The whiskey seemed to possess magical powers. It rapidly restored him to a mood wherein the distress that was his might soon appear a small thing. Yet he grew restless with the urgency that was upon him and glanced around in search of a distraction for his galloping brain.... He bent down and peered through the little aperture which opened upon the public bar of "The World's End." In there he saw a man in a heated atmosphere and enveloped by dense clouds of tobacco-smoke. They were those who had come in the roads to forget their sweat and labor in the black joy of porter. Theirs was a part of the tragedy of the fields, but it was a meaner tragedy. Yet were they suddenly akin to him.... Through the lugubrious expression on their dark faces a sudden light was shining. It was the light as if of some ecstasy. A desire fell upon him to enter into their dream, whatever it might be.... In the wild whirl that the whiskey had whipped up in his brain there now came a sudden lull. It was a lull after a great crescendo, as in Beethoven's music.... He was hearing, with extraordinary clearness, what they were saying. They were speaking of the case of Ulick Shannon and Rebecca Kerr. These names were linked inseparably and were going hand in hand down all the byeways of their talk.... They were sure and certain that he had gone away. There was not a sign of him in Garradrimna this evening. That put the cap on hisguilt surely. Wasn't she the grand whipster, and she supposed to be showing a good example and teaching religion to the childer? A nice one to have in the parish indeed! It was easy knowing from the beginning what she was and the fellow she struck up with—Henry Shannon's son. Wasn't that enough for you? Henry Shannon, who was the best blackguard of his time!... Just inside, and very near to John, a knot of men were discussing the more striking aspects of the powerful scandal.... They were recounting, with minute detail, the story of Nan Byrne.... Wasn't it the strangest thing now how she had managed more or less to live it down? But people would remember it all again in the light of this thing. What Ulick Shannon had done now would make people think of what his father had done, and then they must needs remember her.... And to think that no one ever knew rightly what had become of the child. Some there were who would tell you that her sister, Bridget Mulvey, and her mother, Abigail Byrne, buried it in the garden, and there were those who would tell you that it was living somewhere at the present time.... Her son John was not a bad sort, but wasn't it the greatest crime for her to put him on to be a priest after what had happened to her, and surely no good could come of it?... And why wouldn't Ned Brennan know of it, and wasn't it that and nothing else that had made him the ruined wreck of a man he was? Sure he'd never done a day's good since the night Larry Cully had lashed out the whole story for his benefit. And wasn't it quite possible that some one would be bad enough to tell John himself some time, or the ecclesiastical authorities? What about the mee-aw that hadhappened to him in the grand college in England that so much had been heard of? And there was sure to be something else happening before he was through the college at Ballinamult. A priest, how are ye?
The whiskey had gone to his head, but, as he listened, John Brennan felt himself grow more sober than he had ever before been.... So this was the supplement to the story he had heard a while ago. And now that he knew the whole story he began to tremble. Continually flashing across his mind were the words of the man who was dead and silent at the bottom of the lake—"You could never know a woman, you could never trust her; you could not even trust your own mother." This was a hard thing for any man at all to have said in his lifetime, and yet how full of grim, sad truth did it now appear?... The kind forgetfulness of his choking bitterness that he had so passionately longed for would not come to him.... The dregs of his heart were beginning to turn again towards thoughts of magnanimity as they had already done in the first, clear spell of thought after his deed. He had then gone to gather sticks for the old woman, a kind thing, as Jesus might have done in Nazareth.... The change of the sovereign was in his hand and his impulse was strong upon him. He could not resist. It seemed as if a strong magnet was pulling a light piece of steel.... He had walked into the public bar of "The World's End." Around him was a sea of faces, laughing, sneering, drinking, sweating, swearing, spitting. He was calling for a drink for himself and a round for the shop.... Now the sea of faces was becoming as one face. And there was a look upon it which seemed made up of incredulity andcontempt.... This was replaced by a different look when the pints were in their hands.... They were saying: "Good health, Mr. Brennan!" with a sneer in their tones and a smile of flattery upon those lips which had just now been vomiting out the slime of their minds.
There was another and yet another round. As long as he could remain on his feet he remained standing drinks to them. There was a longing upon him to be doing this thing. And beyond it was the guiding desire to be rid of every penny of the sovereign his mother had given him to help him appear as a gentleman if he met company.... Now it seemed to soil him, coming as it did from her. Curious that feeling after all she had done for him, and she his mother. But it would not leave him.
The drink he had bought was fast trickling down the many throats that were burning to receive it. The rumor of his prodigality was spreading abroad through Garradrimna, and men had gone into the highways and the byeways to call their friends to the banquet. Two tramps on their way to the Workhouse had heard of it and were already deep in their pints. Upon John's right hand, arrived as if by magic, stood Shamesy Golliher, and upon his left the famous figure of Padna Padna, who was looking up into his face with admiration and brightness striving hard to replace the stare of vacancy in the dimming eyes. As he drank feverishly, fearful of losing any, Shamesy Golliher continuously ejaculated: "Me sweet fellow, John! Me sweet fellow!" And Padna Padna kept speaking to himself of the grand thing it was that there was one decent fellow left in the world, even if he was only Nan Byrne'sson. Around John Brennan was a hum of flattery essentially in the same vein.... And it seemed to him that, in his own mind, he had soared far beyond them.... Outwardly he was drunk, but inwardly he knew himself to be very near that rapture which would bring thoughts of Rebecca as he staggered home alone along the dark road.
The companions of his Bacchic night had begun to drift away from him. Ten o'clock was on the point of striking, and he was in such a condition that he might be upon their hands at any moment. They did not want Walter Clinton, the proprietor of "The World's End," to be giving any of them the job of taking him home. The hour struck and the remnant went charging through the doorways like sheep through a gap. Shamesy Golliher limped out, leading Padna Padna by the hand, as if the ancient man had suddenly become metamorphosed into his second childishness.... "The bloody-looking idiot!" they were all sniggering to one another. "Wasn't it a hell of a pity that Ned Brennan, his father, and he always bowseying for drink in McDermott's and Brannagan's, wasn't in 'The World's End' to-night?"
John was alone amidst the dregs of the feast. Where the spilt drink was shining on the counter there was such a sight of glasses as he had never before seen. There were empty glasses and glasses still standing with half their drink in them, and glasses in which the porter had not been touched so drunk had everybody been.
Walter Clinton came in indignantly and said that it was a shame for him to be in such a state, and to go home out of that at once before the peelers got a holdof him.... And he went out with difficulty and down the old road of the elms towards his mother's house in the valley. He could hear the hurrying, heavy feet of those he had entertained so lavishly far down before him on the road.... For the moment he was happy. Before his burning eyes was the form of Rebecca Kerr. Her face had a look of quiet loveliness. He thought it was like the faces of the Madonnas in Father O'Keeffe's parlor.... "Rebecca! Rebecca!" he called to her ever in the agony of his love. "Thy hands, dear Rebecca!" ... She was not soiled now by any earthly sin, for he had purified her through the miracle of blood. And she was clean like the night wind.
He was a pitiable sight as he went staggering on, crying out this ruined girl's name to the night silence of the lonely places.... At last he fell somewhere in the soft, dewy grass. For a long while he remained here—until he began to realize that his vision was passing with the decline within him of the flame by which it had been created. The winds upon his face and hair were cold, and it seemed that he was lying in a damp place. His eyes sprang open.... He was lying by the lakeside and at the place where he had murdered Ulick Shannon.
He jumped up of a sudden, for his fear had come back to him. With his mouth wide open and a clammy sweat upon his brow, he started to run across what seemed a never-ending grassy space.... He broke madly through fences of thorn and barbed wire, which tore his clothes and his hands. He stumbled across fields of tillage.... At last, with every limb shivering, he came near his mother's door.... Presently he grewcoldly conscious.... He could hear his father muttering drunkenly within. He came nearer, striving hard to steady himself and walk erect. He quickened his step to further maintain his pretense of sobriety. His foot tripped against something, and he lurched forward. He was caught in his mother's arms, for, at the sound of his approach, she had opened the door in resigned and mournful expectation.
"O Jesus!" she said.
There were two of them now.
THE END