Next day Ulick Shannon made a call upon John Brennan and invited him for a drive. Outside upon the road Charlie Clarke's motor was snorting and humming. Ulick had learned to drive a car in Dublin, and had now hired Mr. Clarke's machine for the day.
"You see," he said airily, "that I have dispensed with the sanctimonious Charlie and am driving myself. Meaning no respect to you, Brennan, one approach to a priest is as much as I can put up with at a time."
Mrs. Brennan had come to the window, which looked out upon the little garden wicket by which they were standing.... Her eyes were dancing and wild thoughts were rushing into her mind.... Here, at last, was the achieved disaster and the sight her eyes had most dreaded to see—her son and the son of Henry Shannon talking together as brothers.
An ache that was akin to hunger seemed to have suddenly attacked her. Her lips became parched and dry and her jaws went through the actions of swallowing although there was nothing in her mouth. Then she felt herself being altogether obliterated as she stood there by the window. She was like a wounded bird that had broken itself in an attempt to attain to the sunlight beyond.... And to think that it had fallen at last, this shadow of separation from her lovely son. John came to the door and called in:
"I'm going for a drive in the motor with Mr. Shannon, mother."
These were his very words, and they caused her to move away towards the sewing-room with the big tears gathering into her eyes. From her seat she saw her son take up his proud position by the side of Ulick Shannon. There was something for you, now! Her son driving in a motor car with a young man who was going on to be a doctor, in the high noon of a working day, all down through the valley of Tullahanogue. If only it happened to be with any other one in the whole world. What would all the people say but what they must say?... She saw the two students laughing just before the car started as if some joke had suddenly leaped into being between them.
Ned Brennan came into the room. He had been making an effort to do something in the garden when the car had distracted him from his task. Well, that was what you might call a grand thing! While he was here digging in his drought, his son, I thank ye, going off to drive in a motor with a kind of a gentleman. His mind went swiftly moving towards a white heat of temper which must be eventually cooled in the black pools of Garradrimna. He came into the room, a great blast of a man in his anger, his boots heavy with the clay of the garden.
"Well, be the Holy Farmer! that's the grand turn-out!... But sure they're a kind of connections, don't you know, and I suppose 'tis only natural?"
Great God! He had returned again to this, and to the words she feared most of all to hear falling from his mouth.
"A curious attraction, don't you know, that the breed of the Byrnes always had for the breed of the Shannons. Eh, Nan?"
Mrs. Brennan said nothing. It had been the way with her that she felt a certain horror of Ned when he came to her in this state, but now she was being moved by a totally different feeling. She was not without a kind of pity for him as she suddenly realized once more how she had done him a terrible and enduring injury.... As he stood there glowering down upon her he was of immense bulk and significance. If he struck her now she would not mind in the least.
"And they're like one another too, them two chaps, as like as brothers. And mebbe they are brothers. Eh, Nan, eh; what happened the child you had for Henry Shannon? It died, did it? Why 'tis only the other night that Larry Cully came at me again about it in Garradrimna. 'I see you have your sons home about you,' says he, 'and that must be the great comfort to a man, your son John,' says he, 'and your son Ulick. Maybe ye never heard tell,' says he, 'that Grace Gogarty's child died young and that Henry Shannon bought his other son from his other mother-in-law to prevent it being a rising disgrace to him. Bought it for a small sum,' says he, 'and put it in the place of his lawful son, and his wife never suspected anything until the day she died, poor woman; for she was to be pitied, having married such a blackguard.' Is that true, is it, Nan?"
Oh, Blessed Mother! this was even more terrible than the suspicion Marse Prendergast had put upon her. It seemed less of a crime that the little innocent babe shouldhave been murdered in this house and buried in the garden than that her old, dead mother should have sold it to Henry Shannon. And how was she to know? Twenty-five years had passed since that time when she had been at Death's door, nor realizing anything.... And her mother had never told her.... It would be strange if she had gone digging at any time for the tiny bones of the little infant that had never been baptized. People passing the road might suspect her purpose and say hard things.... But sure they said hard things of her still after all the years. It was dreadful to think how any one could concoct a lie like this, and that no one could forget. Old Marse Prendergast knew well. Deep in her wicked mind, for twenty-five years, the secret had been hidden. It was a torture to think of the way she would be hinting at it forever.... And just quite recently she had threatened to tell John.
Bit by bit was being erected in her mind the terrible speculation as to what really was the truth and the full extent of her sin. Yet it was not a thing she could set about making inquiries after.... She wondered and wondered did Myles Shannon, the uncle of Ulick, know the full truth. Why did not her husband drop that grimy, powerful hand? Her breasts craved its blow now, even as they had yearned long ago for the fumbling of the little, blind mouth.
But he was merely asking her for money to buy drink for himself in Garradrimna. Hitherto this request had always given her pain, but now, somehow, it came differently to her ears. There was no hesitation on her part, no making of excuses. She went upstairs to the box which held her most dear possession—the money shehad saved so well through all the years for the fitting-out of Ned to go proudly with her to attend the ordination of their son John. She opened the box with the air of one doing a deliberate thing. The money, which amounted in all to about five pounds, was still in the form in which she had managed to scrape it together. In notes and gold and silver, and even copper. Before this it would have appeared as a sacrilege on her part to have touched a penny of it, but now she had no thought of this kind. Ned wanted the money to purchase the means of forgetfulness of the great injury she had done him.
She counted thirty pennies, one by one, into the pocket of her apron. This seemed the least suspicious way of giving it to him, for he had still no idea that she could have any little store laid by. It was hardly possible when one considered how much he drank upon her in the village.
She came down the stairs in silence, and spoke no word to him as she handed over the money. His lips seemed to split into a sort of sneer as he took it from her. Then he went out the door quickly and down the white road toward Garradrimna.
For the admiration and surprise of John Brennan, Ulick Shannon had been displaying his skill with the wheel. Soon the white, tidy houses beyond the valley were whizzing past and they were running down the easy road which led into the village of Ballinamult. They had moved in a continuous cloud of dust from Tullahanogue.
Ulick said he was choked with dust as he brought thecar to a standstill outside the "North Leinster Arms." He marched deliberately into the public bar, and John Brennan followed after with less sure footsteps, for it was his first appearance in a place of this kind. There was a little, plump girl standing up on a chair rearranging the bottles of whiskey and dusting the shelves.
Ulick would seem to have already visited this tavern, for he addressed the girl rather familiarly as "Mary Essie." She looked at the young man impudently as she wheeled around to exhibit herself to the best advantage. Ulick leaned his elbows upon the low counter and gazed towards her with his deep, dark eyes. Some quite unaccountable thing caused John Brennan to blush, but he noticed that the girl was not blushing. She was more brazenly forcing her body into exhibition.
Ulick called for a drink, whatever his friend Brennan would have, and a bottle of Bass for himself. It appeared a little wrong to John that he should be about to partake of a drink in a pub., for the "North Leinster Arms" was nothing more than a sufficiently bad public-house. He had a sudden recollection of having once been given cakes and sweets in an evil-smelling tap-room one day he had gone with his mother long ago to Mullaghowen. He thought of the kind of wine he had been given that day and immediately the name was forced to his lips by the thought—"Port wine!"
When the barmaid turned around to fill their drinks the young men had a view of the curves of her body. John Brennan was surprised to find himself dwelling upon them in the intense way of his friend.
Before they left Ulick had many drinks of various kinds, and it was interesting to observe how heexpanded with their influence. He began to tell "smutty" stories to Mary Essie. She listened with attention. No blush came into her face, and her glad neck looked brazen.... John Brennan felt himself swallowing great gulps of disgust.... His training had led him to associate the female form with the angelic form coming down from Heaven. Yet here was something utterly different.... A vulgar girl, with fat, round hands and big breasts, her lips red as a recent wound in soft flesh, and looking lonely.
He was glad when they regained the sunlight, yet the day was of such a character as creates oppression by the very height of its splendor. Ulick was in such a mood for talk that they had almost forgotten the luncheon-basket at the back of the car.
Beyond Ballinamult they stopped again where the ruins of a moldering Abbey lay quietly surrounded by a circle of furze-covered hills.... Ulick expanded still further with the meal, yet his discourse still ran along the old trail. He was favoring his friend with a sketch of his life, and it seemed to be made up largely of the women he had known in Dublin. Quite suddenly he said what seemed to John a very terrible thing:
"I have learned a lot from them, and let me tell you this—it has been my experience that you could not trust your own mother or the girl of your heart. They seem to lack control, even the control of religion. They do not realize religion at all. They are creatures of impulse."
Here was a sentiment that questioned the very fact of existence.... It seemed dreadful to connect the triumph of love and devotion that was his mother with this consequent suggestion of the failure of existence....Together they went across the grassy distance towards the crumbling ruin wherein the good monks of old had lived and prayed. And surely, he thought, the great spirit of holiness which had led men hither to spend their lives in penance and good works could not have departed finally from this quiet place, nor from the green fields beyond the rim of furze-covered hills.
Yet upon his ears were falling the even, convincing tones of Ulick Shannon, still speaking cynically.
"Behold," he was saying, "that it is to this place the younger generation throng on the Sabbath. Around you, upon the ruined and bare walls, you will observe not pious words, but the coupled names of those who have come here to sin."
"And look at this!" he exclaimed, picking from a niche in the wall a long shin bone of one of the ancient monks, which possessed the reputed power of cures and miracles. For a moment he examined it with a professional eye, then handed it to John Brennan. There were two names scribbled upon it in pencil, and beneath them a lewd expression. Ulick had only laid hands upon it by the merest accident, but it immediately gave body to all the airy ideas he had been putting forth. There was something so greatly irreverent in the appearance of this accidental piece of evidence that no argument could be put forward against it. It was terrible and conclusive.
The evening was far advanced when John Brennan returned home. His mother and father were seated in the kitchen. His father was drunk, and she was reading him a holy story, with an immeasurable feeling of despondence in her tones. John became aware of this as he entered the house.
Rebecca Kerr had been ill for a few days and did not attend school until the Monday following her arrival in the valley. There she made the acquaintance of Mrs. Wyse, the principal of Tullahanogue Girls' School, and Monica McKeon, the assistant of Tullahanogue Boys' School. Mrs. Wyse was a woman who divided her energies between the education of other women's children and the production of children of her own. Year by year, and with her growing family, had her life narrowed down to the painful confines of its present condition. She had the reputation of being a hard mistress to the children and a harsh superior to her assistants. From the very first she seemed anxious to show her authority over Rebecca Kerr.
In the forenoon of this day she was standing by her blackboard at the east end of the school, imparting some history to her most advanced class. Rebecca was at the opposite end teaching elementary arithmetic to the younger children when something in the would-be impressive seriousness of her principal's tone caused her to smile openly.
Mrs. Wyse saw the smile, and it lit her anger. She called loudly:
"Miss Kerr, are you quite sure that that exercise in simple addition is correct?"
"Yes, perfectly certain, Mrs. Wyse."
The chalk had slipped upon the greasy blackboard, making a certain 5 to appear as a 6 from the distance at which she stood, and it was into this accidental trap that Mrs. Wyse had fallen. Previous assistants had studied her ways and had given up the mistake of contradicting her even when she was obviously in the wrong. But this was such a straight issue, and Rebecca Kerr had had no opportunity of knowing her. She came down in a flaming temper from the rostrum. Rebecca awaited her near approach with a smiling and assured complacency which must have been maddening. But Mrs. Wyse was not one to admit a mistake. Quick as lightning she struck upon the complaint that the exercise was beyond the course of instruction scheduled for this particular standard.... And here were the foundations of an enmity laid between these two women. They would not be friends in any fine way through the length of all the long days they might teach together.
Thus for Rebecca the first day in the valley school dragged out its slow length and was dreary and dreadful until noon. Then Monica McKeon came in from the Boys' School and they took their luncheon together.... They went on chattering away until the door of the schoolroom was suddenly darkened by the shadows of two men. The three women arose in confusion as Master Donnellan called them to the door. There was a young man standing outside who presented a strong contrast to the venerable figure of the master. The latter, in his roundabout, pedagogic way, went on to tell how the stranger had strayed into the school playground and made himself known. He wished to show him the whole of the building, and introduced him as "Mr. UlickShannon, Mr. Myles Shannon's nephew, you know."
The three female teachers took an immediate mental note of the young man. They saw him as neat and well-dressed, with a half-thoughtful, half-reckless expression upon his fine face, with its deep-set, romantic eyes. The few words he spoke during the general introduction appeared to Rebecca to be in such a gentle voice. There were some moments of awkward silence. Then, between the five of them, they managed to say a few conventional things. All the while those great, deep eyes seemed to be set upon Rebecca, and she was experiencing the disquieting feeling that she had met him at some previous time in some other place in this wide world. The eyes of Monica McKeon were upon both of them in a way that seemed an attempt to search their minds for their thoughts of the moment.
Immediately he was gone Mrs. Wyse and Miss McKeon fell to talking of him:
"He's the hateful-looking thing; I'd hate him like poison," said Monica.
"Indeed what could he be and the kind of a father he had? Sure I remember him well, a quare character," said Mrs. Wyse.
"I wonder what could have brought him around here to-day of all days since he came to Scarden?"
This with her eyes set firmly upon Rebecca.
Mrs. Wyse was not slow to pick up the insinuation.
"Oh, looking after fresh girls always, the same as his father."
"He's not bad-looking."
"No; but wouldn't you know well he has himself destroyed with the kind of life he lives up in Dublin?They say he's gone to the bad and that he'll never pass his exams."
Every word of the conversation seemed to be spoken with the direct intention of attacking certain feelings which had already begun to rise in the breast of Rebecca Kerr.... Her mind was being held fast by the well-remembered spell of his eyes.
The afternoon passed swiftly for Mrs. Wyse. She was so engrossed by thought of this small thing that had happened that she gave wrong dates in another history lesson, false notes in the music lesson, and more than one incorrect answer to simple sums in the arithmetic lesson.
Rebecca was glad when three o'clock and her freedom at last came. Out in the sunlight she would be able to indulge in certain realizations which were impossible of enjoyment here in this crowded schoolroom. The day was still enthroned beneath the azure dome. This was the period of its languorous yawn when it seemed to dream for a space and gather strength before it came down from its high place and went into the long, winding ways of evening.
There were men engaged in raising sand from a pit by the roadside as she passed along. A pause in the ringing of their shovels made her conscious that they had stopped in their labor to gaze after her as she went.... Her neck was warm and blushing beneath the shadow of her hair.
Her confusion extended to every portion of her body when she came upon Ulick Shannon around a bend of the road, book in hand, sauntering along.
He saluted as she overtook him, and spoke of thepleasant afternoon.... She hoped he was enjoying his holidays here in the valley. He seemed to be spending the time very quietly. Reading? Poetry? Just fancy!The Daffodil Fields, by John Masefield. What a pretty name! Was he devoted to poetry, and was this particular poem a good one?
"It is a great tale of love and passion that happened in one of the quiet places of the world," he told her with a kind of enthusiasm coming into his words for the first time.
"One of the quiet places?" she murmured, evidently at a loss for something else to say.
"Yes, a quiet place which must have been like this place and yet, at the same time, most wonderfully different, for no poet at all could imagine any tale of love and passion springing from the life about us here. The people of the valley seem to have died before they were born. I will lend you this poem, if you'd care to have it."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Shannon!" she said.
They had wandered down a lane which led from the high road towards the peaceful fields beyond the little lake. This lane, he told her, was called "The Road of the Dead," and would afford her a short cut to her lodging at Sergeant McGoldrick's.
For lack of anything else to say, she remarked upon the strangeness of this name—The Road of the Dead. He said it seemed a title particularly suitable. He went on to elaborate the idea he had just expressed:
"Around and about here they are all dead—dead. No passion of any kind comes to light their existence. Their life is a thing done meanly, shudderingly withinthe shadow of the grave. That is how I have been seeing it for the past few weeks. They hate the occurrence of new people in their midst. They hate me already, and now they will hate you. The sight of us walking together like this must surely cause them to hate us still more."
She was wondering that his words should hold a sense of consideration for her, seeing that they had been acquainted only such a short while.
"This way leads from a graveyard to a graveyard, and they have a silly superstition that dead couples are sometimes seen walking here. Particularly dismal also do I consider this picture of their imagination. The idea of any one thinking us a dead couple!"
As he said this her blushing cheek showed certainly that life was strong in her.... Upon the wings of his words grand thoughts had gone flying through her mind. All day she had been looking forward with dread to the yellow, sickly, sunlit time after school. And now to think that the miracle of this romantic young man had happened.... Both grew silent. Rebecca's eyes were filling with visions and wandering over a field of young green corn. They were dancing upon the waves of sunlight which shimmered over all the clean, feathery surface of the field. The eyes of Ulick were straying from the landscape and dwelling upon her deeply, upon the curves of her throat and bosom, and upon the gentle billows of her hair. Over all his face was clouding that mysterious, murky expression which had come as he gazed upon the little barmaid of the "North Leinster Arms" a few days previously.
Rebecca wanted some light blouses. Those she possessed had survived through one summer, and it was all that could be expected of them. So one day she ran down to Brennan's, during the half hour allowed for recreation, to leave the order. When she entered the sewing-room Mrs. Brennan was busy at her machine. Her ever-tired eyes struggled into a beaming look upon Rebecca.
The young girl, with her rich body, seemed to bring a clean freshness into the room. For a moment the heavy smell of the miscellaneous materials about her died down in the nostrils of Mrs. Brennan. But this might have arisen from a lapse of other faculties occasioned by her agreeable surprise. So here was the new teacher who had so recently occupied her tongue to such an extent. She now beheld her hungrily.
Rebecca laid her small parcel of muslin upon the table, and became seated at the request of Mrs. Brennan.
"That's the grand day, ma'am," said she.
"'Tis the grand day indeed, miss," said Mrs. Brennan.
"Not nice, however, to be in a stuffy schoolroom."
"Indeed you might swear that, especially in such a school as Tullahanogue, with a woman like Mrs. Wyse; she's the nice-looking article of a mistress!"
Rebecca almost bounded in her chair. She hadfancied Mrs. Brennan, from the nature of her occupation, as a gabster, but she had not reckoned upon such a sudden and emphatic confirmation of her notion. Immediately she tried to keep the conversation from taking this turn, which, in a way, might bring it to a personal issue. But Mrs. Brennan was not to be baulked of her opportunity.
She began to favor her visitor with a biography of Mrs. Wyse. It was a comprehensive study, including all her aspects and phases. Her father and his exact character, and her mother and what she was. Her husband, and how the marriage had been arranged. How she had managed to gain her position. Everything was explained with a wealth of detail.
Rebecca out of the haze into which the garrulous recital had led her, spoke suddenly and reminded Mrs. Brennan of the passage of the half hour. Mrs. Brennan quickly fancied that the cause of the girl's lack of enthusiasm in this outpouring of information might have arisen from the fact that Mrs. Wyse had forestalled her with a previous attack. Thus, by a piece of swift transition, she must turn the light upon herself and upon the far, bright period of her young girlhood.
Now maybe Miss Kerr would like to look through the album of photos upon the table. This was a usual extension of feminine curiosity.... Rebecca opened the heavy, embossed album and began to turn over the pages.... There was a photo of a young girl near the beginning. She was of considerable beauty, even so far as could be discerned from this faded photo, taken in the early eighties. As Rebecca lingered over it, the face of Mrs. Brennan was lit by a sad smile.
"She was nice, and who might she have been?" said Rebecca.
"That was me when I was little and innocent," said Mrs. Brennan.
Rebecca looked from Mrs. Brennan to the photo, and again from the photo to Mrs. Brennan. She found it difficult to believe that this young girl, with the long, brown hair and the look of pure innocence in the fine eyes, could be the faded, anxious, gossipy woman sitting here at her labor in this room.... She thought of the years before herself and of all the tragedy of womanhood.... There was silence between them for a space. Mrs. Brennan appeared as if she had been overpowered by some sad thought, for not a word fell from her as she began to untie the parcel of blouse material her customer had brought. There was no sound in the wide noontide stillness save the light fall of the album leaves as they were being turned.... Rebecca had paused again, and this time was studying the photos of two young men set in opposite pages. Both were arrayed in the fashions of 1890, and each had the same correct, stiff pose by an impossible-looking pedestal, upon which a French-gray globe reposed. But there was a great difference to be immediately observed as existing between the two men. One was handsome and of such a hearing as instantly appeals to feminine eyes. It was curious that they should have been placed in such contiguous contradistinction, for the other man seemed just the very opposite in every way to the one who was so handsome. It could not have been altogether by accident, was Rebecca's thought, and, with the intuition of a woman at work in her, she proceeded to lay the foundations of aromance.... Mrs. Brennan was observing her closely, and it grew upon her that she had been destined to bare her soul to this girl in this moment.
"That was the nice young man," said Rebecca, indicating the one who, despite his stiff pose by the pedestal, looked soldierly with his great mustache.
"Indeed he was all that," said Mrs. Brennan. "I met him when I was away off in England. He was a rich, grand young man, and as fond of me as the day was long; but he was a Protestant and fearful of his people to change his religion, and to be sure I could not change mine. For the sake of me holy religion I gave up all thoughts of him and married Ned Brennan, whose likeness you see on the other page."
Rebecca lifted her eyes from the album and looked full at Mrs. Brennan. She wondered how much truth could be in this story. The dressmaker was a coarse woman and not at all out of place in this mean room. She imagined the heavy husband of her choice as a suitable mate for her.
This sudden adoption of the attitude of a kind of martyr did not seem to fit well upon her. Rebecca could not so quickly imagine her as having done a noble and heroic thing for which she had not received sufficient beatification.
Rebecca was still turning the leaves. She had hurried through this little pageant of other generations, and was at the last pages. Now she was among people of the present, and her attention was no longer held by the peculiarities of the costumes.... Her mind was beginning to wander. Suddenly she was looking down upon a photo in the older style and the anachronism wasstartling. Had it been placed in any other portion of the album she might not have so particularly noticed it. It was the likeness of a dark, handsome man on horseback.
"Who was he?" she said, almost unconsciously.
A flush passed over the face of Mrs. Brennan, but she recovered herself by an effort. She smiled queerly through her confusion and said:
"Indeed 'tis you who ought to know that."
"How should I know?"—Rebecca was amazed.
"Don't you know Ulick Shannon?"
It was now Rebecca's turn to be confused.
Fancy this woman knowing that she had been talking just once with Ulick Shannon.... Evidently the tongue of this place had already begun to curl around her.
"But this is not Ulick Shannon!" She blushed as she found herself speaking his name.
"No, but it is the photo of his dead father, Henry Shannon."
Mrs. Brennan heaved a great sigh as she said this. She rose from her seat by the machine and moved towards the place where Rebecca was bending over the album. She gazed down at the picture of the dead man with moist eyes.... There was silence between them now for what seemed a long time. Rebecca became alarmed as she thought that she might have overstayed the half hour. At the school the priest or the inspector might have called and found her absent from her post.
She broke in abruptly upon Mrs. Brennan's fit of introspection, and gave a few hurried orders about the blouses.
"Will you be giving me the making of your next new costume?" said Mrs. Brennan.
"Well, I'm sorry—I don't think so. You see I have it being made already in Dublin."
"In Dublin itself? Well, well! that'll be the great style."
She felt it as an affront to her reputation that any one who lived in the neighborhood should patronize other places for their needs. She took such doings as exhibitions of spite and malice against her. And, somehow, she could not get rid of the idea now, although this girl evidently knew nothing of her history.
She was seeing Rebecca to the door when John Brennan came up the little path. She introduced him, and told how he was her son and, with vanity in her tones, that he was going to be a priest.
"That'll give her something to think of, with her slighting me be telling how she was having her costume made be another. A woman that's going to have a son a priest ought to be good enough to make for her, and she a whipster that's after coming from God knows where."
The mind of Mrs. Brennan was saying this to itself as she stood there at her own door gazing in pride upon her son. Rebecca Kerr was looking up into his face with a laugh in her eyes. He was such a nice young fellow, she was thinking. John Brennan was blushing in the presence of this girl and glancing shyly at her hair.
Suddenly she broke away from them with a laughing word upon her lips, ran out to the road, and down towards the school.
"She's a very nice girl, mother."
"Oh! indeed she's not much, John; and I knew well I wouldn't like her from the very first I heard tell of her coming."
Large posters everywhere announced the holding of a concert in Garradrimna. As in many other aspects of life in the village, it was not given to John Brennan to see their full meaning. He had not even seen in Thomas James, who posted the bills, a symbolic figure, but only one whom disaster had overtaken through the pursuit of his passion. For many a year had Thomas James gone about in this way, foretelling some small event in the life of Garradrimna. Now it was a race-meeting or a circus, again an auction or a fair. All the while he had been slipping into his present condition, and herein lay the curious pathos of him. For he would never post like this the passing of his own life; he would never set up a poster of Eternity.
It was curious to think of that, no poster at all of the exact moment amid the mass of Time when the Great White Angel would blow his blast upon the Shining Trumpet to awaken all Earth by its clear, wide ringing across the Seven Seas.
John Brennan spoke to his mother of the concert.
"The cheek of them I do declare, with their concert. People don't find it hard enough to get their money without giving it to them. Bits of shop-boys and shop-girls! But I suppose they want new clothes and costumes for the summer. I'll go bail you'll see them girls with new hats after this venture."
"The bills announce that it is for the Temperance Club funds."
"And them's the quare funds, you might say, and the quare club. Young fellows and young girls meeting in the one room to get up plays. No good can come of it."
"Of course we need not attend if we don't like."
"Ah, we must go all the same. If we didn't, 'tis what they would say mebbe that we hadn't the means, and so we must let them know that we have. It wouldn't be nice to see you away from it."
"I have no desire to go, mother, I assure you. A quiet evening more or less will not matter."
"But sure it'll be a bit of diversion and amusement."
"Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking, so I didn't see anything very wrong in going or in supporting those who organized it. But if you don't care to go, it does not matter."
"Ah, but wouldn't it be the quare thing to see your mother ignorant and not having a word to say about what was after passing to any one that would come in, and they knowing the whole thing? Now what you'll do for me, John, is this. You'll go into Phillips's this evening and get two of the most expensive tickets, one for yourself and one for me."
John Brennan had a momentary realization of the pitiful vanity behind this speech. He remained thinking while she went upstairs for the price of the tickets, for that must be her object, he fancied, in ascending into the upper story. He could hear her moving a trunk and opening it. The sounds came to him with perfect clearness in the still room and struck him with a sense of their little mournfulness, even though he was quiteunaware that his mother had secretly begun the destruction of a bright portion of her life's dream.
In the evening he went to the village for the tickets.
"It'll be a grand turn-out," said Jimmy Phillips, as he took in the money and blinked in anticipation with his one eye.
"I'm sure," said John, as he left the little shop where you might buy the daily newspaper and sweets and everything.
He strolled up the street towards the old castle of the De Lacys. The local paper, published at Mullaghowen, was never tired of setting down its fame. The uncouth historians of the village had almost exhausted their adjectives in relating the exploits of this marauding baron of the Normans who had here built him a fortress, from which his companies of conquering freebooters had sallied forth so long ago. Yet, as an extraordinary mistake on the part of those who concerned themselves so intimately with the life around them, they had altogether missed the human side of the crumbling ruin. Of what romances of knighthood it had once been the scene? Of what visions of delight when fair women had met cuirassed gallants? Of all that pride which must have reared itself aloft in this place which was now the resort, by night, of the most humble creatures of the wild? Not one of them had ever been able to fancy the thoughts which must have filled the mind of Hugh De Lacy as he drew near this noble monument of his glory after some successful expedition against the chieftains of the Pale.
Through the thin curtain of the twilight John Brennan saw two figures stealing from the labyrinthine wayswhich led beneath the castle into what were known as "The Cells." These were dark, narrow places in which two together would be in close proximity, and it was out from them that this man and this woman were now stealing. He could not be certain of their identity, but they looked like two whom he knew.... And he had heard that Rebecca Kerr was going to sing at the concert, and also that Ulick Shannon was coaching the Garradrimna Dramatic Class in the play they were to produce, which was one he had seen at the Abbey Theater.... A curious thrill ran through him which was like a spasm of pain. Could it be this girl and this young man who had spoken with such disgusting intimacy of the female sex in the bar of the "North Leinster Arms" in Ballinamult ...? They went by a back way into the Club, where the rehearsals were now going forward.
John Brennan was sitting stiffly beside his mother in the front seats. Around and about him were people of renowned respectability, who had also paid two shillings each for their tickets. The seven publicans of Garradrimna were there, some with their wives, some with their wives and daughters, and some with their wives and daughters and sisters-in-law. The Clerk of the Union continually adjusting and re-adjusting his lemon-colored gloves. The old bespectacled maid from the Post Office sitting near the gray, bullet-headed postmaster, whose apoplectic jowl was shining. They were keeping up a continual chatter and buzz and giggle before the rise of the curtain. The jaws of the ancient postmistress never ceased to work, and those hot words of criticism and scorn which did not sizzle outwardlyfrom her lips dropped inwardly to feed the fire of her mind, which was a volcano in perpetual eruption.
Mrs. Brennan sat in silence by the side of her son, in the pride of his presence, glad that he and she were here. She was as fine as any of them, for she kept fine raiment for such occasions. In the first place as an advertisement for her craft of dressmaker, and, secondly, to afford a cloak for her past, even as those among whom she sat cloaked their pasts in heavy garments of pride. Her attention was concentrated not so much upon the performance she was about to witness as upon the audience assembled to witness it. To her the audience was the concert, and, although she was speaking no word, she was as nervously observant as the old postmistress. She was concerned by the task before her, for would she not be in honor bound to "go over" all that passed to any one who might happen into the sewing-room next day, and lay everything bare with a searching and deadly analysis for her son John? Thus was she not distracted by the chattering and giggling, but perfectly at ease while her mind worked nimbly within the limits of its purpose.
The mind of John Brennan was not enjoying the same contentment. He was a little excited by the presence of Rebecca Kerr on a seat adjacent. She had a place on the program, and was awaiting her time to appear. His eye was dwelling upon her hair, which lifted gracefully from her white neck in a smooth wave of gold. It was the fairest thing in this clouded place of human fumes, and the dear softness from which it sprang such a recess of beauty.
The concert had at last begun. Harry Holton, the comic, was holding the stage and the audience was inconvulsions. Harry Holton was a distant disciple of Harry Lauder. Having heard the funny Scotchman upon the gramophone he rather fancied that it was he who should have been Harry Lauder. In course of time, he had grown to think that it was Lauder and not himself who was doing the impersonation. His effort to be broadly Scotch, while the marks of the son of Erin were so strong upon him, was where, all unseen, his power to move towards laughter really lay. Yet the audience rocked its sides in crude mirth at this crude exhibition, and each man asked his neighbor was it not the funniest damned thing? The seven sleek publicans of Garradrimna threatened to explode.... John Brennan saw big beads of perspiration rise upon the comedian's brow and gleam in the sickly glare of the lamplight. Beyond the excitement, from behind the scenes, came a new sound—the popping of a cork—and through a chink in the back cloth he saw Ulick Shannon take his drink from the bottle.... Had Rebecca Kerr seen that as well as he or——. But his speculation was cut short by the exit of the comedian after many encores, amidst tumultuous applause.
Next came Agnes McKeon, a near relation of Monica's and the schoolmistress of Ballinamult. Her big spectacles gave her the look of her profession, and although she sang well in a pleasing contralto, she appeared stiff and unalluring in her white dress, which was starched to a too strong resplendence. John heard two old maids with scraggy necks remarking, not upon the power of Miss McKeon's voice, but upon the extraordinary whiteness of her dress, and saying it was grand surely, but they anxiously wondered were all her garments as cleanfor they were ready to credit her with extreme slovenliness of habit.
The play was the notable event of the evening. Although the work of a famous Abbey playwright, it had been evidently re-written for Harry Holton, who was the principal character. It was purely a Harry Holton show. Dramatic point and sequence were sacrificed to give scope to his renowned abilities. The other players would seem to have merged themselves to give him prominence. But the ladies had not merged their natural vanity. One in particular, who was supposed to represent an old woman of Ireland, wore an attractive dress which was in the prevailing fashion. It was the illiterate pronunciation of even the simplest words which chiefly amused John Brennan. Herein might be detected the touch of Ulick Shannon, who, in coaching the production, had evidently added this means of diversion for his own amusement. John fancied that his friend must be enjoying it hugely in there behind the scenes.
When the play had been concluded by Harry Holton giving a few steps of a dance, John Brennan saw Rebecca moving towards the stage. He observed the light grace with which she went to the ordeal. Here was no self-consciousness, but instead that easy quietness which is a part of dignity.... It was Ulick Shannon who held aside the curtain allowing her to pass in upon the stage.
"Well now, isn't that one the brazen thing?"
This was the expression of opinion which came clearly from out the whispering and giggling. It was an unpardonable offense to appear in public like this without a certain obvious fluttering and fear which it wasone of Garradrimna's most notable powers to create. It was a great flout. Even his mother was moved to nudge him, so unusual was the method of this strange girl, appearing in public before the place into which she had come to earn a living.
But she was singing. Rebecca Kerr was singing, and to John Brennan this was all he wished to know. He trembled as he listened and grew weary with delight. He became nervous, as before some unaccountable apprehension, and turned to his mother. She was looking quizzically at the girl on the stage. But the stage to him was now a sort of haze through which there moved ever little dancing specks.
The concert was over and his mind had not yet returned to realization. Rebecca had not come from behind the scenes. He moved with his mother out into the night, and, as they went, glanced around the corner of the hall. He saw Rebecca Kerr and Ulick Shannon standing within the shadow of the surrounding wood. He spoke no word to his mother as they went down the road towards the house in the valley.
As if from the excitement of the concert, John Brennan felt weary next morning. He had been awake since early hours listening to the singing of the birds in all the trees near the house. The jolly sounds came to him as a great comfort. Consequently it was with an acute sensation of annoyance that there crowded in upon his sense of hearing little distracting noises. Now it was the heavy rumble of a cart, again the screech of a bicycle ridden by Farrell McGuinness on his way to Garradrimna for the letters of his rounds; and, continually, the hard rasp of nailed boots upon the gravel of the road.
His mother was moving about in the sewing-room beneath. He could hear the noise made by her scissors as, from time to time, she laid it down and picked it up again, while, mingled with these actions, occasionally came up to him the little, unmusical song of the machine. His father was still snoring.
Last night Rebecca Kerr had shone in his eyes.... But how exactly had she appeared before the eyes of Garradrimna and the valley? After what manner would she survive the strong blast of talk? The outlook of his mother would be representative of the feeling which had been created. Yet he felt that it would be repugnant to him to speak with his mother of Rebecca Kerr. There would be that faded woman,looking at him with a kind of loving anxiety which seemed always to have the effect of crushing him back relentlessly towards the realities of the valley and his own reality. After his thoughts of last night and this morning he hated to face his mother.
When at last he went down into the room where she sat sewing he had such an unusual look in his eyes as seemed to require the solace of an incident to fill it. If he had expected to find a corresponding look upon his mother's face he was disappointed. It seemed to wear still the quizzical expression of last night, and a slight curl at the corners of her mouth told that her mind was being sped by some humorous or satirical impulse.
"Whatever was the matter with you last night, John?" she asked.
She did not give him time to frame an answer, but went on:
"And I dying down dead to talk to you about the concert, I could not get you to speak one word to me and we coming home."
He noticed that she was in good heart, and, although it was customary with him to be pleased to see his mother in a mood of gladness, he could not enter into laughter and gossip with her now.
But she could not be silent. This small expedition into the outer world of passing events was now causing her mind to leap, with surprising agility, from topic to topic.... Yet what was striking John more than her talk, and with a more arresting realization, was, that although the hour of his Mass-going was imminent, she was not reminding him or urging him to remembranceof the good custom.... At last he was driven by some scruple to remind her of the time, and it was her answer that finally amazed him:
"Ah, sure you mightn't go to-day, John. You're tired and all to that, I know, and I want to tell you.... He! he! he! Now wasn't it the funniest thing to see the schoolmistress of Ballinamult and the schoolmistress of Tullahanogue and they up upon the one stage with Harry Holton's dramatics making sport for a lot of grinning idiots? Like a couple of circus girls they were, the brazen things! Indeed Miss Kerr is the bold-looking hussy, with not a bit of shame in her at all. But sure we may say she fell among her equals, for there wasn't much class connected with it anyhow."
"I think Ulick Shannon was knocking about the stage."
The words strayed, without much sense of meaning or direction, out of the current of his musing, but they produced a swift and certain effect upon Mrs. Brennan. Her eyes seemed to cloud suddenly behind her glasses.
"Aye ... I wonder who was the girl he went off with through the wood as we came out. Never fear it was the new schoolmistress."
She said this with a curious, dead quietness in her tones, and when she had spoken she seemed instantly sorry that the words had slipped from her lips.... It seemed a queer thing to say to her son and he going on to be a priest.
John thought it very strange that she too should have observed this incident, which he had imagined must have been hidden from all eyes save his own. He now wondered how many more must have seen it as he triedto recall the sensations with which it had filled him.... But beyond this remarkable endeavor of his mind his mother was again speaking:
"If you went now, you'd be in time for half-past eight Mass."
He did not fail to notice the immediate change which had taken place in her, and wondered momentarily what could have been its sudden cause. He was beginning to notice of late that she had grown more and more subject to such unaccountable fits.
In his desire to obey her he was still strong, but, this morning, as he walked along to Garradrimna he was possessed by a certain feeling of annoyance which seemed to strain the bond that stretched between them.
In the chapel he knelt beside Charlie Clarke, like the voteens around them, with a lifeless acquiescence in the ceremony. He was here not because his heart was here, but merely because his mother had wished it. When his lips moved, in mechanical mimicry of the priest, he felt that the way of the hypocrite must be hard and lonely.
When he came out, upon the road he was confused to find himself face to face with Rebecca Kerr. It seemed a trick of coincidence that he should meet her now, for it had never happened on any other morning. Then he suddenly remembered how his mother had kept him late from "eight o'clock" by her talk of the concert, and it was now Miss Kerr's school-going time.... She smiled and spoke to him.
She looked handsome as she moved there along the road from the house of Sergeant McGoldrick to the Girls' School of Tullahanogue. She was in harmony with the beauty of the morning. There had been a dullpain upon his mind since he had last seen her, but already it was gone.
Although the concert might appear as the immediate subject to which their minds would turn, this was not so. They began to talk of places and things away from Garradrimna.
She spun for his amusement many little yarns of the nuns who conducted the college where she had been trained. He told her stories of the priests who taught in the English college where he was being educated for the priesthood. They enlarged upon the peculiarities of monastic establishments.
"And you're going to be a priest?" she said, looking up into his face suddenly with dancing eyes.
Such a question had never before been put to him in exactly this way.
"I am.... At least, I think so.... Oh, yes!" he faltered.
She laughed in a ringing, musical way that seemed to hold just the faintest trace of mockery in its tones, but it seemed, next instant, to be only by way of preface to another conventual tale which she proceeded to tell.
Through the period of this story they did not notice that they were being stared at by those they were meeting upon the road.... As she chatted and laughed, his eyes would be straying, in spite of him, to that soft place upon her neck from which her hair sprang upward.
It was with painful abruptness that she said: "Good morning, Mr. Brennan!" and went into the old, barrack-like school.
When John regained the house he saw that his father's boots had disappeared from their accustomed place beside the fire. No doubt he had gone away in them to Garradrimna. He had not met him on the road, but there was a short way across the fields and through the woods, a backward approach to three of the seven publichouses along which Ned Brennan, some rusty plumber's tool in his hand and his head downcast, might be seen passing on any day.
He did not go straight into the sewing-room, for the door was closed and he could hear the low murmur of talk within. It must be some customer come to his mother, he thought, or else some one who had called in off the road to talk about the concert. Immediately he realized that he was wrong in both surmises, for it was the voice of Marse Prendergast raised in one of its renowned outbursts of supplication.
"Now I suppose it's what you think that you're the quare, clever woman, Nan Byrne, with your refusing me continually of me little needs; but you'd never know what I'd be telling on you some day, and mebbe to your grand son John."
"Sssh—sssh—sure I'll get it for you when he goes from the kitchen."
This last was in a low tone and spoken by his mother.
"Mebbe it's what you're ashamed to let him see yougiving to me. That's a grand thing now, and I knowing what I know!"
"Can't you be easy now and maybe 'tis a whole shilling I'll be giving you in a few minutes."
This was altogether too generous of his mother. It gave scope to Marse Prendergast to exercise her tyranny. Her threat was part of the begging convention she had framed for herself, and so it did not move him towards speculation or suspicion. His mind drifted on to the enjoyment of other thoughts, the girl he had just walked with down the valley, the remembered freshness of the morning road. He came out to the door. The little kitchen garden stretched away from his feet. An abandoned spade stood up lonely and erect in the middle of the cabbage-plot. Around it were a few square feet of freshly-turned earth. It was the solitary trace of his existence that his father had left behind.... As the mind of John Brennan came to dwell upon the lonely spectacle of the spade the need for physical exertion grew upon him.
He went out into the little garden and lifted the rude implement of cultivation in his hand. He had not driven it many times into the soft clay of the cabbage-bed when a touch of peace seemed to fall upon him. The heavy burden that had occupied his mind was falling into the little trench that was being made by the spade.
He had become so interested in his task that he had not heard his mother go upstairs nor seen Marse Prendergast emerge from the house some moments later.
The old shuiler called out to him in her high, shrill voice:
"That's right, John! That's right! 'Tis glad myself is to see you doing something useful at last. Digging the cabbage-plot, me sweet gosoon, and your father in Garradrimna be this time with his pint in his hand!"
Mrs. Brennan had followed her to the door, and her cruelty was stirred to give the sore cut by reviving the old dread.
"That's the lad! That's the lad! But mind you don't dig too far, for you could never tell what you'd find. And indeed it would be the quare find you might say!"
He laughed as she said this, for he remembered that, as a child she had entertained him with the strangest stories of leprecauns and their crocks of gold, which were hidden in every field. The old woman passed out on the road, and his mother came over to him with a pitiful look of sadness in her eyes.
"Now, John, I'm surprised at you to have a spade in your hand before Marse Prendergast and all. That's your father's work and not yours, and you with your grand education."
The speech struck him as being rather painful to hear, and he felt as if he should like to say: "Well, what is good enough for my father ought to be good enough for me!" But this, to his mother, might have looked like a back-answer, a piece of impertinence, so he merely stammered in confusion: "Oh, sure I was only exercising and amusing myself. When this little bit is finished I'm going down to have a read by the lake."
"That's right, John!" she said in a flat, sad voice, and turned back to her endless labor.
He stopped, his hands folded on the handle-end of thespade, and fell into a condition of dulness which even the slightest labor of the body brings to those unaccustomed to it. All things grew so still of a sudden. There seemed to come a perfect lull in the throbbing, nervous realization of his brain from moment to moment.... He felt himself listening for the hum of his mother's machine, but it was another sound that came to him—the desolating sound of her lonely sobbing. She was crying to herself there now in the sewing-room and mourning forever as if for some lost thing.... There were her regular sobs, heavy with an eternal sadness as he listened to them. Into such acute self-consciousness had his mood now moved that he could not imagine her crying as being connected with anything beyond himself. He was the perpetual cause of all her pain.... If only she would allow him, for short spaces, to go out of her mind they might both come into the enjoyment of a certain freedom, but sometimes the most trivial incident seemed to put her out so. This morning she had been in such heart and humor, and last night so interested in the concert, and here now she was in tears. It could not have been the visit of Marse Prendergast or her talk, for there was nobody so foolish, he thought, as to take any notice of either. It must have been the digging and the fact that people passing the road might see him. Now was not that foolish of her, for did not Father O'Keeffe himself dig in his own garden with his own two blessed hands ...? But he must bend in obedience to her desire, and go walking like a leisured gentleman through the valley. He was looking forward to this with dread, for, inevitably, it must throw him back upon his own thoughts.
As he came down past the school he could hear a dull drone from among the trees. The school had not yet settled down to the business of the day, and the scholars were busy with the preparation of their lessons. John stopped by the low wall, which separated its poor playground from the road, to gaze across at the hive of intellect. Curious that his mother should now possess a high contempt for this rude academy where he had been introduced to learning. But he had not yet parted company with his boyhood. He was remembering the companions of his schooldays and how this morning preparation had been such a torture. Still moving about the yard before his formal entrance to the school, was Master Donnellan. As John Brennan saw him now he appeared as one misunderstood by the people of the valley, and yet as one in whom the lamp of the intellect was set bright and high. But beyond this immediate thought of him he appeared as a man with overthrown ambitions and shattered dreams, whose occasional outbursts of temper for these reasons had often the effect of putting him at enmity with the parents of the children.
Master Donnellan was a very slave of the ferrule. He had spent his brains in vain attempts to impart some knowledge to successive generations of dunces of the fields. It had been his ambition to be the means of producing some great man whose achievements in the world might be his monument of pride. But no pupil of his in the valley school had ever arisen as a great man. Many a time, in the long summer evenings, when the day would find it hard to disappear from Ireland, he would come quietly to the old school with a step ofreverence, and going into the moldy closet, where all the old roll-books and register-books were kept, take them down one by one and go searching through the lists of names. His mind would be filled with the ringing achievements of men who had become notable in the world.... Not a trace of any of those famous names could he find here, however far he might search in all the musty books until the day had faded.... Then he would rely upon his memory in a further aspect of his search. He had not even produced a local great man. In his time no priests had come out of the valley. There was a strange thing now—no priests, and it was a thing that was always said by angry mothers and fathers when they called at the valley school to attack him for his conduct towards their children—"And you never to have made a priest or a ha'porth!" It was not the unreasonableness of their words that annoyed him, but rather the sense of impotence with which they filled him.... If only it would happen that he could say he had produced one famous man. A priest would be sufficiently fine to justify him in the eyes of the valley. It was so strange that, although he had seen many young men move towards high attainment, some fatality had always happened to avert his poor triumph. He thought of young Brennan as his present hope and pride.
John went on towards the lake. When he came to the water's edge he was filled with a sense of peace. He sat down beneath one of the fir trees and, in the idleness of his mood, began to pick up some of the old dried fir-cones which were fallen beneath. They appeared to him as things peculiarly bereft of any sap or life. Hegathered until he had a handful and then cast them from him one by one on the surface of the water. It seemed a surprising thing that the small eddies which the light splashes of them made rolled distantly to the shores of the little lake. He began to wonder would his life come to be like that—a small thing to be flung by the Hand of Fate and creating its little ripple to eddy to the far shores of Time.
"Me sound man, John!"
It was the voice of Shamesy Golliher coming from behind a screen of reeds where he had been fishing.
"'Tis a warm day," he said, pushing back his faded straw hat from his brow, "Glory be to the Son of God!"
This was a pious exclamation, but the manner of its intonation seemed to make it comical for John Brennan laughed and Shamesy Golliher laughed.
"Now isn't them the clever, infernal little gets of fishes? The divil a one can I catch only the size of pinkeens, and I wanting to go to Garradrimna with a hell of a thirst!"
"And is that all you have troubling you?" said John.
"Is that all? Begad if it isn't enough after last night. If the priests knew all the drink that bees drunk at concerts in aid of Temperance Halls you wouldn't see a building of that kind in the country.
"Now down with me last night to the concert with me two lovely half-pints of malt. Well, to make a long story short, I finished one of them before I went in. I wasn't long inside, and I think it was while Harry Holton was singing, when who should give me a nudge only Hubert Manning: 'Are ye coming out, Shamesy?' says he. He had two bottles of stout and a naggin, andwe had them finished before Harry Holton had done his first song. I was striving for to crush back into me place when who should I knock against only Farrell McGuinness? He had a lot of bottles in his pocket. He seemed to have about four dozen of stout on his person, according to the noise he made: 'For the honor of Jases,' says he, 'will you not spill me porter?' But then when he saw it was me he had in it: 'Come to hell oura this,' says he, 'into the night air.' I was so glad to see that he hadn't broken his bottles, I introduced th'other half pint. Sure he nearly swallowed it, bottle and all. Then we fell to at the porter, and such a bloody piece of drinking never was seen. And it wasn't that we had plenty of drink of our own, but strange people were coming running through the wood putting half-pints and naggins into our mouths just as if we were little sucking childer. I fell a corpse under a tree about eleven. I don't know how long I was insensible, but when I came to I had a quare feeling that I was in Hell or some place. I wasn't able to move an inch, I was that stiff and sick.... Somewhere near me I could hear two whispering and hugging in the darkness. They were as close as ever they could be. I couldn't stir to get a better look for fear they'd hear me. But there was quare goings on I can tell you, things I wouldn't like to mention or describe. Whisper, I'm near sure it was Ulick Shannon and the schoolmistress, Miss Kerr, or whatever the hell her name is——."
Shamesy's sickening realism was brought to an abrupt end by the ducking of his cork, which had been floating upon the surface of the water. There was a short moment of joyous excitement and then a dyingperch lay on the grass by the side of John Brennan.
He viewed with sorrow that clean, shining thing wriggling there beneath the high heavens. Its end had come through the same pitiful certainty as that of the rabbits which had aforetime contributed to the thirst of Shamesy, who presently said with delight:
"Now I have the correct number. I can sell them for sixpence in 'The World's End,' and you'd never know the amount of good drink that sixpence might bring."
He prepared to take his departure, but ere he went across the hill he turned to John and said:
"That was the fine walk you were doing with Ulick Shannon's girl this morning! She was in great form after last night."
He said it with such a leer of suggestion as cast John, still blushing, back into his gloom.