In an instant her eye had taken the whole picture of the youth, his clothes, the coat, much the worse for wear, his trousers, thin at knee and frilly at the shoe-mouth, his cap torn at rim and crown, the stray locks of hair straggling down his forehead, the bundle lying at his feet, and the hazel stick which he held in his hand, probably even yet in imitation of the cattle drovers who went along Glenmornan road on the way to the fair of Greenanore. These things Norah noticed with a girl’s quick intuitive perception, but what struck her most forcibly was Dermod’s look of expectation as he watched her come up the gang-plank towards him.
“Dermod Flynn, I hardly knew ye at all,” she said, putting out her hand and smiling slightly. “Ye’ve got very big these last two years.”
“So did you, Norah,” Dermod answered, looking curiously at the small white hand which he gripped in his own. “You are almost as tall as I am myself.”
“Why wouldn’t I be as tall as you are?” Norah replied, although Dermod had unknowingly squeezed her hand in a hard, tense grip. “Am I not a year and a half older?”
When her hand was released her skin showed whitewhere Dermod’s fingers had gripped her, but she did not feel angry. On the contrary the girl was glad because he was so strong.
“Come over here!” cried Maire a Glan, who was sitting on her bundle beside the rail, smoking a black clay pipe and spitting on the deck.
The noise was deafening; the rowting of the cattle in the pens became louder; a man on the deck gave a sharp order; the gangway was pulled off with a resounding clash, the funnel began to rise and fall; Norah saw the pier move; a few women were weeping; some of the passengers waved handkerchiefs (none of them too clean) to the people on the quay; rails were bound together, hatches battened down; sailors hurried to and fro; a loud hoot could be heard overhead near the top of the funnel and the big vessel shuffled out to the open sea.
THEboat was crowded with harvestmen from Frosses, potato-diggers from Glenmornan and Tweedore; cattle drovers from Coleraine and Londonderry, second-hand clothes-dealers, bricklayers’ labourers, farm hands, young men and old, women and children; all sorts and conditions of people.
“There are lots of folk gathered together on this piece of floatin’ wood,” said Maire a Glan, crossing herself, a habit of hers, when speaking of anything out of the ordinary. “The big boat is a wonderful thing; beds with warm blankets and white sheets to sleep in, tables to sit down at and have tea in real cups and saucers, just the same as Father Devaney has at Greenanore, and him not out at all in the middle of the ocean on a piece of floatin’ wood!”
“And willweget a bed to sleep in?” asked Norah Ryan.
“Why shouldwebe gettin’ a grand bed? We’re only the poor people, and the poor people have no right to these things on a big boat like this one,” said the old woman, putting her black clay pipe into the pocket of her apron. “There are no grand beds for people like us; they’re only for the gentry.”
“Wouldn’t a bed look nice on a Frosses curragh?” said Micky’s Jim, sitting down on the bundle belonging to Willie the Duck and pulling the cork from a bottle of whisky which he had procured in Derry. “Will ye have a drop, Maire a Glan?” he asked.
“I’ll not be havin’ any,” said the old woman, who nevertheless put out her hand, caught the bottle and raised it to her lips. “It’s a nice drop this,” she said, when she had swallowed several mouthfuls, “but I’m not goin’ to drink any of it. I’m only just tastin’ it.”
“If it was my bottle I’d be content if ye only just smelt it,” said Eamon Doherty, with a dry laugh.
“Dermod Flynn had one great fight in Tyrone,” said Micky’s Jim after draining some of the liquor. “Gave his master one in the guts and knocked him as sick as a dog.”
“Get away!”
“So he was sayin’. Dermod Flynn, come here and give an account of yerself.”
The young fellow, who was watching the waves slide past the side of the vessel, came forward when Micky’s Jim called him.
“Give an account of yerself, Dermod Flynn,” Jim cried. “Did ye not knock down yer boss with one in the guts? That was the thing to do; that’s what a Glenmornan man should do. I mind once when I was coal humpin’ on the Greenock Docks——”
And without waiting for an answer to his question, Jimnarrated the story of a fight which had once taken place between himself and a Glasgow sailor.
The sun, red as a live coal, was sinking towards the west, the murmur, powerful and gentle, of a trembling wind could be heard overhead; a white, ghostly mist stole down from the shore on either side and spread far out over the waters. The waves lapped against the side of the vessel with short, sudden splashes, and the sound of the labouring screw could be heard pulsing loudly through the air. A black trail of smoke spread out behind; a flight of following gulls, making little apparent effort, easily kept pace with the vessel.
“They will follow us to Scotland,” said Maire a Glan, pointing at the birds with a long claw-like finger.
Most of the men were drunk; a few lying stretched on the deck were already asleep, and the rest were singing and quarrelling. Micky’s Jim stopped in the middle of an interesting story, a new one, but also about a fight, and joined in a song; old Maire a Glan helped him with the chorus.
A man, full of drink and fight, paraded along the deck, his stride uncertain and unsteady, a look born of the dark blood of mischief showing in his eyes. He had already been fighting; in his hand he carried an open clasp-knife; one eyebrow had been gashed and the strip of torn flesh hung down even as far as his high cheekbones. He was dressed in a dirty pea-jacket and moleskin trousers; a brown leather belt with a huge, shiny buckle was tied round his waist, and the neck of a half-empty whisky bottle could be seen peeping over the rim of his coat pocket. His shoulders were broad and massive, his neck short and wrinkled and the torn shirt showed hisdeep chest, alive with muscles and terribly hairy, more like an animal’s than a man’s. His hands, which seemed to have never been washed, were knotted and gnarled like the branches of an old and stunted bush.
“This is young O’Donnel from the County Donegal, and young O’Donnel doesn’t give a damn for any man on this boat!” he roared, speaking of himself in the third person, and brandishing the knife carelessly around him. “I can fight like a two year old bullock, and a blow from young O’Donnel is like a kick from a young colt that’s new to the grass. I’m a Rosses man and I don’t care a damn for any soul on this bloody boat—not one damn! So there ye are!”
Suddenly observing Dermod Flynn staring at him, he slouched forward and struck the boy heavily across the face with a full swing of his left fist. Dermod dropped quietly to the deck; Micky’s Jim, who was suggesting to Willie the Duck that the fiddle should be flung into the sea, threw down the instrument which he held and, jumping on the top of O’Donnel, with a sudden movement of his hand sent the knife flying into the sea.
“Ye long drink of water, I’ll do for ye!” shouted Jim, and with feet and fists he hammered O’Donnel into insensibility.
Dermod Flynn regained his feet with a swollen cheek and a long red gash stretching along his face from ear to chin. He was helped to a seat by one of the party; Norah Ryan procured some water and bathed his face, rubbing her fingers tenderly over the sore.
“It was a shame to hit ye, Dermod,” she said. “One would think that a big man like that wouldn’t hit a small boy like yourself!”
Dermod flushed and his eyes lit up as if he was going to say something cutting, but Norah checked the wordsby pressing her hand across his brow and looking at him with eyes of womanly understanding.
“I know what ye are goin’ to say, Dermod,” she said. “Ye’re goin’ to tell me that ye are a man: and no one can deny that. Ye were a man when ye were at school and hit the master. Sure I know meself what ye had in yer head to say.”
Dermod resented the words of consolation and felt like rising and walking away from the girl, if her fair fingers had not been pressing so softly and tenderly against his cheek. He shrugged his shoulders and resigned himself to the ministrations of Norah.
“By God, I wasn’t long with him!” cried Micky’s Jim, kicking idly at Willie the Duck’s fiddle which still lay on the deck. “I just gave him one in the jaw and three on the guts. Ah! that was the way to do it! It takes a Glenmornan kiddie to use his mits in this bloomin’ hole. Glenmornan, and every inch of it, forever! Whoo! There’s no man on this boat could take a rise out of me; not one mother’s son! Fight! I could fight any damned mug aboard this bleedin’ vessel. Look at my fist; smell it! There’s the smell of dead men off it!”
Micky’s Jim, now doubly drunk with liquor and excitement, paced up and down the deck, challenging all aboard to fight, to put up their “fives” to him. Presently the quarrel became general.
All along the deck and down in the steerage cabin a terrible uproar broke forth; men fastened on to one another’s throats, kicking, tearing, and cursing loudly. The darkness had fallen; the buoys, floating past, bobbed up and down in the water, their little bright lights twinkling merrily. The pale ghost of a moon stole into the heavens and a million stars kept it company. But those aboard the Derry boat took little heed of the moon or stars. Over coils of ropes, loose chains, boxes and bundles,sleeping women and crying babies, they staggered, fought and fell, trampling everything with which they came in contact.
A man went headlong down the steerage stair and a second followed, thrown from above. Beside the door a bleeding face, out of which gleamed a pair of lustrous eyes, glowered sinister for a moment, a fist hit sharply against the eyebrows, the eyes closed; a knife shone, glancing brightly against the woodwork, the man with the bloodstained face groaned and fell; a woman crouching at the bottom of the stairs was trampled upon, she shrieked and the shriek changed into a volley of curses, which in turn died away into a low, murmurous plaint of tearful pity. Men sought one another’s faces grunting and gasping, long lean arms stretched out everywhere and fists shot through the smoke-laden atmosphere of the steerage ... splotches of blood showed darkly on the deck ... somewhere from below came the tinkle of glasses and the loud chorus of an Irish folk-song.
The fighters, overcome by their mad exertion, collapsed three or four in a heap and slept where they had fallen. Outside on the open deck Micky’s Jim lay prostrate, his head on the lap of Maire a Glan, who was also asleep, her two remaining upper teeth, tobacco-stained and yellow, showing in the moonlight. All over the deck men and women lay curled up like dogs. Near the rail a woman’s bare arm showed for a moment over a bundle of rags, then twined snakelike round the neck of a sleeping child. On a bench astern Norah Ryan sat, her shawl drawn tightly over her head and her eyes fixed on the moon-silvered sea that stretched out behind. A great loneliness had overcome her; a loneliness which she did not understand. It seemed as if something had snapped within her, as if every fabric of her life had been torn to shreds. The stars overhead looked so cold, everything seemed so desolate.A chill wind swept against her face, and she could hear the water soughing along the vessel’s side and crying wearily. Snores, groans, and sleepy voices came through the open doors and resounded in the passage at the head of the steerage stairs. Human bodies were heaped together in compact masses everywhere. The fighting had come to an end—though now and then, as a flame flickers up for a second over a dying fire, a man would totter from a drunken sleep and challenge everybody on board to fight him. But even when speaking loudest he would drop to the deck with a thud and fall asleep again.
LISTENINGto the engine pulsing heavily and the propeller hitting the water with an intermittent buzz Norah Ryan fell asleep. On opening her eyes again she could see the moon further up the sky and the stars twinkling colder than ever. Dermod Flynn, his face swollen horribly, was beside her, looking at her, and she was pleased to see him.
“Sit down beside me, Dermod,” she said. “It will be warmer for two.”
He sat down, his eyes sparkling with pleasure; the girl nestled close to his side in the darkness, and one timid little hand stole softly into his.
“Ye nearly squeezed the hand off me when I met ye this evenin’,” she said, but there was no reproof in her voice, and he understood that she was not angry with his strong handshake, even though it had given her pain.
“Did I?”
“Ye did.... Isn’t it cold?”
“Cold as the breath of a stepmother,” said Dermod. “There was great fighting!”
“Why do men always fight?” asked Norah.
“Because it’s—it’s their way.”
“Why is that?”
“You’ll not understand; you’re only a girl.”
“Will I never understand?” asked Norah.
“Never,” Dermod answered. “And we’re goin’ to be sick too,” he went on with boyish irrelevance. “That’s when we’re passin’ round the Mull of Cantyre. So Micky’s Jim said. And we’re goin’ to see Paddy’s Milestone, that’s if we aren’t asleep.”
“Where’s Paddy’s Milestone?”
“It’s a big rock out in the middle of the sea, half-way between Ireland and Scotland,” said Dermod.
“Oh, is that it?... What kind of time had ye in Tyrone?”
“Not so bad, but Scotland will be a better place.... Is old Master Diver livin’ away?”
“Dead, God rest his soul. He was only ill for three days. And poor Maire a Crick is gone as well.”
“She was as old as the Glenmornan hills. And old Oiney Dinchy?”
“He got one of his eyes knocked out with the horns of a cow. That was because the priest put the seven curses on him; but that was before ye went away.”
“Is Fergus writin’ home now?”
“We haven’t heard hilt nor hair of him for a long while,” said Norah sadly. “Maybe it is that he is dead.” “Don’t say that!” Dermod exclaimed, fixing a pair of sad eyes on the girl.
“Well, it is a wonder that we’re not hearin’ from him,” Norah went on, “a great wonder entirely.... Your face is very.... Is it sore now?”
The conversation died away; the boy and girl pressed closer for warmth and presently both were asleep. When they awoke the pale dawn was breaking. A drunken manlay asleep at their feet, his face turned upwards, one arm stretched out at full length and the other curled over his breast. Beside him on the deck was an empty whisky bottle and the bowl of a broken clay pipe.
“Have ye seen Scotland yet?” asked the girl, rubbing her fingers over her eyelids.
“That’s it, I think,” Dermod answered, pointing at the coastline which showed like a well-defined cloud against the sky-line miles away.
“Have we passed Paddy’s Milestone?”
“I don’t know. I was sleepin’.”
“Isn’t it like Ireland?” remarked Norah after she had gazed for a while in silence at the coastline. “I would like to be goin’ back again, Dermod,” she said.
“I’m goin’ to make a great fortune in Scotland, Norah,” said the youth, releasing the girl’s hand which he had held all night. “And I’m goin’ to make ye a lady.”
“Why would ye be goin’ to do the likes of that?”
“I don’t know,” Dermod confessed, and the boy and girl laughed together.
A heavy fall of rain came with the dawn, and the Clyde was a dreary smudge of grey when the boat made fast alongside Greenock Quay and discharged its passengers. Again the derricks began to creak complainingly on their pivots; a mob of excited cattle streamed up the narrow gangways, followed by swearing drovers, who prodded the dewlaps and hindquarters of the animals with their short, heavy blackthorn sticks.
A tall, thin man, somewhat over middle age, with bushy beard, small penetrating eyes and wrinkles between the eyebrows, met the squad as they disembarked. He bade good-morning to Micky’s Jim just as if he had seen him the night before, and in a loud, hurried voice gave him several orders as to what he had to do during the summer season at the digging. The tall, thin man was the potato-merchant.
“How many have ye with ye from Ireland?” he asked Micky’s Jim.
Although knowing the number of men it contained, Jim, with an air of importance, began to count the members of the squad, carefully enumerating each person by name.
“Get your squad to work as soon as you can,” said the merchant, his Adam’s apple bobbing in and out with everymovement of his throat. He gave Jim no time to finish the count. “I see you’re three or four short of last year—four, isn’t it? There’s some people waitin’ for a start over there, so you’d better take a few of them with you.”
Opposite the squad a dozen or more men and women stood, looking on eagerly, all of them shivering with the cold and the water dripping from their rags. These Jim approached with a very self-conscious swagger and entered into conversation with the women, who began to speak volubly.
“What’s wrong with them?” asked Dermod Flynn, and Maire a Glan, to whom he addressed the question, drew a snuff-box from her pocket and took a pinch.
“They’re lookin’ for a job, as the man said,” she answered and her teeth chattered as she spoke.
“When do we start our work?” asked Norah Ryan.
“Work!” laughed Judy Farrel, and her laugh ended in a fit of coughing. “Work, indeed!” she stammered on regaining breath. “Ye’ll soon have plenty of that and no fear!”
“Come now,” Micky’s Jim shouted as he came back to his own squad followed by two men and two women who detached themselves from the crowd that was looking for work. “We must go down to the Isle of Bute to-day and get some potatoes dug in a hurry. Take yer bundles in yer hands and make a start for the station.”
“It’s Gourock Ellen that’s in it,” said Maire a Glan, when the strange women came forward. “Gourock Ellen and Annie, as the man said.”
Gourock Ellen was a tall, angular woman, who might at one period of her life have been very handsome, but who now, owing to the results of a hard and loose life, bore all the indelible marks of dissolute and careless living. Her face was hard, pock-marked, and stamped with a look of impudent defiance; she smiled with ill-concealed contemptat Maire a Glan and looked with mock curiosity at the warty hand which the old woman held out to her.
“There’s a lot of new faces in the squad,” she said, glancing in turn at Norah Ryan and Dermod Flynn. “Not bad lookin’, the two of them, and they’ll sleep in the yin bed yet, I’ll go bail! And you, have you the fiddle with you?”
“Aye, sure, and I have,” said Willie the Duck, to whom she addressed this question. “I don’t go far without it.”
“You don’t,” answered the woman, and her tones implied that she would have added, “you fool!” if she thought it worth while.
Her companion, who hardly spoke a word, was somewhat older, swarthy of appearance and very ragged. Her toes peeped out through the torn uppers of her hobnailed boots, and when she lifted her dress to wring the water from the hem it could be seen that she wore no stockings and that her dark, thin legs were threaded with varicose veins above the calves.
“D’ye see them?” Micky’s Jim whispered in Dermod’s ear. “They cannot make a livin’ on the streets and they have to come and work with us.”
“I don’t like the look of them,” Dermod whispered, rubbing his hand over the sore on his face.
“By God! that was a great dunt that O’Donnel gave ye,” said Jim. “They’re great women, them, without a doubt,” he added. “It’s a long while since Gourock Ellen broke her pitcher.”
“How? What do you mean?”
“Ye’re green, Dermod, green as a cabbage,” said Jim, chuckling. “Them women—but I’ll tell ye all about it some other time. Willie the Duck is a great friend of them same women. He knows what they are, as well as anyone, don’t ye, Willie?”
“Aye, sure,” said Willie, who did not know what Jimwas speaking about, but wished to be agreeable to everybody.
A short run on a fast train from Upper Greenock to Wemyss Bay was followed by an hour’s journey on a boat crowded with passengers bound for Rothesay. It was now the last day of June, and those who had rented coast houses for the following month were flocking down from Glasgow and other Clydeside industrial centres. In the midst of the crowd of gaily dressed trippers all the members of the squad felt sensitive and shy and stood huddled awkwardly together on deck; all but Micky’s Jim and the strange men and women, who paraded up and down the deck, careless of the eyes that were fixed upon them. Old Maire a Glan was praying, her rosary hidden under her shawl; Dermod Flynn was looking over the rail into the water, his main interest in turning away being to keep the naked knee that peeped through his torn trousers hidden from the sight of the elegantly dressed trippers. Norah envied the young girls who chattered noisily to and fro, envied them their fine hats and brave dresses, their elegant shoes and the wonderful sparkling things that decorated their necks and wrists. What a splendid vision for the girl’s eyes! the hot sun overhead in a sky of blue, the water glancing brightly as the boat cut through it; the fair women, the well-dressed men, the band playing on deck, the glitter, the charm and the happiness! The girl could hardly realise that such beauty existed, though once she had seen a picture of a scene something like this in one of the books which Fergus used to read at home. Poor girl! the water was still running down her stockings, her clothes were ragged and dirty, and the boy, her youthful lover, was hiding his naked knee by turning to the rail!
Opposite the crowd in which Norah stood, a group of five persons—father, mother and their children, a son and two daughters—were sitting on camp-stools. The man, bubble-bellied and short, had taken off his hat, and in the sunlight beads of sweat glittered on his bald head like crystals in a white limestone facing. His wife, a plump, good-looking woman, who seemed full of a haughty self-esteem, gazed critically through a lorgnette on the unkempt workers and sniffed contemptuously as if something had displeased her when her examinations came to an end. The three little things regarded them wonderingly for a moment and afterwards began to ply first the father and then the mother with questions about the strange folk who were aboard the boat. But the parents, finding that the children were speaking too loudly, bade them be silent, and the little ones, getting no answer to their questions, began to puzzle over this and wonder who and what were the queer, ragged people sitting opposite.
The girls, taking into account the contemptuous stare which their mother fixed on the members of the squad, came to the conclusion that the beings who were dressed so differently from themselves were really other species of men and women altogether and were far inferior to those who wore starched collars and gold ornaments.
The boy, an undersized little fellow with sharp, twinkling eyes, looked at his father when putting his questions, but the old man pulled a paper—The Christian Guide—from his pocket and, burying himself in it, took no notice of the youngster’s queries.
The boy solved the question for himself in the curious incomplete way which is peculiar to a child.
“I don’t know who they are,” he said, “but I’d like to play with them—that old lady who’s moving something under her shawl and speakin’ to herself, with the niceyoung lady, with the man with the hump and the fiddle; with every one of them.”
Gourock Ellen was speaking to Micky’s Jim.
“Have ye ever slept under a bridge with the wind chillin’ ye to the bone?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“That’s where I slept last night,” said Ellen fiercely. “Isn’t that a pretty dress that that woman has, Jim?”
“And Annie?” Jim asked, putting a match to the eternal pipe.
“She slept along wi’ me,” Ellen replied. “Blood is warm even when it runs thin.”
“If ye had the price of that lady’s dress, ye’d not have to sleep out for a week of Sundays,” said Jim, pointing to the woman with the lorgnette. “See her brats too! Look how they’re glowerin’ at Norah Ryan!”
“The children are very pretty,” said the woman, and a slight touch of regret softened her harsh voice. Perhaps for the moment she longed for the children which might have been hers if all had gone well. “Norah Ryan is a very soncy wench, isn’t she, Jim?” she went on. “What is the bald man readin’?”
“Christian Guide,” said Jim, who spent a whole year at school and who could read a little.
“I ken him well,” said Ellen, assuming a knowing look and winking slightly. “It was years ago, he was young—and ye ken yerself.”
“Phew!” Jim whistled, taking the pipe from his mouth and lowering the left eyelid. “He was one of them sort?...Christian Guide, indeed!... A decent man, now, I suppose, and would hardly pass a word with ye!”
“I’m not as good lookin’ as I was.”
“If ye told old baldhead’s wife what ye told me what would she say?”
“Oh! I wadna dae that, Jim. He always paid on the nail.”
“Christian Guide,” sniggered Jim, hurrying to the rail and spitting into the water.
“There are some great dresses on those people,” said Maire a Glan, nipping Dermod Flynn on the thigh with her finger and thumb. “See that woman sittin’ there with the bald-headed man. Her dress is a good one. All the money that ye earned for two whole years in Tyrone would hardly put flounces on it; wouldn’t flounce it, as the man said.”
“Maybe not,” said Dermod, turning round slightly, but still standing in such a way that his bare knee was concealed from everybody on board.
“It’s a great dress, a grand dress and a dress for a queen,” Maire a Glan went on. “Look at the difference between it and the dress that Gourock Ellen is wearin’!”
“Just so,” said Dermod, peeping at the exposed kneecap. “Could ye give me a needle and thread this night, Maire a Glan?” he asked.
“I could, indeed, Dermod,” said the old woman. “That wife of the bald-headed man is a fine soncy-lookin’ stump of a woman.”
“Is she better-lookin’ than Gourock Ellen?” asked Dermod with a laugh.
“Ye are droll, Dermod,” said Maire a Glan, nipping the boy’s thigh again. “D’ye know where Gourock Ellen slept last night? Under a cold bridge with the winds of heaven whistlin’ through the eye of it.”
“Could she not have gone into some house?”
“House, child? Ye are not in Ireland here!”
“When a poor man comes to our house at night, he always gets a bed till the mornin’,” said Norah Ryan, who was listening to the conversation. “And a bit and sup as well!”
“It’s only God and the poor who help the poor,” said the old woman. “And here’s the rain comin’ again, as the man said. It will be a bad day this to plough on our knees through the wet fields, bad luck be with them!”
A farmer with a bulbous nose and red whiskers met the squad on Rothesay pier. He wore a black jacket which, being too narrow round the shoulders, had split open half way down the back, a corduroy waistcoat, very tight trousers, patched at the knees and caked brown with clotted earth. This man was seated on the sideboard of a large waggon, removing the dirt from his clothes with a heavy, double-bladed clasp-knife.
“Good-day,” said Micky’s Jim, coming off the boat and stepping up to the man on the waggon.
“Good-day,” answered the man without lifting his head or looking at the speaker.
“Will ye take the waggon nearer the boat, or will we carry up the bundles to here?” asked Jim, blowing a puff of white smoke into the air.
“Carry them up, of course,” said the farmer, still busy with his clasp-knife.
Jim set his squad to work, and soon the waggon was loaded with bundles of clothes, frying-pans, tea-caddies, tins, bowls, and other articles necessary for the workers during the coming months. In addition to the stores taken from Ireland by the potato-diggers the merchant supplied them with blankets, an open stove, and a pot for boiling potatoes. It was now raining heavily; the drops splashed loudly on the streets, ran down the faces and soaked through the clothes of the workers. The rain struck heavily against the waggon; a hot steam rose fromthe withers of the cart-horse; the pier was almost deserted and everything looked lonesome and gloomy.
So far the farmer had taken very little notice of anybody; but now, having observed Norah Ryan, he shouted: “Ye have a fine leg, lassie!” and afterwards, while the cart was being loaded, he kept repeating this phrase and chuckling deep down in his throat. Whenever he made the remark he looked at the girl, and Norah felt uncomfortable and blushed every time he spoke.
Dermod Flynn, who had taken a sudden dislike to the man with the bulbous nose, now felt sorry for Norah and angry with the man. At last, unable to restrain his passion any longer, he stepped up to the side of the waggon and looked straight in the face of the farmer, who was packing the blankets in one corner of the vehicle, and shouted: “Here, Red Nose, don’t try and make fun of yer betters!” The farmer straightened himself up, rested his thumb on his jaw and pulled a long black finger through his beard.
“All right,” he said at last, and did not speak another word to anybody else that day.
Dermod, who had looked for an outburst, felt frightened when the farmer became silent.
“Jim, what’s wrong with that man?” he asked his ganger when the cart started on its journey home with the farmer sitting in front, waving his whip vigorously, but refraining from hitting the horse.
“He’s mad,” said Jim in a whisper.
“Mad?”
“As a March hare, as an Epiphany cock, as a —— He’s very mad, and was in the madhouse last year when we were digging on the farm. It takes very little to set him off. Maybe he’s goin’ mad now; one never knows.”
“It was very good of you to stand up for me,” said Norah to Dermod about an hour later, when the partycame in sight of the farmhouse. “Ye have the kind heart, and that farmer isn’t a nice man. I don’t like the looks of him!”
“He’s mad——”
“Mother of God!”
“—— as an Epiphany cock! He was in the madhouse last year.”
“Maybe he’ll do ye some harm one day!”
“Will he?” asked Dermod, squaring his shoulders and instinctively tightening his fists. Somehow he felt wonderfully elated since he had spoken to the farmer on the waggon.
NEWpotatoes were urgently needed and the potato merchant told Jim to get as many as possible dug on the first afternoon. No sooner had the squad come to the farmhouse than they were shown out to the fields where the green shaws, heavy with rain, lay in matted clusters across the drills. Every step taken relieved the green vegetable matter of an enormous amount of water, which splashed all over the workers as they stumbled along to their toil.
Work started. The men threw out the potatoes with short three-pronged graips; the women girt bags round their waists, went down on their knees and followed the diggers, picking up the potatoes which they threw out. Two basin-shaped wicker baskets without handles were supplied to each woman; one basket for the good potatoes and the other for “brock,” pig-food.
“It’s the devil’s job, as the man said,” old Maire a Glan remarked as she furrowed her way through the slushy earth. “What d’ye think of it, Judy Farrel?” But Judy, struggling with a potato stem, did not deign to answer.
Maire was a hard worker; and it was her boast that she never had had a day’s illness in her life. The story had got abroad that she never missed a stitch in a stocking while giving birth to twins, and the woman never contradictedthe story. She gathered after Eamon Doherty’s “graip”; old Eamon with a head rising to a point almost and a very short temper.
Biddy Wor, the mother of seven children, “all gone now to all the seven ends of the world,” as she often pathetically remarked, gathered the potatoes that Murtagh Gallagher threw out. Biddy’s hair was as white as snow, except on her chin, where a dozen or more black hairs stood out as stiffly as if they were starched.
Owen Kelly, another of the diggers, was very miserly and was eternally complaining of a pain in the back. Micky’s Jim assured him that a wife was the best cure in the world for a sore back. But Owen, skinflint that he was, considered a wife very costly property and preferred to live without one. He dug for Judy Farrel, the stunted little creature with the cough. She was a very quiet little woman, Judy, had very little to say and, when speaking, spoke as if her mouth was full of something. When pulling the heavy baskets, weighted with the wet clay, she moaned constantly like a child in pain.
Two sisters worked in the squad, Dora and Bridget Doherty, cheery girls, who spoke a lot, laughed easily, and who were similar in appearance and very ugly. Dora worked with Connel Dinchy, son of Oiney Dinchy, an eel-stomached youth over six foot in height and barely measuring thirty-four inches round the chest. He was a quiet, inoffensive fellow, who laughed down in his throat, and every fortnight he sent all his wages home to his parents. Bridget Doherty gathered potatoes for one of the strange men. Both girls were blood relations of Murtagh Gallagher. The other strange man worked in conjunction with Gourock Ellen; Norah Ryan gathered for Willie the Duck; and Ellen’s companion, who was known as Annie—simply Annie—crawled in the clay after Thady Scanlon, a first cousin of Micky’s Jim. When the basketswere full, Dermod Flynn emptied the potatoes into large barrels supplied for the purpose.
The women worked hard, trying to keep themselves warm. Norah Ryan became weary very soon. The rain formed into a little pond in the hollow of her dress where it covered the calves of her legs. Seeing that the rest of the women were rising from time to time and shaking the water off their clothes, she followed their example, and when standing, a slight dizziness caused her to reel unsteadily and she almost overbalanced and fell. She went down on her knees hurriedly, as she did not want Micky’s Jim to see her tottering. If this was noticed he might think her unfit for the job. For the rest of the afternoon she crawled steadily, fearing to rise, and wondered how Gourock Ellen, who was giving voice to a loose and humorous song, could sing on such a day. What troubled Norah most were the sharp pebbles that came in contact with her knees as she dragged herself along. They seemed to pierce through rags and flesh at each movement, and at times she could hardly refrain from crying aloud on account of the pain. Before night, and when she knew that her knees were bleeding, she had become almost indifferent to bodily discomforts.
All the time she was filled with an insatiable longing for home. The farm looked out on the Clyde—the river was a grey blur seen through the driving rain, and a boat passing by attracted her attention.
“Is it an Irish boat?” she asked Willie the Duck, who was whistling softly to himself.
“Aye, sure,” answered Willie without raising his head.
“I wish that I was goin’ home in it,” she said plaintively.
“Ireland’s much better than this dirty country,” said Maire a Glan, speaking loud enough for the Scotchwoman Annie to hear her.
WHENsix o’clock came round Jim pulled out his watch, looked at it severely for a moment and shouted: “Down graips and run home to yer warm supper!”
“Home!” repeated Maire a Glan, rising awkwardly to her knees. “Mother of Jesus; it is a home! An old byre and no less, as the man said. Shame be on ye, Micky’s Jim!”
“We have no grub and no siller,” said Gourock Ellen, rising briskly and loosing the claycoated sack from around her waist. “I’m up to my thighs in clabber,” she added.
“We’ll not let ye starve as long as there’s a bit at all goin’,” said Micky’s Jim.
“We’d be pigs if we ate all ourselves when other people have nothin’,” remarked Maire a Glan.
When the squad went back to the farm a ploughman, a flat-footed, surly fellow with a hare-lip, showed them their quarters in the steading. “First I’ll show ye where ye’re to roost,” said the man, and led the way into an evil-smelling byre, the roof of which was covered with cobwebs, the floor with dung. A young fellow, with a cigarette in his mouth, was throwing the manure through a trap-door into a vault underneath. On both sides of the sink, which ran up the middle, was a row of stalls, each stall containing two iron stanchions to which chains used for tying cattle were fastened.
“No need to tie any of ye to the chains, is there?” asked the man with the hare-lip, laughing loudly. “When ye go to bed at night, close the trap-door,” he continued. “It will keep the smell of the midden away from you!”
“Aye, sure,” said Willie the Duck.
“Oh! ye’re here again, are ye?” asked the ploughman. “Have ye got the music murderer with ye? This way to see where yer eatin’ room is,” said the man, without waiting to hear Willie the Duck’s answer to his question.
The byre was built on the shoulder of a hillock; the midden was situated in a grotto hollowed underneath. Behind the dung-hill, in the grotto, the three-legged stove was standing, and already a fire which old Eamon Doherty had kindled was sparkling merrily.
“Watch yersel’!” shouted the ploughman to Dermod Flynn, who was crossing the dung-hill on the way towards the fire. “That young rascal above will throw down a graipful of dung on yer head if ye’re not careful.”
Maire a Glan filled the pot with clean white potatoes and placed them over the blaze. The ploughman sat down on an upended box and lit his pipe; Micky’s Jim took the squad back to the byre, which was now fairly clean, and proceeded to make bunks for the night. Four or five level boxes were placed on the floor of each stall, a pile of hay was scattered about on top, and over this was spread two or three bags sewn together in the form of a sheet; sacks filled with straw served as pillows, a single blanket was given to each person, and two of the party had to sleep in each stall.
“Who’s goin’ to sleep with me?” asked Micky’s Jim.
“I will,” said Murtagh Gallagher.
“Ye snore like a pig!”
“What about me?” asked Owen Kelly.
“Ye kick like a colt.”
“Will I do?” asked Willie the Duck.
“Ye do!” cried Micky’s Jim, “ye that was chased out of the graveyard with a squad of worms. None of ye will sleep with me; Dermod Flynn is the man I want. Help me to make the bed, Dermod Flynn,” he said to the youth who was standing beside him.
“It’s a fine place, this,” said Gourock Ellen as she spread a pile of hay over the boxes in the stalls. “A gey guid place!”
“D’ye know who slept in that stall last night?” asked Jim.
“A heifer like mysel’ maybe,” said Ellen. “And indeed it had a muckle better place than I had under the bridge.”
“The potatoes are nearly ready,” shouted Maire a Glan, sticking her wrinkled head round the corner of the door.
There was a hurried rush down to the midden. Boxes were upended to serve as seats, the maid-servant at the farm came out in brattie,[D]shorgun,[E]and brogues, and sold milk at a penny a pint to the diggers. All, with the exception of Annie, Ellen, and Owen Kelly, bought a pennyworth; Micky’s Jim bought a pennyworth for Ellen, Maire a Glan shared her milk with Annie, and Owen Kelly bought only a halfpennyworth, half of which he kept for his breakfast on the following morning.
The potatoes were not ready yet; the water bubbled and spluttered in the pot and shot out in little short spurts on every side. Ellen complained of her legs; they had been horribly gashed during the day and were now terribly sore. She lifted up her clothes as far as her thighs and rubbed a wet cloth over the wounds. Micky’s Jim tittered; Dermod Flynn blushed, turned away his head and looked at Norah Ryan. Ellen noticed this and, smiling sarcastically, began to hum: