More than ever on this morning was Rebecca aware that the keen eye of Mrs. Wyse was upon her as she moved about the schoolroom. One of the bigger girls was despatched to the other school for Monica McKeon and Master Donnellan's assistant came in to Mrs. Wyse. She nodded the customary greeting to Rebecca as she passed in. This interview was unusual at such an early hour of the day. But it was never the custom of either of them to tell her of what they were talking. As she busied herself teaching the very smallest of the children she felt that the eyes of both women were upon her.
After what appeared to be a very long time Monica passed out. On this second occasion she looked loftily across her glasses and gave no nod of acknowledgment to Rebecca. Rebecca blushed at this open affront. She felt that Mrs. Wyse must have something against her, something she had told Monica just now.... And now the principal was exceedingly busy with her pen as if writing a hurried note.... Rebecca heard the high, coarse voice raised in command:
"Euphemia McGoldrick, I want you!"
Then came the timid "Yes, ma'am!" of Euphemia.
"Here are two letters, child. Take this one to Father O'Keeffe, your parish priest, and this to your mother, like a good child."
"Yes'm!"
Some fear of unknown things began to stir in the breast of Rebecca. This connection of Mrs. McGoldrick with Mrs. Wyse's occupation of the morning seemed to announce some dragging of her into the matter. But as yet, although her mind moved tremulously in its excitement, she had, curiously enough, no suspicion of what was about to happen. It could not be that Mrs. Wyse had suspected. Oh, not at all. There was still no danger. But it might be a near thing.... Already she had begun to wonder would Ulick come to-night. But of course he would come. He was not such a bad fellow. And he might be taken up with his own condition just now. He had missed his examination in Dublin: missed it, maybe, through his foolishness in coming to see her.... But already she had thoroughly blamed herself for this.... To ease the pain of her mind she went busily about her work. She knew that the eye of Mrs. Wyse was upon her and that the very best way of defeating it was by putting on this air of industry. The day, in its half-hour divisions, was passing rapidly towards noon.
A little girl came quickly in to say that Father O'Keeffe was coming up the road. Rebecca glanced out of the window and, sure enough, there he was upon his big, fat, white horse coming into the yard. She heard his loud cries calling into the Boys' School "for a chap to come out and hold his horse." When the boy came to do his bidding he held forth at great length upon the best way of leading "King Billy" around the yard.
Then the reverend manager of Tullahanogue Schools moved into the female portion of the establishment. At the door he twisted his round face into an aspect of severity which was still humorous in its alien incongruity. Here also he removed his hat from his head, which was white and bald like the apex of an egg above the red curve of his countenance. It was his custom to visit the schools of which he was manager, thus precociously to make up in some way for what he lacked in educational knowledge and enthusiasm. As his short, squat figure moved up the passage by the desks, the massive head bowed low upon the broad chest and the fat fingers of both hands coiled behind his back, he was not at all unlike an actor made up as Napoleon Bonaparte. His voice was disciplined in the accents of militarism and dictatorship.
Rebecca noticed on the instant that to-day he was as one intensified. He began to slap his legs continuously with his silver-mounted riding whip. He did not speak to her as he passed in. But, although it caused her heart to flutter for a moment, this appeared to her as no unusual occurrence. He never took notice of her unless when she called at the vestry after Mass upon occasion to deliver up a slice of her salary in Dues and Offerings. Then the Napoleonic powerfulness disappeared and he fell to talking, with laughter in his words, about the richness of Royal Meath in comparison with the wild barrenness of Donegal.
He moved up to where Mrs. Wyse was at work. Rebecca could distinctly hear the loud "Well, what's your best news?" with which he always prefaced his conversations. In low whispers they began tocommunicate.... It was not till now that she began to have immense doubts as to the purpose of his visit, and already she was trembling in presence of the little children.
"An example of her, Father!"
"Oh yes, an example of her. Nothing less, Mrs. Wyse!"
The words came down to Rebecca clearly through the deep silence that had fallen upon the school since the entrance of Father O'Keeffe. The bigger girls were listening, listening in a great hush of patience for all that had to be reported when they went home. Each one was preparing for her respective examination—
"Was there any one in the school to-day?"
"Yes, mother!"
"Who, the inspector?"
"No, the Priest!"
"Father O'Keeffe?"
"Well, anything else?"
"He was talking to Mrs. Wyse."
"And what was he saying?"
"I couldn't hear, mother, so I couldn't."
"And why didn't you listen? What am I slaving myself to send you to school for?"
And so they were listening with such eagerness now. They were looking down at Rebecca as if she were the object of the whole discussion. Her thoughts were beginning to well into a swirling unconsciousness.... Great sounds, like those of roaring cataracts and the drumming of mighty armies were rolling up to her ears.
Father O'Keeffe and Mrs. Wyse now came down the schoolroom together. As they passed Rebecca, Father O'Keeffe beckoned to her with his riding-whip in the wayone might call to a very inferior hireling. Shaken by unique and powerful impulses, she went out into the hall-way to meet her superiors.... Instantaneously she knew what had happened—they knew.
"Well, isn't this a nice thing?" began Father O'Keeffe.
"Ye might say it's a nice thing, Father!" echoed Mrs. Wyse.
"An enormous thing!"
"A terrible thing! Father!"
"You're a nice lady!" he said, addressing Rebecca angrily. "To come into a parish where there is none save decent people to leave a black disgrace upon it and you going away!"
"Was ever the like known, Father? And just imagine her keeping it so secret. Why we thought there was nothing in this affair with Ulick Shannon. There was such an amount of cuteness in the way they used to meet at times and in places we never knew of. In the woods, I suppose!"
Father O'Keeffe was addressing her directly again.
"Why, when I think of the disgrace to this school and all that, it drives me near mad."
"And, mind you, the shocking insult it is to me and to the little children."
"The shocking insult to you and to the little children. True for you, Mrs. Wyse."
"And when I think of how you have contrived to besmirch the fair name of one of the fine, respectable families of the parish, gentlemen, as you might say, without one blot upon their escutcheon."
"People as high up as the Houlihans of Clonabroney."
"People as high up as the Houlihans of Clonabroney, Mrs. Wyse."
His eye was upon Rebecca with a sudden gleam.
"When I think of that, I consider it an enormous offense...." She did not flinch before them. She was thinking only of the way in which they had come to hear it.... She was concerned now that Ulick should not suffer, that his grand family name should not be dragged down with hers.... If he had not come to her she would have slipped away without a word.... And now to think that it had become public. The previous burning of her mind had been nothing to this.... But Father O'Keeffe was still speaking:
"Listen to me, girl! You are to go from hence, but not, as you may imagine, to the place from whence you came. For this very evening I intend to warn your pastor of your lapse from virtue while in our midst, so that you may not return to your father's house and have no more hope of teaching in any National school within the four seas of Ireland."
"That is only right and proper, Father!" put in Mrs. Wyse.
Rebecca was not listening or else she might have shuddered within the shadow of the torture his words held for her. In these moments she had soared far beyond them.... Through the high mood in which she was accepting her tragedy she was becoming exalted.... What glorious moments there would be, what divine compensation in whispering of the torture surrounding its beginning to the little child when it came?
"So now, Rebecca Kerr, I command you to go forthfrom this school and from the little children that you corrupt towards your own abomination by further presence among them."
As he moved angrily out of the school she moved quietly, and without speaking a word, to take her coat and hat down from the rack.
"Oh, wait!" commanded Mrs. Wyse, "you must not leave until three, until you have made an example of yourself here in a way that all the children may bring home the story. God knows it will be the hard thing for them to be telling their mothers when they go home. The poor little things!"
Rebecca stood there desolately alone in the hall-way through the remainder of the afternoon. In one aspect she appeared as a bold child being thus corrected by a harsh superior. On many more occasions than appeared absolutely necessary Monica McKeon passed and repassed her there as she stood so lonely. The assistant of the Boys' School was a model of disdain as, with her lip curled, she looked away out over her glasses. And ever and anon Mrs. Wyse passed in and out, muttering mournfully to herself:
"The cheek of that now, before the children and all!"
And the elder girls moved about her in a procession of sneering. They knew, and they were examining her for the purpose of giving full accounts when they went home.
But, occasionally, some of the little ones would come and gaze up into her eyes with wild looks. Although they did not know why, they seemed to possess for her an immense, mute pity.
"Poor Miss Kerr!" they would say, stroking her dress, but their big sisters would come and whisk them away.
"Don't touch her. She's dirty——" Then Monica would pass again. At last she heard the merciful stroke of three.
When John Brennan went to his room after his father's outburst it was with the intention of doing some preparation for the morrow's work at the college; but although he opened several books in turn, he could feel no quickening of knowledge in his mind.... There she was again continually recurring to his thoughts. And now she was far grander. This was the fear that had always been hidden in his heart,—that somehow her friendship with Ulick was not a thing that should have happened. But he had considered it a reality he could not attempt to question. Yet he knew that but for Ulick she must be very near to him. And Ulick had admitted his unworthiness, and so the separation was at an end.
It was surprising that this should have happened now. His mind sprang back to all that tenderness with which his thoughts of her had been surrounded through these long days of dreaming, when he had contrived to meet her, as if by accident, on her way from school.
All through the next day his heart was upon her; the thought of her would give peace. Into every vacant moment she would come with the full light of her presence. He had suddenly relapsed into the mood that had imprisoned him after the summer holidays. He stood aloof from Father Considine and did not wish to see him through the whole of his long day in the college at Ballinamult.... All the way home he pictured her. She wasluring him now as she had always lured him—towards a fairer vision of the valley.
He noticed how the summer was again flooding over the fields like a great river spilling wide. It was a glorious coincidence that she should be returning to him now, a creature of brightness at a time of beauty.
The road seemed short this pleasant afternoon, and the customary feeling of dusty weariness was not upon him as he leapt lightly off the bicycle at his mother's door. Mrs. Brennan came out to meet him eagerly. This was no unusual occurrence now that he had again begun to ascend the ladder of the high condition she had planned for him. She was even a far prouder woman now, for, somehow, she had always half remembered the stain of charity hanging over his uprise in England. Besides this he was nearer to her, moving intimately through the valley, a living part of her justification.... Her fading eyes now looked out tenderly at her son. There seemed to be a great light in them this afternoon, a great light of love for him.... He was moved beneath their gaze. And still she continued to smile upon him in a weak way as within the grip of some strong excitement. He saw when he entered that his dinner was not set out as usual on the white table in the kitchen.... She brought him into the sewing-room. And still she had the same smile trembling upon her lips and the same light in her eyes.... All this was growing mysterious and oppressive. But his mood was proof against sad influences. It must be some tale of good fortune come to their house of which his mother had now to tell.
"D'ye know what, John? The greatest thing ever is after happening!"
"Is that a fact, mother?"
"Though mebbe 'tis not right for me to tell you and you all as one as a priest, I may say. But sure you're bound to hear it, and mebbe a little knowledge of the kind might not be amiss even to one in your exalted station. And then to make it better, it concerns two very near friends of yours, Mr. Ulick Shannon and Miss Rebecca Kerr, I thank you!"
John Brennan's mind leaped immediately to interest. Were they gone back to one another, and after what he had thought to-day? This was the question his lips carried inwardly to himself.
"I don't know how I can tell you. But Father O'Keeffe was at school to-day in a great whet. He made a show of her before the children, Mrs. Wyse and Miss McKeon, of course, giving him good help. He dismissed her, and told her to go about her business. He'll mebbe speak of her publicly from the altar on Sunday."
"And what is it, mother, what—?"
"Oh, she's going to have a misfortune, me son. She's going to be a mother, God bless us all! and not married or a ha'porth!"
"O God!"
"But sure she put in for nothing else, with her going up and all that to Dublin to have her dresses made, instead of getting them done nice and quiet and modest and respectable be me. I may tell you that I was more than delighted to hear it."
"Well now, and the—"
John was biting his lips in passion, but she took another view of it as she interrupted him.
"Ah, you may well ask whoheis, who but that scoundrel Ulick Shannon, that I was never done asking you not to speak to. You were young and innocent, of course, and could not be expected to know what I know. But mebbe you'll avoid him now, although I think he won't be long here, for mebbe Father O'Keeffe'll run him out of the parish. Maybe not though, for his uncle has bags of money. Indeed I wouldn't put it apast him ifhewas the lad encouraged him to this, for the Shannons were always blackguards in their hearts.... But it'll be great to hear Father O'Keeffe on Sunday. I must be sure and go to his Mass. Oh, it'll be great to hear him!"
"Yes, I suppose it will be great to hear him."
John spoke out of the gathering bitterness of his heart.
"I wonder what'll become of her now. I wonder where'll she go. Oh, to Dublin, I suppose. She was always fond of it."
His mother was in a very ecstasy of conjecture as to the probable extent of Rebecca's fate. And this was the woman who had always expressed a melting tenderness in her actions towards him. This was his mother who had spoken now with all uncharitableness. There was such an absence of human pity in her words as most truly appalled him.... Very quickly he saw too that it was upon his own slight connection with this tragic thing her mind was dwelling. This was to him now a token, not of love, but rather of enormous selfishness.... Her eyes were upon him still, watering in admiration with a weak gleam.... The four walls seemed to be moving in to crush him after the manner of some medieval torture chamber.... Within them, too, was beginning to rise a horrid stench as of dead human things.... Thisghastliness that had sprung up between mother and son seemed to have momentarily blotted out the consciousness of both. They stared at one another now with glassy, unseeing eyes.
After three Rebecca took her lonely way from the school. Neither Mrs. Wyse nor Monica McKeon had a word for her at parting. Neither this woman, who was many times a mother, nor this girl who might yet be a mother many times. They were grinning loudly and passing some sneer between them, as they moved away from one another alone.
Down the valley road she went, the sunlight dazzling her tired eyes. A thought of something that had happened upon this day last year came with her remembrance of the date. It was the first anniversary of some slight, glad event that had brought her happiness, and yet what a day it was of dire happening? Just one short year ago she had not known the valley or Ulick or this fearful thing.... There were friends about her on this day last year and the sound of laughter, and she had not been so far distant from her father's house. And, O God! to think that now she was so much alone.
Suddenly she became aware that there was some one running by her side and calling "Miss Kerr! Miss Kerr!"
"Oh, Janet Comaskey!" she said, turning. "Is it you?"
"Yes, Miss Kerr. I want to tell you that I was talking to God last night, and I was telling Him about you. He asked me did I like you, and I said I did. 'And so do I,' said He. 'I like Miss Kerr very much,' He said, 'for she's very nice, very, very nice.'"
Rebecca had never disliked this queer child, but she loved her now, and bending down, warmly kissed her wild face.
"Thanks, miss. I only wanted to tell you about God," said Janet, dropping behind.
Rebecca was again alone, but now she was within sight of the house of Sergeant McGoldrick. It seemed to be dozing there in the sunlight. She began to question herself did those within already know ...? Now that the full publicity of her condition seemed imminent an extraordinary feeling of vanity was beginning to take possession of her. She took off her dust-coat and hung it upon her arm. Thus uncloaked she would face the eyes of Mrs. McGoldrick and her daughters, Euphemia and Clementina, and the eyes, very probably, of John Ross McGoldrick and Neville Chamberlain McGoldrick....
But when she entered the house she experienced the painful stillness of a tomb-like place. There was no one to be seen. She went upstairs with a kind of faltering in her limbs, but her head was erect and her fine eyes were flashing.... Even still was she soaring beyond and beyond them. Her eye was caught by a note pinned upon her door. It seemed very funny and, despite her present condition of confusion and worry, she smiled, for this was surely a melodramatic trick that Mrs. McGoldrick had acquired from the character of her reading.... Still smiling, she tore it open. It read like a proclamation, and was couched in the very best handwriting of Sergeant McGoldrick.
"Miss Kerr,Rev. Louis O'Keeffe, P.P., Garradrimna, has givennotice that, on account of certain deplorable circumstances, we are to refuse you permission to lodge with us any longer. This we hasten to do without any regret, considering that, to oblige you at the instigation of Father O'Keeffe, we broke the Regulation of the Force, which forbids the keeping of lodgers by any member of that body. We hereby give you notice to be out of this house by 6 p.m. on this evening, May —, 19—, having, it is understood, by that time packed up your belongings and discharged your liabilities to Mrs. McGoldrick. Father O'Keeffe has, very magnanimously, arranged that Mr. Charles Clarke is to call for you with his motor and take you with all possible speed to the station at Kilaconnaghan.Sylvester McGoldrick (Sergeant, R.I.C.)."
"Miss Kerr,
Rev. Louis O'Keeffe, P.P., Garradrimna, has givennotice that, on account of certain deplorable circumstances, we are to refuse you permission to lodge with us any longer. This we hasten to do without any regret, considering that, to oblige you at the instigation of Father O'Keeffe, we broke the Regulation of the Force, which forbids the keeping of lodgers by any member of that body. We hereby give you notice to be out of this house by 6 p.m. on this evening, May —, 19—, having, it is understood, by that time packed up your belongings and discharged your liabilities to Mrs. McGoldrick. Father O'Keeffe has, very magnanimously, arranged that Mr. Charles Clarke is to call for you with his motor and take you with all possible speed to the station at Kilaconnaghan.
Sylvester McGoldrick (Sergeant, R.I.C.)."
The official look of the pronouncement seemed only to increase its gloomy finality, but the word "magnanimously," fresh from the dictionary at the Barrack, made her laugh outright. The offense she had committed was unnamed, too terrible for words. She was being sentenced like a doomed Easter rebel.... Yet, even still, she was not without some thought of the practical aspect of her case. She owed thirty shillings to Mrs. McGoldrick. This would leave her very little, out of the few pounds she had saved from her last instalment of salary, with which to face the world. This, of course, if Ulick did not come.... And here was her dinner, set untidily in the stuffy room where the window had not been opened since the time she had left it this morning in confusion. And the whole house was quiet as thegrave. She never remembered to have heard it so quiet at any other time. It seemed as if all this silence had been designed with a studied calculation of the pain it would cause. There was no kindness in this woman either, although she too was a mother and had young daughters. It appeared so greatly uncharitable that in these last terrible moments she could not cast from her the small and pitiful enmity she had begun upon the evening of Rebecca's arrival in the valley. She would not come even now and help her pack up her things, and she so weary?... But it was easily done. The few articles that had augmented her wardrobe since her coming to the valley would go into the basket she had used to carry those which were barely necessary for her comfort when she went to that lonely cottage in Donegal.... The mean room was still bare as when she had first come to it. She had not attempted to decorate it. In a pile in one corner stood the full series ofIrish School WeekliesandWeldon's Ladies' Journalsshe had purchased since her coming here. She had little use for either of these publications now, little use for the one that related to education or the other that related to adornment.
There came a feverish haste upon her to get done with her preparations for departure, and soon they were completed. She had her trunk corded and all ready. She had no doubt that Ulick would meet her upon The Road of the Dead at 5.30, the hour she had named in the letter of this morning. It was lucky she had so accurately guessed her possible time of departure, although somehow she had had no notion this morning of leaving sosoon. But already it was more than 4.30 by her little wristlet watch. She put on her best dress, which had been left out on the bed, and redid her hair. It was still the certain salvage from the wreck she was becoming. Ulick or any other man, for all he had ruined her, must still love her for that hair of gold. It needed no crown at all, but a woman's vanity was still hers, and she put on a pretty hat which Ulick had fancied in Dublin. She had worn it for the first time last summer in Donegal, and it became her better than any hat she had ever worn.... What would they say if they saw her moving about in this guise, so brazenly as it seemed, when she might be spoken of from the altar on Sunday?
Now fell upon her a melancholy desire to see the chapel. There was yet time to go there and pray just as she had thought of praying on her first evening on coming to Garradrimna. She took a final glance at the little, mean room. It had not been a room of mirth for her, and she was not sorry to leave it—there was the corded trunk to tell the tale of its inhospitality. She took the money for Mrs. McGoldrick from her purse and put it into an envelope.... Going downstairs she left it upon the kitchen table. There was no one to be seen, but she could hear the scurrying of small feet from her as if she were some monstrous and forbidden thing.
As she went up the bright road there was a flickering consciousness in her breast that she was an offense against the sunlight, but this feeling fled away from her when she went into the chapel and knelt down to pray. Her mind was full of her purpose, and she did not experience the distraction of one single, selfish thought. But when sheput her hands up to her face in an attitude of piety she felt that her face was burning.
It was a day for confessions, but there were few people in the chapel, and those not approaching the confessionals. The two young curates, Father Forde and Father Fagan, were moving about the quiet aisles, each deeply intent upon the reading of his office. They were nearer the altar than to her, but for all the air of piety in which they seemed to be enveloped, they detected her presence immediately and simultaneously. Soon they began to extend their back and forward pacing to include her within the range of their sidelong vision.... By the time she had got half way around her little mother-of-pearl rosary they were moving past her and towards one another at her back. She was saying her poor prayers as well as she could, but there they were with their heads working up and down as they looked alternately at her and at their holy books.... Just as she got to the end of the last decade she was conscious that they had come together and were whispering behind her.... It was not until then that she saw the chapel for what it stood in regard to her. It was the place where, on Sunday next, mean people would smirk in satisfaction as they sat listening in all their lack of charity and fulness of pride.... The realization brought the pulsing surge of anger to her blood and she rose to come away. But when she turned around abruptly there were the two curates with their eyes still fixed upon her.... She did not meet their looks full straight, for they turned away as if to avoid the contamination of her as she ran from the House of God.
When John Brennan reached a point in his disgust where further endurance was impossible he broke away from the house and from his mother. He went out wildly through the green fields.
But he would see her. He would go to her, for surely she had need of him now.... If Ulick did not come.... And there was much in his manner and conversation of the previous night to make it doubtful.... If he did not take her away from this place and make her his own to protect and cherish, there was only one course left open.... He knew little of these things, for he knew little of the ways of life, but instinctively he felt that Rebecca would now cling to Ulick and that Ulick would be a great scoundrel if he spurned her from him. And what, he asked himself, would he, John Brennan, do in that case?
No answer would spring directly to his thoughts, but some ancient, primeval feeling was stirring in his heart—the answer that men have held to be the only answer from the beginning of the world. But that was a dreadful thing which, in its eddying circles of horror, might compass his own end also.
But, maybe the whole story was untrue. He had heard his mother speak many a time after the same fashion, and there was never one case of the kind but had proved untrue. Yet it was terrible that no answer would come flashing out from his wild thoughts, and already he had reached The Road of the Dead.
His wandering eyes had at last begun to rest upon a wide, green field. He saw the wind and sun conspiring to ripple the grass into the loveliest little waves. He had loved this always, and even the present state of his minddid not refuse the sensation of its beauty. He went and leaned across the field gate to gaze upon it.
He turned suddenly, for there was a step approaching him along the road. Yes, surely it was she. It was Rebecca Kerr herself coming towards him down The Road of the Dead.... She was smiling, but from the dark, red shadows about her eyes it was easy to see that she had quite recently been crying.
"Good evening, John Brennan!" she said.
"Good evening, Miss Kerr!"
There was a deep touch of concern, turning to anxiety, almost a rich tenderness in his words. She heard them for what they were, and there came to her clearly their accents of pity.... For the moment neither seemed capable of finding speech.... Her eyes were searching The Road of the Dead for the man she expected to meet her here. But he was not coming. In the silence that had fallen between them John Brennan had clearly glimpsed the dumb longing that was upon her.... He felt the final gloom that was moving in around her ... yet he could not find speech.
"I'm going away from the valley," said Rebecca.
He made some noise in his throat, but she could hear no distinct word.
"It was notyouI expected to meet here this evening. It is so strange how we have met like this."
"I just came out for a walk," he stammered, at a loss for something better to say.
"I'm glad we have met," she said, "for this is the last time."
It was easy to see that her words held much meaningfor herself and him.... He seemed to be nearer the brink as her eyes turned from him again to search the road.
"He will not come," she said, and there was a kind of wretched recklessness in her tones. "I know he will not come, for that possibility has never been." She grew more resigned of a sudden. She saw that John Brennan too was searching the road with his eyes.... Then he knew the reason why she was going away.
He was such a nice boy, and between his anxious watching now for her sake he was gazing with pity into her eyes.... He must know Ulick too as a man knows his friend, and that Ulick would not come to her in this her hour of trial.... The knowledge seemed the more terrible since it was through John Brennan it had come; and yet it was less terrible since he did not disdain her for what she had done. She saw through his excuse. He had come this way with the special purpose of seeing her, and if he had not met her thus accidentally he must inevitably have called at the house of Sergeant McGoldrick to extend his farewell. She was glad that she had saved him this indignity by coming out to her own disappointment.... She was sorry that he had again returned to his accustomed way of thinking of her, that he had again departed from the way into which she had attempted to direct him.
And now there loomed up for her great terror in this thought. Yet she could read it very clearly in the way he was looking so friendly upon her.... Why had he always looked upon her in this way? Surely she had never desired it. She had never desired him. It wasUlick she had longed for always. It was Ulick she had longed for this evening, and it was John Brennan who had come.... Yes, how well he had come? It was very simple and very beautiful, this action of his, but in its simple goodness there was a fair promise of its high desolation. It appeared that she stood for his ruin also, and, even now, in the mounting moments of her fear, this appeared as an ending far more appalling.... She was coming to look at her own fate as a thing she might be able to bear, but there was something so vastly filled with torture in this thought.... Whenever she would look into the eyes of the child and make plans for its little future she would think of John Brennan and what had happened to him.
She felt that they had been a long time standing here at this gate, by turns gazing anxiously up and down the road, by turns looking vacantly out over the sea of grass. Time was of more account than ever before, for was it not upon this very evening that she was being banished from the valley?
"I must go now," she said; "hewill never come."
He did not answer, but moved as if to accompany her.... She grew annoyed as she observed his action.
"No, no, you must not come with me now. You must not speak with me again. I have placed myself forever beyond your friendship or your thought!"
As she extended her hand to him her heart was moved by a thousand impulses.
"Good-by, John Brennan!" she said simply.
"Good-by, Rebecca!" said he at last, finding speech by a tremendous effort.... And without another word they parted there on The Road of the Dead.
Outside the garden gate of Sergeant McGoldrick Charlie Clarke was waiting for her with his motor-car. Her trunk had been put in at the back. This was an unholy job for a saintly chauffeur, but it was Father O'Keeffe's command and his will must be done. When the news of it had been communicated to him he had said a memorable thing:
"Well, now, the quare jobs a religious man has sometimes to do; but maybe these little punishments are by way of satisfaction for some forgotten and far-distant sin!"
Rebecca understood his anxiety to have her off his hands as she saw him jump in behind the wheel at her approach. She got in beside her poor trunk, and presently the car would be ready to start. There was not a trace of any of the McGoldrick family to be seen.... But there was a sudden breaking through the green hedge upon the other side of the road, and Janet Comaskey stood beside the car. Rebecca was surprised by the sudden appearance of the little, mad girl at this moment.
"Miss Kerr, Miss Kerr!" she called. "I got this from God. God told me to give you this!"
The car started away, and Rebecca saw that the superscription on the letter she had been handed was in the pronounced Vere Foster style of Master Donnellan. Doubtless it was some long-winded message of farewell from the kind-hearted master, and she would not open it now. It would be something to read as she moved away towards Dublin.
Just now her eyes were being filled by the receding pageant of the valley, that place of all earth's places which had so powerfully arrayed its villainy against her....And to think that he had not come.... It was the Valley of Hinnom.... Yes, to think that he had not come after all she had been to him, after all the love of her heart she had given him. No word could ever, ever pass between them again. They were upon the very brink of the eternity of separation. She knew now that for all the glory in which she had once beheld him, he must shrivel down to the bitter compass of a little, painful memory. Oh, God! to think he had not replied to her letter, and the writing of it had given her such pain.
They were at the station of Kilaconnaghan. Charlie Clarke had not spoken all through the journey, but now he came up to her indignantly, as if very vexed for being compelled to speak to her at all, and said: "The fare is one pound!"
The words smote her with a little sense of shock. She had been expecting something by way of climax. She was very certain in her consciousness that the valley would not let her slip thus quietly away.—A pound for the journey, although it was Father O'Keeffe who had engaged the car.—She must pay this religious robber a huge price for the drive. There rushed through her mind momentarily a mad flash of rebellion. The valley was carrying its tyranny a little too far.... She would not pay.... But almost immediately she was searching for a note in her purse.... There were so very few of them now. Yet she could not leave the valley with any further little stain upon her. They would talk of a thing like this for years and years.
With a deadly silence hanging over him and fearful thoughts coming into his mind Myles Shannon had kepthimself and his nephew Ulick at work all through the day. After tea in the lonely dining-room he fetched in his inky account books, which had been neglected for many a month. His nephew would here have work to occupy him for the remainder of the evening and probably far into the night. Ulick was glad of the task, for his mind was very far from being at ease.
Then Mr. Shannon took £100 from the old-fashioned bureau in the parlor, which held, with the other things, all his papers and accounts, and while the evening was yet high went down towards the house of Sergeant McGoldrick to see Rebecca Kerr. Around a bend of the road he encountered Charlie Clarke on his way back from Kilaconnaghan, where he had been delayed upon bazaar business.
The saintly chauffeur at once put on the brakes. This was Mr. Myles Shannon and some one worth speaking to. He bowed a groveling salute.
"You're out pretty late?" said Mr. Shannon.
"Oh, yes!" And then he went on to describe his work of the evening. He felt inclined to offer his condolence to Mr. Shannon in a most respectful whisper, but thought better of it at the last moment.
"And no one knows where she has gone?"
"No one. She has disappeared from the valley."
"She went away very suddenly."
"Yes, Father O'Keeffe saw that, in the public interest, she should disappear after this fashion. The motor was a help, you know."
Charlie Clarke offered to drive Mr. Shannon to his home. No word passed between them as they drew up the avenue to the lonely house among the trees.
In the train, moving on towards Dublin, Rebecca Kerr had just opened the letter from Master Donnellan. It contained a £5 note.... This was like a cry of mercy and pardon for the valley.... The rich fields of Meath were racing by.
There was a curious hush about the lake next evening, although the little cottage of Hughie Murtagh was swept by winds which stirred mournfully through all the bright abundance of early summer. Even the orange-blossoms of the furze seemed to put on an aspect of surrender. There was no challenge in their color now; they looked almost white against a somber sunset. John Brennan moped about among the fir-trees. He came to a stand-still by one that had begun to decay and which was even more mournful in its failure to contribute another plumed head to the general effect of mourning. But it seemed to shake enraged at this impotence in its poor foundation over the deserted warren, from which Shamesy Golliher had long since driven the little rabbits towards that dark Chicago of slaughter which was represented to them by Garradrimna.
The same color of desolation was upon the reeds which separated him from the water. The water itself had, beneath its pretense of brightness upon the surface, the appearance of ooze, as if it had come washing over the slime of dead things.
It was here that John Brennan had come to wait for Ulick Shannon, and, as he waited, his mood became that of his surroundings.... He fell to running over what had happened to him. Alternately, in the swirl of his consciousness, it appeared as the power of the valley andas the Hand of God. Yet, whatever it might be in truth, this much was certain. It had reduced his life to ruins. It was a fearful thing, and he shuddered a little while he endeavored to produce a clear picture of it for the chastisement as well as the morbid excitement of his imagination.
But there came instead a far different picture, which seemed to have the effect of lifting for a moment the surrounding gloom. He saw Rebecca Kerr again as upon many an afternoon they had met. For one brave moment he strove to recover the fine feeling that had filled him at those times. But it would not come. Something had happened, something terrible which soiled and spoiled her forever.
For love of her he had dreamed even unto the desire of defeating his mother's love. And yet there was no triumph in his heart now, nothing save defeat and a great weariness. Neither his mother nor Rebecca Kerr were any longer definite hopes upon which his mind might dwell.... His thoughts were running altogether upon Ulick Shannon. It was for Ulick he waited now in this lonely, wind-swept place, like any villain he had ever seen depicted upon the cover of a penny dreadful in Phillips's window when he was a boy. He now saw himself fixed in his own imagination after this fashion. Ulick Shannon would soon come. There was no doubt of this, for a definite appointment had been made during the day. He had remained at home from the college in Ballinamult to bring it about. Soon they would be endeavoring to enter what must be the final and tragic bye-way of their story. And it must be all so dreadfully interesting, this ending he had planned.... Now thewater came flowing towards him more rapidly as if to hurry the tragedy. It came more thickly and muddily and with long, billowy strides as if it yearned to gather some other body still holding life to its wild breast. Its waters kept flowing as if from some wide wound that ached and would not be satisfied; that bled and called aloud for blood forever.
Now also the evening shadows were beginning to creep down the hills and with them a deeper hush was coming upon the wild longing of all things. Yet it was no hush of peace, but rather the concentration of some horrible purpose upon one place.
"I am going away on Friday," Ulick had written in one of the two notes that had been exchanged between them by the messenger during the day, "and I would like to see you for what must, unfortunately, be the last time. I am slipping away unknown to my uncle or to any one, and it is hardly probable that I will be seen in these parts again."
At length he beheld the approach of Ulick down the long Hill of Annus.... His spirit thrilled within him and flamed again into a white flame of love for the girl who was gone.... And coming hither was the man who had done this thing.... The thickest shadows of the evening would soon be gathered closely about the scene they were to witness.... The very reeds were rustling now in dread.
The lake was deep here at the edge of the water.... And in the rabbit-warren beneath his feet were the heavy pieces of lead piping he had transported in the night. He had taken them from his father's stock of plumber's materials, that moldy, unused stock which had so longlain in the back yard and which, in a distant way, possessed an intimate connection with this heaped-up story.... In a little instant of peculiar consciousness he wondered whether it would be pliable enough.... There were pieces for the legs and pieces for the arms which would enfold those members as in a weighty coffin.... And hidden nearer to his hand was the strangely-shaped, uncouth weapon his father had used many a time with such lack of improvement upon the school slates and with which one might kill a man.... The body would rest well down there beneath the muddy waters.... There would be no possibility of suspicion falling upon him, for the story of Rebecca Kerr's disgrace and Ulick Shannon's connection with it had already got about the valley.... He had been listening to his mother telling it to people all day.... Ulick's disappearance, in a way self-effacing and unnamed, was hourly expected. This opportunity appeared the one kind trick of Fate which had been so unkind to the passionate yearnings of John Brennan.
But Ulick Shannon was by his side, and they were talking again as friends of different things in the light way of old.... Their talk moved not at all within the shadows of things about to happen presently.... But the shadows were closing in, and very soon they must fall and lie heavily upon all things here by the lake.
"Isn't it rather wonderful, Brennan, that I should be going hence through the power of a woman? It is very strange how they always manage to have their revenge, how they beat us in the long run no matter how we may plume ourselves on a triumph that we merely fancy. Although we may degrade and rob them of their treasure,ours is the final punishment. Do you remember how I told you on that day we were at the 'North Leinster Arms,' in Ballinamult, there was no trusting any woman? Not even your own mother! Now this Rebecca Kerr, she—"
The sentence was never finished. John Brennan had not spoken, but his hand had moved twice—to lift the uncouth weapon from the foot of the tree and again to strike the blow.... The mold of unhappy clay from which the words of Ulick had just come was stilled forever. The great cry which struggled to break from the lips resulted only in a long-drawn sigh that was like a queer swoon. The mournful screech of a wild bird flying low over the lake drowned the little gust of sound.... Then the last lone silence fell between the two young men who had once been most dear companions.
No qualms of any kind came to the breast of John Brennan. He had hardened his heart between the leaping flames of Love and Hate, and there was upon him now the feeling of one who has done a fine thing. He was in the moment of his triumph, yet he was beginning to be amazed by his sudden power and the result of his decision.... That he, John Brennan, should have had it in him to murder his friend.... But no, it was his enemy he had murdered, the man who had desecrated the beauty of the world.... And there was a rare grandeur in what he had done. It was a thing of beauty snatched from the red hands of Death.
Yet as he went about his preparations for submerging the body he felt something akin to disgust for this the mean business of the murder.... Here was where the beauty that had been his deed snapped finally fromexistence in his consciousness and disappeared from him.
Henceforth gray thought after gray thought came tumbling into his mind. Ulick had not been a bad fellow. He had tried to be kind to him—all the motor-drives and the walks and talks they had had. Even the bits of days and nights spent together in Garradrimna.... And how was Ulick to know of his affection for Rebecca Kerr? There had never been the faintest statement of the fact between them; his whole manner and conversation and the end for which he was intended forbade any suspicion of the kind. In fact to have had such a doubt would have been a sin in the eyes of many a Catholic.... The legs and arms were well weighted now.... This might not have happened if his mother had been attended in the right spirit of filial obedience.... But with the arrogance of youth, which he now realized for the first time, he had placed himself above her opinion and done what he had desired at the moment. And why had he done so?... She would seem to have had foreboding of all this in the way she had looked upon him so tenderly with her tired eyes many a time since his memorable home-coming last summer. She had always been so fearfully anxious.... Here must have been the melancholy end she had seen at the back of all dreaming.... He could feel that sad look clearly, all dimmed by dark presentiments.
The body was a great weight. He strove to lift it in his arms in such a way that his clothes might not be soiled by the blood.... His face was very near the pale, dead face with the red blood now clotting amongst the hair.... He was almost overpowered by his burden as he dragged it to the water's edge.... It was a very fearfulthing to look at just as the water closed over it with a low, gurgling sound, as if of mourning, like the cry of the bird in the moment the murder had been done.
As he staggered back from the sighing reeds he noticed that the ground was blood-drenched beneath the tree.... But he was doing the thing most thoroughly. In a frenzy of precautionary industry he began to hack away the earth with the slating implement very much as Shamesy Golliher might hack it in search of a rabbit.
Later he seemed to put on the very appearance of Shamesy himself as, with bent body, he slouched away across the ridge of the world. He too had just effected a piece of slaughter and Garradrimna seemed to call him.
When he came out upon the valley road he was no longer the admirable young man he had been less than a year since. He was a broken thing, and he was stained by another's blood. He was marked eternally by what he had done, and there was upon him a degradation unspeakable. He was an offense against existence and against the gathering, blessed gloom of the quiet evening.... He had murdered one who had been his friend, and it was a thing he might never be able to forget. The body, with all the lovely life so recently gone from it, he had weighted and sunk beneath the surface of the lake.... It was down there now, a poor, dead thing among the ooze of dead things from which the water had taken its color and quality. The wild spirit that had been Ulick Shannon, so contradictory in its many aspects, was now soaring lightly aloft upon the wings of clean winds and he, John Brennan, who had effected this grand release, felt the weights still heavy about his heart.
He came on a group of children playing by the roadside. It seemed as if they had been driven across his path to thwart him with their innocence. He instantly remembered that other evening when he had been pained to hear them express the ugly, uncharitable notions of their parents regarding a child of another religion. Now they were playing merrily as God had intendedthem to play, and religion, with its tyranny of compulsion towards thoughts of death and sin, seemed distant from them, and distant was it from him too. His mind was empty of any thought. Would no kindly piece of imagination come down to cool his spirit with its grace or lift from his heart the oppression of the leaden weights he had bound about the body of Ulick Shannon?... At last he had remembrance of his mother. It had been borne in upon him during some of his lonely cycle-rides to and from Ballinamult that things should not be, somehow, as they were. He was moving along exalted ways while his mother labored in lonely silence at her machine.... Where was the money coming from? Such an unproductive state as his required money for its upkeep. His father was no toiler, but she was always working there alone in the lonely room. Her hands were grown gnarled and hard through her years of labor.... Just presently she was probably discussing a dismal matter of ways and means with some woman of the valley, saying as she had said through the long years:
"Thank God and His Blessed Mother this night, I still have me hands. Aye, that's what I was just saying to Mrs. So and So this morning—Thank God I still have me hands!"
Thus she was going on now, he imagined, as he had always heard her, a pathetic figure sitting there and looking painfully through the heavy, permanent mist that was falling down upon her eyes. And yet it was not thus she really was at this moment. For although it was a woman who held her company, there was no mood of peace between them. It was Marse Prendergast who was with her, and she was proceeding busily with her eternalwhine. Mrs. Brennan was now disturbed in her mind and fearful of the great calamity that might happen. While she had bravely maintained the money in the little chest upstairs there had lingered, in spite of every affliction, a sense of quietness and independence. But now she was without help and as one distraught. Of late this gibbering old woman had obtained a certain power over her, and a considerable portion of the once proud Mrs. Brennan had fallen finally away. Although, at unaccountable moments, her strong pride would spring up to dazzle the people of the valley, she did not now possess that remarkable imperviousness which had so distinguished her attitude towards life. Now she was in a condition of disintegration, unable to maintain an antagonism or hide a purpose. The old ruined woman, the broken shuiler of the roads, was beginning to behold the ruins of another woman, the ruins of Mrs. Brennan, who had once been so "thick" and proud.
"So you won't hearken to me request?"
"I can't, Marse dear. I have no money to give you!"
This was a true word, for the little store upstairs had gone this way and that. Tommy Williams had had to be given his interest, and although people might think that John was getting his education for charity, no one knew better than she the heavy fees of the college in Ballinamult. Besides, he must keep up a good appearance in the valley.
But when Marse Prendergast made a demand she knew no reason and could make no allowance.
"Well, Nan, me dear, I must do me duty. I must speak out when you can't bribe me to be silent. I must do a horrid piece of business this night. I must turna son against his mother. Yes, that must be the way of it now, a son turned for good against his mother. For surely there could be no pardon in his grand, holy eyes for what you were once upon a time. But let me tell you this, that I'd have acquainted him anyhow, for I'd not have gone to me grave with that sin on me no matter what. They say it isn't right to offer a son to God where there's after being any big blemish in the family, and that if you do a woful misfortune or a black curse comes of it. And sure that was the quare, big blemish in your family, Nan Byrne, the quarest blemish ever was."
Mrs. Brennan began to cry. She seemed to have come at last to the end of all her long attempt to brazen things out.... Marse Prendergast was not slow to observe this acceptance of defeat, and saw that now surely was her time to be hard and bitter. She was growing so old, a withered stump upon the brink of years, and there was upon her an enormous craving for a little money. People were even driven, by her constant whine for this thing and that, to say how she had a little store of her own laid by which she gloated over with a wicked and senile delight. And for what, in God's name, was she hoarding and she an old, lone woman with the life just cross-wise in her?... And it was always Mrs. Brennan whom she had visited with her singular and special persecution.
"I suppose now you think you're the quare, clever one to be going on with your refusals from day to day. I suppose you think I don't know that you have acheshtfull of money that you robbed from poor Henry Shannon, God be good to him, when he used to be coming running to see you, the foolish fellow!"
"As God's me judge, Marse Prendergast, I haven't e'er a penny in the house. I'm in debt in Garradrimna this blessed minute, and that's as sure as you're there!"
"Go on out of that with your talk of debts, and you to be sending your son John through his college courses before all our eyes like any fine lady in the land. And think of all the grand money you'll be getting bye and bye in rolls and cartloads!"
"Aye, with the help of God!"
Even in the moment of her torment Mrs. Brennan could not restrain her vanity of her son.
"And to think of all that being before you now and still you keep up your mean refusals of the little thing I ask," said the old woman with the pertinacious unreasonableness of age.
"I haven't got the money, Marse, God knows I haven't."
"God knows nothing, Nan Byrne, only your shocking villainy. And 'tis the great sin for you surely. And if God knows this, it is for some one else to know your sin. It is for your son John to know the kind of a mother that he loves and honors."
Mrs. Brennan had heard this threat on many an occasion yet even now the repetition of it made her grow suddenly pale.... An expression of sickliness was upon her face seen even through the shadowed sewing-room. Always this thought had haunted her that some time John might come to know.
"Long threatening comes at last!" was a phrase that had always held for her the darkest meaning. She could never listen to any woman make use of it withoutshuddering violently. Marse Prendergast had threatened so often and often.
"Ah, no, Nan Byrne, this is something I could never let pass. And all the long days I saw you contriving here at the machine, and you so anxious and attentive, sure I used to be grinning to myself at the thoughts of the bloody fine laugh I'd be having at you some day. I used, that's God's truth!"
It seemed terrible to be told the story of this hate that had been so well hidden, now springing up before her in a withering blast of ingratitude and being borne to her understanding upon such quiet words.... She sighed ever so slightly, and her lips moved gently in the aspiration of a prayer.
"O Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" was what she said.
The pious ejaculation seemed to leap at once towards the accomplishment of a definite purpose, for immediately it had the effect of moving Marse Prendergast towards the door.
"I'm going now!"
The words were spoken with an even more chilling quietness. Mrs. Brennan made a noise as if to articulate something, but no words would come from her.
"And let you not be thinking that 'tis only this little thing I'm going to tell him, for there's a whole lot more. I'm going to tell himallI know,all that I didn't tell youthrough the length of the years, though, God knows, it has been often burning me to tell.... You think, I suppose, as clever as you are, that the child was buried in the garden. Well, that's not a fact, nor the color of a fact, for all I've made you afraid of it so often.... GraceGogarty had no child of her own for Henry Shannon.Ulick Shannon is your own child that was sold be your ould mother for a few pound!"
"That's a lie for you, Marse Prendergast!"
"'Tis no lie at all I'm telling you, but the naked truth. I suppose neither of them lads, Ulick nor John, ever guessed the reason why they were so fond of one another, but that was the reason; and 'tis I used to enjoy seeing them together and I knowing it well. Isn't it curious now to say that you're the mother of a blackguard and the mother of the makings of a priest?... Mebbe you'd give me the little bit of money now? Mebbe?"
Mrs. Brennan did not answer. Big tears were rolling down her cheeks one after the other.... Her heart had been rent by this sudden flash of information. Even the last remaining stronghold of her vanity had been swept away. That she, who had claim in her own estimation to be considered the wise woman of the valley, could not have long since guessed at the existence of a fact so intimate.... Her heart was wounded, not unto death, but immortally.... Her son! Ulick Shannon her son! O Mother of God!
John Brennan was still in his agony as he saw the long-tongued shuiler coming towards him down the road. She was making little journeys into the ditches as she came along. She was gathering material for a fire although every bush was green.... She was always shivering at the fall of night. The appearance of the children had filled him with speculations as to where he might look for some comfort.... Could it be derived from the precepts of religion translated into acts ofhuman kindness? Momentarily he was confused as he attempted to realize some act of goodness to be done here and now. He was unable to see.
Old Marse Prendergast, coming towards him slowly, was the solitary link connecting his mind with any thought. To him she appeared the poor old woman in need of pity who was gathering green sticks from the hedge-rows to make her a fire which would not kindle. He remembered that morning, now some time distant, when he had helped her carry home a bundle of her sticks on his way from Mass. It had appeared to him then, as it did now, a Christ-like action, but his mother had rebuked him for it. Yet he had always wished his mother to take the place of Mary when he tried to snatch some comfort from the Gospel story. Soon he was by her side speaking as kindly as he could.... Great fear was already upon him.
"God bless you, me little Johneen, me little son; sure 'tis yourself has the decent, kind heart to be taking pity upon the old. Arrah now! You're alone and lonely this evening, I notice, for your friend is gone from you. It bees lonely when one loses one's comrade. Ah, 'tis many a year and more since I lost me comrade through the valley of life. Since Marks Prendergast, the good husband of me heart and the father of me children, was lost on me. Sure he was murdered on me one St. Patrick's Day fair in Garradrimna. He was ripped open with a knife and left there upon the street in his blood for me to see.... That's the way, that's the way, me sweet gosoon; some die clean and quiet, and some go away in their blood like the way they came."
Had she devoted much time and skill to it she couldnot have produced a more dire effect upon John than by this accidental turn of her talk.... The scene by the lakeside swam clearly into his eyes again.
"I supposeyourgood comrade is gone away?"
"Whom, what?"
"Ulick Shannon, to be sure. I suppose he's after slipping away be this time anyway."
"Aye, he's gone away."
"That was what you might call the nice lad. And it was no wonder at all that you were so much attached to one another. Never a bit of wonder at all.... Sure you were like brothers."
John was so solicitous in maintaining his silence that he did not notice the old woman's terrible sententiousness.... He went on pulling green sticks from the hedge and placing them very carefully by the side of those she had already gathered.
"Just like brothers. That's what ye were, just like brothers. He, he, he!"
Although he did not detect the note of laughter in it that was hollow and a mockery, he was nevertheless appalled by what should appear as a commendation of him who was gone.... He felt himself shaking even as the leaves in the hedgerows were being shaken by the light wind of evening.
"Like brothers,avic machree."
Even still he did not reply.
"Like brothers, I say, and that's the whole story. For ye were brothers. At least you were of the one blood, because ye had the same woman for the mother of ye both."
Certainly she was raving, but her words were havingan unusual effect upon him. He was keeping closer to the hedge as if trying to hide his face.
"To-night, me fine gosoon, I'm going to do a terrible thing. I'm going to tell you who your mother is, and then you'll know a quare story. You'll know that Ulick Shannon, good luck to him wherever he's gone, was nothing less than your own brother.... It is she that is after forcing me on to it be her penurious and miserly ways. I didn't want to tell ye, John! I say, I didn't want to tell ye!"
Her old, cracked voice trailed away into a high screech. John Brennan was like a man stunned by a blow as he waited for her to speak the rest of the story.
"Ulick Shannon's father, Henry Shannon, was the one your mother loved. She never cared for your father, nor he for her. So you might say you are no love child. But there was a love child in it to be sure, and that child was Ulick Shannon. Your mother was his mother. He was born out of wedlock surely, but he happened handy, and was put in the place of Grace Gogarty's child that died and it a weeshy, young thing.... It was your grandmother that sold him, God forgive her, if you want to know, for I was watching the deed being done.... Your mother always thought the bastard was murdered in the house and buried in the garden. I used to be forever tormenting her by making her think that only it was me could tell. There was no one knew it for certain in the whole world, only me and them that were dead and gone. So your mother could not have found out from any one but me, and she might never have found out only for the way she used to be refusing me of me little dues.... But I can tell you that she foundout this evening how she was the mother of Ulick Shannon, and that you, the beloved son she cherished in her heart and put on in all her pride to be a priest of God, was a near blood relation of the boy she was never done but running down. The boy that she, above all others, with her prate and gab made a drunkard of in the first place, and then rushed on, be always talking of the like about him, to do great harm to this girl. But sure it was myself that could not blame him at all, for it was in him both ways, the poor, unfortunate gosoon!"
There was no reason to doubt the old shuiler's story, with such passionate vehemence did it fall from her. And its coherence was very convincing. It struck him as a greater blow which almost obliterated his understanding. In the first moment he could stand apart from it and look even blindly it appeared as the swift descent of Divine vengeance upon him for what he had just done.... He moved away, his mind a bursting tumult, and without a sight in his eyes.... The mocking laughter of Marse Prendergast rang in his ears. Now why was she laughing at him when it was his mother who was her enemy?
He was walking, but the action was almost unnoticed by him. He was moving aimlessly within the dark, encircling shadow of his doom.... Yet he saw that he was not far distant from Garradrimna.... The last time he had been there at the period of the day he had been in company with Ulick Shannon. It was what had sprung out of those comings together that was now responsible for this red ending.... He remembered also how the port wine had lifted him out of himself andhelped him to see Rebecca Kerr.... The windows were squinting through the gloom as he went the road.
There was stronger drink in Garradrimna and pubs. of greater intensity than McDermott's. There was "The World's End," for instance, that tavern so fantastically named by the Hon. Reginald Moore in memory of an inn of the same name that had struck his fancy in England.... The title now seemed particularly appropriate.
It was towards this place his feet were moving. In another spell of thought which surprised him by the precaution it exhibited, he remembered that his father would not be there; for, although it had been Ned Brennan's famous haunt aforetime, he had been long ago forbidden its doors. It was in this, one of the seven places of degradation in Garradrimna, he was now due to appear.
He went very timidly up to the back-door, which opened upon a little, secluded passage. He ordered a glass of whiskey from the greasy barmaid who came to attend him.... He felt for the money so carefully wrapped in tissue-paper in his waistcoat pocket. It was a bright gold sovereign that his mother had given him on the first day of his course at Ballinamult College to keep against any time he might be called upon to show off the fact that he was a gentleman. As he unfolded it now, from the careful covering in which she had wrapped it, it seemed to put on a tragic significance.... He was fearfully anxious to be in the condition that had brought him his vision on the night he had slept by the lake.
He drank the whiskey at one gulp, and it seemed a long time until the barmaid returned with the change. Sovereigns were marvels of rare appearance at "TheWorld's End." He thanked her and called for another, paying her as she went. She was remarkably mannerly, for, in the narrow gloom of the place, she took him to be some rich stranger. She had seen the color of his money and liked it well.