'So thin he calls the sexton, an' the foor of us proceeds to the chapel roun' the corner, an' us two was marrit.
'"Thank ye kindly, your Riverence," says I, "an' what may I be owin' ye for the job?"
'"Twenty-five shillin'," says he.
'"An' how many shillin' is there in a pun?"
'"Twenty," says he.
'"Mother av Moses," says I, "but mathrimony's the egsthravagint business all out. Here's me pun note, it's ahl I have in the wurrld, an' I'm thinkin' I'll have to be owin' ye the other five shillin'!"
'"Ah, I'll forgive it ye this time," says he. "But don't come here axin' to be marrit no more. I've had enough of ye."
'"Ahl right, yer Riverence," says I, an' out me an' Mary Anne goes.
'"An' what will we do now?" says she.
'"I niver thought o' that," says I, "but I s'pose we'd betther go on home to me mother, and see what she'll say to us."
'"D'ye think she'll take us in?"
'"Well, I know she'd be right glad to see me home from the sojerin': she's powerful fond av me, she thinks the sun rises an' sets on me elbow, but I'm not so sartain about yous. But we can only thry; she can't kill us anyway."
'"Where is it?"
'"Five mile out along the mountain road."
'"Luck's till us," says she, an' off we starts. But the further we wint, the more onaisy in me mind I became, till whin we came into the lane that led to the house, I says to Mary Anne—
'"Mary Anne, darlin'," I says, "I think it ull be betther for you to wait outside av the dure, while I break the news gintly. Av me mother's by her lone, it ull be ahl right; but av me sisther's there, too, it's the divil ahl out."
'As luck wud have it, the first sight I claps eyes on whin I come in at the dure is me sisther, Casey, sittin' in the chimney corner, the oul' catamaran, an' I knew there'd be wigs an' the green before ahl was done.
'"Arrah, Andy, me jewel, an' is it yersilf?" says me mother runnin' an throwin' her arms round me neck; "but it's a brave lad ye've grown, an' it's right welcome ye are home from the sojerin'. Troth it's a sight for sore eyes just to see ye."
'"Yis," says I, "I'm home, an' I'm not alone. I'm marrit. Come in out of that an' show yersilf, Mary Anne."
'Mary Anne came in, an' me mother an' me sisther just lets wan shriek, an' I shouts,—
'"Run, Mary Anne, run for yer life."
'They turned and grabbed the two three-legged stools they was settin' on, an' me an' Mary Anne cleared the flure wid wan lep, an' was out an' away down the back lane as hard as we cud tear, an' them two weemin gallopin' afther us an' screaming like hell's delight. But me an' Mary Anne was young an' soople, an' we ran like hares till we came to the edge of the bog. And thin I says,—
'"Houl' an," I says, "let me go first," an' I tuk the path across the bog that lay betwixt two big bog-holes.
'Well, me sisther, bein' the younger, comes first to the edge of the bog, an' she was that blind wid fury she cudn't see where she was goin', an' whin she come to the first bog-hole souse she goes intil the middle of it neck over crop, an' I caught a sight of her legs goin' up in the air wid the tail ov me eye, an' down I sits, an' thought I'd ha shplit.
'Well, whin we was sore wid laffin, we wint on back to the town, an' the last we saw of the pair of thim Casey was lyin' wid her arms on the bank of the bog-hole an' me mother haulin' at her ahl she was fit to dhrag her out.
'But whin we came to the town it was dhrawin' near han' night, an' there was the greatest goin's on iver ye seen. We was met at the head of the town by a crowd of the boys that was out lukin' for us; for the praste had tould on us, and they'd been sarchin' iverywhere for the bride an' bridegroom, they said.
'So they took an' cheered us, an' carried us roun' the town. An' they had the town band behind us, wid wan big dhrum an' six little wans, an' fourteen flutes, an' they banged and tootled till they cudn't bang nor tootle no more, an' the street boys yelled, and the dogs yelped, an' there was a noise thro' the town ye cudn't hear yersilf spake for the best part of an hour. Glory be! it was a weddin' fit for a king,' and the old man spat reflectively into the fire, as he looked back upon that crowning moment of his life.
'An' whin it was ahl over, "Mary Anne, honey," says I, "I'm hung-ry; I haven't had nahthin' to eat the day since me brackfast, an' that graspin' oul' praste has copped ahl me money, have ye iver a pinny?"
'"Divil a thraneen," says she, "but just wan ha'penny."
'"A power o' use that is to stay two hung-ry stummicks upon," says I, "but I tell ye what. We'll do things in style the night if we niver did before nor since. We'll have an illumination to light the way to our bridal couch."
'So we bought two farthin' candles, and wint to slape in the hay in Mrs. Flanigan's byre.'
'On the principle,' said I, 'ofqui dort, dine.'
But that remark was lost upon Andy.
'Oul' Shan the Pote,' as the townsfolk called him, was a descendant in the direct male line of Shan O'Neill, the great rebel of Queen Elizabeth's day. He had a fine pedigree, but little else; for of all the possessions of his forefathers, all that remained to him was an old battered, silver punch-ladle and a silver-mounted dirk with a cairngorm in the hilt of it, which the envious-minded amongst his neighbors declared to be a bit of yellow glass. At such insinuations Shan used to wax mightily indignant, showing that he still retained his pride of birth; but on ordinary occasions that feeling was entirely subordinate in him to two others—his belief in his own genius as a poet, and his overflowing love for 'me daughter Kathleen, what's in Australey, the crathur.'
His actual position in the social scale did not quite coincide with his high ancestry and literary pretensions. He was a stone-cutter by trade, and had been for some years at one time in his life in my grandfather's service as odd man. With the partisanship of the Irish peasant, he thought that the latter circumstance made the family in general, and me in particular, his peculiar property, and used to treat us accordingly. When he was a young man, and the sap was still effervescent in him, he had been in the habit of going an occasional 'tear;' and once my grandmother, seeing the recumbent form of a man very drunk sleeping peacefully in the middle of the road in front of the house, and having a vision of carts jolting over him, called in the police to remove him to the lock-up. In the morning it turned out, much to her dismay, that the man she had thus given into custody was Shan, whom she was called upon to go and bail out again. That was the standing joke of his life. Whenever he saw her in his latter days he used to say, 'Ah, now, misthress dear, don't be ang-ery an' go an' give poor oul' Shan up to the polis, bad scran to thim,' and then he cackled vehemently at his own wit.
The last time I saw him was when I was a schoolboy of fifteen home for the holidays. He was then a little thin old man with deep wrinkles in his face, and long wispy gray hair that used to blow round his face in a dishevelled halo. I can see him now ambling along the street of the little town with his eyes fixed straight in front of him, with the inward gaze of the poet and the dreamer; 'moonin' down the road like a jackass wid a carrot in front of his nose,' his persecutors, the street boys, used to call it.
When he was more than usually elated by the recent appearance of some piece of doggerel of his in the poet's corner of the local rag, he would be heard crooning over to himself with a curious kind of sing-song lilt the words of his great poem, that had made his local reputation,—
'Oh, the banks an' braes o' wild Kilcross,Where the blue-bells blowAn' the heath an' fern an' soft green mossIn the springtime grow,Where the lads an' lasses take their playOf a Sunday morn,An' the blackbirds sing the livelong dayIn the rustlin' corn.'
When I used to point out to him that 'the rustlin' corn' was a pure myth of his imagination, as the cliffs of 'wild Kilcross' were as bleak a place as you would find in 'a month of Sundays,' and that not a blade grew anywhere within a mile of them, he used to reply, 'Ah! whisht now, can't ye? If them wans haven't got the sinse to plant a lock ov oats, is it me as ye'd blame for it? Ahl that the likes av thim has a mind for is shpuds.'
But his favorite haunt where I could always find him at need was in the churchyard under the shadow of the square, ugly tower of the barn-like church, amongst 'the beautiful uncut hair of graves.' At that time he did very little work, and used to spend the greater part of his day there stringing rhymes together, while he renewed the inscriptions upon the old weather-beaten stones, and made them once more legible; for the lapse of time and lichen-growth make those memorials of us in stone hardly more enduring than human life itself. There I used to seek him out with offerings of snuff, to get him to tell me those stories of the ancient grandeur of his race which I loved to hear; for youth has always a tinge of snobbishness, which is at the root of that hero-worship common to all children.
But Shan's mind was fixed on other things. He would parry my inquiries by bringing out a roll of old newspaper cuttings, which he always carried about with him, and use me as an audience for the lack of a better, spreading the precious morsels out on the flat tombstone on which we were sitting, and holding the fluttering paper down with a thumb on each corner as he read them aloud, although he knew every word by heart. Or he would say, as he chipped away at his labor of love with deft strokes of the hammer on the head of his chisel,—
'Tell ye how I knew that oul' ladle really belonged to the great Shan O'Neill, is it? Well, this is the way ov it, d'ye see? Min' the shparks, sonny, or they'll be fly in' in yer eye. While I'm thinkin' ov it, did I iver tell ye the shtory of the road Kathleen an' yours kim to be thegither. It was whin yous was a wee fellah, a weeshan roun' roll of fat in yer perambulator, an' ye kim down to the big meady wan day whin they was puttin' in a shtack of hay; I mind it was the year afore I got the toss off of the cart of hay, an' tuk harrum in me innards, an' I was niver the same man afther; an' ahl the quality from the big house was there havin' a picnic, an' Kathleen she was a bit slip ov a gurl ov thirteen at the time, an' she kim to help carry the tay. Well, yous an' she made great frien's, an' ye rouled in the hay an' covered aich other up till many's the time ye were shtuck be the forkers ahl but. An' whin they tuk yous home in the evenin', Kathleen she started to roar an' to cry afther yous, an' there was no houlin' her; we thried ahl we knew to quiet her, but deil a hate wud she quit, an' her mother was fair moidhered wid her, an' at last she ups an' takes her in unner her shawl, an' walks her ivery fut ov the road up to the big house, an' lan's her in there at ten o'clock ov night, an' she ups an' says, says she, to the misthress, as bowl' as ye plaze, "Mam," says she, "ye've made Kathleen here that conthrairy, yous an' that babby ov yours, that there's no houlin' her. I'm fair broke wid her, so I am. So I've brought her up till ye, an' ye must just kape her, for I can do nothin' wid her." An' the misthress she laughs an' says, says she, "Well, if I must, Biddy, I shuppose I must. Must is a harrud worrud," says she; an' so Kathleen she shtops from that day out in the house an' luks afther yous. I min' well she used to wheel ye in the perambulator, an' many's the time she shpilt ye in the shtreet, but devil a hate did yous care, ye just rouled in the gutter, an' laughed till she picked yous up agin. An' she shtayed as long as yous was there,—she was terrible fond ov yous; it bet ahl iver I see. But when yous was eight year oul', an' she was goin' on near han' twinty, an' a fine han'some soople lass she was too, glory be! They tuk an' sint yous away to school in England, an' she was that lonesome afther yous she was neither to houl' nor to bind, an' she just tuk a notion, an' she ups an' she emigrates to Australey. An' she was there in service for foor year, an' she wint wid wan and wid another, an' no wunner, for she was the purtiest gurl in the foor baronies, an' at last she marries a squatter-fellah out there, an' now I hear tell she has a grand carriage an' servants galore to her back. But she doesn't forgit her oul' daddy, she's not the wan to go for to do that; but she sinds me enough ivery month to kape me at me aise like a lord wid lashins ov tobaccy, an' shnuff, an' tay, an' shugar. But ahl the time she thinks a power ov yous till this minit, more be a dale, I'm thinkin', than ov her oul' man himself, as she calls him. Many's the time she's axed me to go out till her, but I wouldn't lave the oul' place even for her; I'll lay me bones, plaze God, where I spint me youth. May the saints purtect her, and may her children stan' by her as she has stud be her oul' father an' mother.'
At this point in the story the old man always found it necessary to see in which direction the clouds were blowing, and I took diligently to making out the rest of the inscription upon which he was at work. He told his story all in a breath, and always in the same words, as a parrot might, from long habitude. It was the old story of Irish emigration. Sons and daughters, not content with a fare of potatoes and tea and a futureless outlook at home, drift off one by one as they grow up to different parts of America and Australia; there they form new ties, and forget the old folks at home and all they owe them. In this case one of the daughters did not forget her debt; and, as rarely happens in this world, it was the most prosperous and best beloved of all who was thus mindful of her old parents and supported them in their age.
It was seven years before I revisited the sleepy little town, and I had heard nothing of old Shan for a long time. The day after my arrival I went for a drive on a hired car; the Jarvey was the same old character that I remembered from my youth up, but I had outgrown his failing memory; the mare was the same old screw, only a little grayer and scraggier than of old. She was painfully climbing the steep hill just outside the town, when she suddenly stopped in the middle and turned round her head to look at us.
'Ah, luk at that now. She says she's tired, the crathur, an' wud like a rist,' cried her compassionate driver with the familiarity of a privileged class. 'Shure yous is in no hurry. What 'ud ail ye?' and he got down and put a stone behind the wheel to keep the car in position, while we surveyed the view.
Opposite and behind us another hill rose steeply, even more precipitous than the one we were on, which had proved too much for the mare—a green knoll crowned with the gray old church, its summit fenced with the back wall of the churchyard. Along the strip of level ground on the dividing line, from which the twin hills sprang, wound a gray ribbon of dusty road; and as we watched, a singular procession crawled slowly along its length below us. Four old men in the light blue workhouse uniform painfully bore a long oblong black box upon their shoulders; behind them followed two old women, also in light blue. It was a pauper funeral.
'Luk at yon now. Troth, there's a sight ye wudn't see the like ov anywhere outside of the foor baronies, an' mebbe ye might niver see agin,' said the driver, with a complacency in this unique local spectacle evidently bred by the remarks of previous strangers.
As he spoke the procession halted at a stile, from which a footpath sprang straight up the hill to an opening in the shoulder of the churchyard wall: it led to the portion of ground outside 'God's Acre' allotted to those outcasts, who, by venturing to die within the walls of the 'Poorhouse,' forfeited that last right of miserable humanity, a resting-place in consecrated ground.
The old men rested their burden on the stile and grouped themselves round it.
'What are they doing now?' I asked.
And the driver replied, 'They're fittin' the rope till it. Them oul' flitters isn't fit to carry a heavy corp, lit alone the coffin, up yon brae, the crathurs, so they tie a rope till it and dhrag it up.'
The group opened out and resolved itself into its parts as it slowly climbed the hill. First came two old men bent double, each straining at a loop of rope passed over one shoulder and across their chests; behind them jolted the coffin, to which they were harnessed, over the uneven ground; next came the other two men as a relay, ready to relieve their comrades when tired; and behind them the mourners, the two old women.
I now noticed that the path was composed of three parallel lines upon the green sward. On each side was a footway, worn smooth and bare by the feet of the men and the following mourners. In the middle was vaguely outlined a strip less distinct where the grass was beaten down like a pock-marked field of oats after a rainstorm, and was thinned and straggling like the hair upon a head beginning to grow bald. That was the mark where the coffin was dragged.
'Whose funeral is it?' I asked, with a pitying sigh at this outrage upon the dead.
'Oul' Shan O'Neill's,' came the startling answer; 'he was a stone-cutter, and a gran' han' at the pothery; he cud write a pome as fast as another man cud mow a fiel' ov hay. Troth cud he!'
'But I thought his daughter kept him.'
'Holy Post-Office, how did ye come to know that?' exclaimed the driver, in surprise at the unexpected extent of my information; 'that was Kathleen, the wan dacint wan ov the whole bilin'. She kep' him till a year ago. But thin she lost ahl her money in wan ov thim banks in Australey, and the other childher' wudn't give no help, and so the oul' man come on the parish, an' he niver hel' up his head from that day out, and now they're buryin' of him.'
And so the descendant of all the O'Neills was haled at the end of a rope to a pauper's grave.
There was agitation in Kilcross. For years the fishing industry of the place had been deteriorating. Steam-trawlers owned by English and Scotch firms in Liverpool and Glasgow had gradually come to infest the bay, and tugs came twice a week to relieve them of their takings. The primitive appliances and means of transport of the native fishermen had left them unable to cope with this competition; so that it was with difficulty they could get their fish sold, and often it was left to rot on their hands. Further than that, the huge beams of these new-fangled engines disturbed the bottom of the bay, raked up the spawning beds, and interfered with the habits of generations, so that no man knew where to look next for the fish.
But all that was going to be altered now; the press had taken the matter up and interested itself on behalf of this distressed class; busybodies who saw an opportunity of gaining a cheap notoriety for themselves wrote to the papers and caused questions to be asked in Parliament. The result was that relief works had been undertaken in the shape of a boat-slip, with a jetty to protect it from the weather, and to form a harbor for incoming boats. Up to this time the open beach had been their only landing-place, and dragging the heavy boats, over the rough shingle every time they were launched or taken out of the water had not tended to increase their lasting qualities; while often, when it was at all rough, it was impossible to land at all, and a sandy cove further round the coast had to be sought out. So now, with a placid gratitude to Providence, all Kilcross was sitting on the shore watching the first stone being laid.
For weeks afterwards the new works afforded great employment for eye and tongue to the inhabitants of the little village. In the reunions on the beach or round the fires at night in the cottages, there was no other subject of conversation but 'the gran' new kay;' and when there was nothing else to do, the large square stones lying about came in handy to sit upon and smoke a pipe while watching the masons at work. Some of the men even went the length of earning an occasional day's wages by helping to transport the stones to their resting-places; but the general opinion was that, when everything was being done for them, it was unnecessary to jog the elbow of Providence, and that such sustained energy as regular work entailed could not be expected of a people used to the precarious calling of the sea.
Presently the works were finished, and the idlers' occupation was gone. The particular busybody who took the credit to himself for all that had been done, broke a bottle of champagne over the new pier and made a speech. The fishermen quite believed him when he told them that they were very fine fellows; but with the narrow shrewdness of their class, thought that he was rather a fool to take so much trouble over other people's affairs that did not concern him, for they did not know how it served his interest to do so.
On the following Sunday morning, a lovely day in the late Donegal summer, when the women and the younger men were preparing to set out for chapel, the word went round that 'the fish is in the bay,' and in a moment all thought of devotions was abandoned. First there was seen a dark-blue ripple on the surface of the water, coming rapidly nearer, and shot with flashes of silver in the sunlight; this was caused by the 'sprit' or small herring-fry leaping out of the water to escape their natural enemies. Above them hovered screaming flocks of gulls; every now and then one of these would mount to a height, and sheathing its wings, would drop with a splash like a stone into the water, emerging with a small fish in its beak. Hard upon the track of the 'sprit' followed shoals of shehans, glascon, whiting, mackerel, herring, and pollack; after them came porpoises, dolphins, and seals; conger-eels twined themselves among the wrack along the rocks lying in wait for the fry; and even a whale was seen spouting in the offing. The larger fish devoured the smaller, only to be themselves devoured in turn by others.
In a moment the nets were got out and the boats launched. The women and boys remaining on shore armed themselves with baskets and seine-nets. With these they rushed into the water up to the waist and lifted out baskets full of the fry and even of the mackerel, which sometimes ran themselves up dry upon the beach in their eagerness after their prey. A shoal of mackerel entered the mouth of the little harbor, and a seine-net being quickly stretched across the entrance, not one escaped.
That evening there were rejoicings in the little village. Enough fish had been caught in that one day to salt down and last them through the winter, leaving a handsome surplus to hawk through the inland towns and villages. The whiting had been caught in such numbers that no one had any use for them, and they were left to rot in heaps upon the shore, until the country people came with carts and drew them for manure. But the old men shook their heads, and said it was a bad sign for the weather; they had never known so plentiful a take, and the fish must be flying before some prodigious storm.
Upon this occasion the croakers proved right for once. For when the people awoke two days later, they found that the first of the equinoctial gales was upon them before its usual time. The clouds were scurrying in huge banks across the sky, and the sea, turned leaden-gray, was running violently shorewards, beaten flat by the furious force of the wind, and breaking upon the beach with a low moaning sound. As the day progressed the wind abated slightly and allowed the waves to rise, and they roused themselves in their might and beat upon the devoted pier. For a time their efforts were unavailing, for the back that it presented to them was encased in concrete and proof against assault; but at last a huge roller launched itself over the top of the pier and fell upon the stone-work in its centre; the mortar, impregnated with the salt air and the spray, had never had a chance to dry and get properly hard; the force of the water, gripping the edges of one of the huge stones in the centre, whisked it from its feeble hold and carried it hurtling into the sea beyond. The waves laughed, exulting in their success, and hurled mass after mass into the breach thus begun, churning stones and mortar up in a circular whirlpool, until by evening there was a huge round hole in the new pier reaching to the bed-rock beneath.
Meanwhile the sights and sounds of wrecks at sea were beginning to be apparent. Minute-guns were heard in the offing, the reports almost drowned in the rush of the storm; a three-masted vessel went ashore on the opposite side of the bay under the lighthouse upon St. John's Point, and could be seen rapidly breaking up. Masts of vessels, beams, and pieces of wreckage began to come ashore, brought by the set of the currents and the force of the wind. All the fishermen were gathered upon the beach apathetically watching the destruction of the quay, from which they had hoped so much, and on the look-out for prizes.
'What's yon?' presently said Big Dan Murphy, the leader of the group, pointing to a dark object tossing among the surf. They formed a line joining hands, and he dashed in and pulled it ashore. It proved to be a cask of rum.
'Lend a hand, boys,' he said, 'to take it up to me shanty, an' we'll have a sup the night whin ahls over.'
Nothing further came ashore, and the night saw a dozen men gathered in Murphy's hut. The village stood a little back from the beach in a dip of the land that sheltered it from the boisterous fury of the Atlantic gales; but Murphy's hut stood alone on higher ground and nearer the sea, the sentinel and outpost of the rest.
The men sat round the open turf fire upon the hearth, each with a tin porringer in his hand, and the cask in their midst.
'It's well that the ould gauger's gone,' said one with gloomy satisfaction, 'or he'd be pokin' his ugly nose into this. He always kim down on the night ov a storrum to say what had kim ashore.'
'They say,' replied another, 'that this man is worse agin. New twigs swape clane an' he's for iver drivin' aroun' the counthry wid his trap an' his little wee black pony.'
As he spoke there was a knock at the door, and the gauger stood in their midst.
'How's this, boys?' he said. 'What have you got here? Your name's Dan Murphy, isn't it?'
'Ay, till the bone breaks,' returned Dan briefly.
'Don't you know that this doesn't belong to you? Flotsam and jetsam belongs to the Crown and the owner of the land upon which it is washed ashore.'
The other men looked anxious, Dan dogged.
'Findin's is kapin's,' he said; 'I niver hear tell that the open baich belonged to no man. I pulled yon barrel out ov the say at the risk av me own life, an' I've as much right to kape it as any man else, an' what's more, I mane to kape it.'
'I've heard of you, Dan Murphy,' replied the gauger sternly, 'and you'd better not give any trouble. I'm not the kind of man to stand any nonsense. I seize this rum in the Queen's name.'
In an instant he was on his back on the floor with two men on top of him; but the red-bearded gauger was a strong man and a bold, and struggling fiercely, he gave vent to a shrill whistle. The door burst open, and in rushed six policemen, whom he had brought, expecting resistance. The biggest of them made at Big Dan, but found more than his match; the giant stepped lightly aside, and catching his assailant as he passed by the scruff of the neck and the waistband, he swung him round with the impetus of his own rush, and hurled him back through the door the way he came.
Then seizing an axe that stood in the corner, he shouted above the uproar, 'If us is to git no good ov it, no man else will neither,' and he brought down the axe on the head of the cask, smashing it in and overturning it.
The rum gurgled placidly out of the hole, and ran in little streams about the floor, forming a pool round the gauger where he lay on his back, and soaking into his clothes; above him the fight raged fiercely, the men whirled close-locked in the narrow space of the hut. Presently a rivulet of rum meandered gently into the fire upon the hearth, and immediately the floor of the hut was intersected by rivers of blue flame. The rest of the combatants rushed stamping and swearing out of the hut. The gauger still lying on his back could not see what had occurred; and thinking that the others were escaping, he grappled his two assailants more fiercely to him, so that they could not rise. In a moment he was an island in a lake of fire, the flames lapping his sides, fastening upon his clothes, and licking his beard. With a yell of surprise and pain he released his opponents, who fled shouting from the hut. He rose and rushed after them. But the flames had caught, and were fanned to fury by the gale. He threw himself down and rolled upon the ground in agony, but they had got firm hold of his rum-soaked clothes, and relit in one place as fast as they were extinguished in another. At last he could bear the torture no longer, and uttering shriek on shriek, he rushed headlong down the slope a pillar of towering flame, and threw himself over the cliff into the sea a hundred feet below.
When he was pulled out a few minutes later he was a mere mass of charred cinder, hardly bearing any resemblance to humanity, and with only a few sparks of life left in his body. Before he could be carried to the nearest hut he was dead.
For their share in his death Dan Murphy and the other two men received long terms of penal servitude, and the scandal consequent upon the incident cast a blight over the little place. No further relief works were undertaken. The jetty is now in ruins, but a hundred yards off along the cliffs there is a spot still pointed out as 'the gauger's lep.'
The snow had been lying for several days, when I woke one morning and found my windows covered with the delicate tracery of hoar-frost. 'What a day for snipe-shooting!' I said, and jumping out of bed, sent a message to Hughie M'Nulty to come up at once, that I wanted him for a day's sport.
Hughie was a professional angler, who gained a good living during the summer months by acting as guide and assistant to rich English salmon-fishers, and hibernated for the rest of the year by the help of any odd jobs he could pick up. He was my constant companion on my vagrant shooting excursions, and a livelier, more talkative, or more interesting companion could not be wished for. He arrived, buttoning up his coat, before I had finished my breakfast; and after he had cut some sandwiches and filled my flask with whisky, we set out together.
'Now, Hughie,' said I, before getting clear of the town, for I knew of old his little weakness for cheating the revenue, 'have you got a game license yet this year?'
'Troth, Misther Harry, ain't I own keeper to Misther Donovan ov the Castle, an' d'ye think the likes ov him wud begrudge me a dhirty license?'
'I doubt you're too emphatic, Hughie, to be quite truthful. If you like to confess while there's time, I'll get you one. But, remember, if you get caught by the gauger without one, I'll not be responsible, and you'll have to clear yourself as best you may without my assistance.'
'God sees that, if it's not the truth that I'm tellin',' said Hughie, and we turned off the road into the fields.
Presently my companion remembered he owed something to his dignity, and began: 'I tell ye, surr, ye were lucky to git me the mornin' at ahl, at ahl; ivery wan was fur havin' me ahl to wanst. There was Misther Donovan sint down for me, jist afther I got yer message, wantin' me to go and shoot cock with him on the island in the lough; and there was Misther Fitzgerald, an' Dennison, an' Kilpathrick, an' Dawson, an' Gorman—they was ahl jist ravenin' for me; but I wudn't disappint yer ahner for one av thim, an' I jist ups an' towld thim so.'
'You've made a bad shot this time, Hughie; you should name some one that I don't know. I was playing cards last night with all those gentlemen, and I know that not one of them can go out shooting to-day. Mr. Donovan has gone up to Dublin this morning; Mr. Dennison is going to the fair at Enniskillen; Mr. Fitzgerald is on duty; Mr. Kilpatrick has a case coming on at the Court-house; and the other two can't leave the Bank on a market day. You should really be a little more careful of your ground, Hughie.'
'Ah, kape wide, can't ye, an' houl' yer whist. Ye'll be havin' the burds as wild as hawks, an' we won't git inside of an ass's roar ov thim the day. Ye might as well have brought thim dogs ye wanted, scuttherin' through the snow, if this is the road yer goin' to kape jabberin'. There, what did I tell ye? Auch! Begob, I thought he was clane away,' and Hughie ran forward to pick up our first snipe.
'Now, I'll take ye to a place that's jist swarmin' wi' them this weather. D'ye know the ould bog of Tubbernavaicha—the well in the bog, that manes—foreninst the face of the hill beyant? No?—well, that's the place ye'll fin' them.'
When we came to the old bog we recognized the fact by finding the surface sinking beneath our feet, and the icy water oozing into our boots; otherwise, there was nothing to mark it from the surrounding country beneath its winding sheet of snow. As we got further and further out the ground became more and more tremulous, and we sank to our knees at every step, but luckily for our comfort the frozen mud and snow had caked into a hard mass a foot below the surface; the whole bog shivered and sank at each fresh step as we crashed through the thin upper crust of ice, but we did not go through the solid mass below, and it rose buoyantly again beneath us like a life-buoy in the sea. But still we did not come across any birds.
'This bates ahl, this bates ahl,' Hughie kept muttering to himself. 'Not a burrd in the whole bog; but there's just the wan wee spring in the middle that we're comin' to. Luk out, surr. Ah, well shot! Ye'll soon larn to shute av ye kape on. The way he wint straight away behin' us I didn't think ye cud turn to git a shot at ahl, an' yous shtuck up to yer knees in the dirt. But we're in luck the whole time not to be in deeper; for I've seen the time I've thramped this bog an' it's cum up to me arrum-pits in every part ov it, an' I've had to sweem the pools with me gun over me head. Troth, we'd be friz enthirely av we had to do the likes ov yon the day.'
'Well, Hughie, I don't think much of your hot corner. Can't you do better than this?'
'Well, ye see, it's this way, yer ahner, in the harrd weather the burrds takes to the springs av runnin' wather. I thought the bog wud be saft enough for thim still, but I was mistook. But we've got thim now, anyways; for I was on the jayological survey what cum down here from Dublin 'tis three year cum Michaelmas: I helped to hould the tapes, an' av I didn't larn nothin' else, I larnt the springs to fin' the snipeses through ahl the counthry roun'.'
As he spoke a snipe got up in front of him, and flew slowly and hungrily away along the surface of the snow. Hughie blazed both barrels at it with no effect. 'Ah, I knocked a hatful of feathers out av that boy, anyway,' said he, looking after it indignantly; and as it was just topping the wall of the next field, I brought it down with a fluky cross-shot. He walked forward and picked it up in disgusted silence, and didn't speak another word for a good half hour.
At the end of that time we walked into a wisp of eight, out of which we got a brace each, and Hughie's good humor was restored. 'Did ye see the way them two of mine wus shot?' he said; 'the wan that wint towerin' straight up in circles, an' thin shut his wings an' fell with a whop that wud have shuck the breath out av his body av he'd had any lef, was shot through the heart; the other wan flew a wee bit wid his head thrown over his back an' his wings fluttherin'. I knew he wudn't go far; he just soothered down slantways wid his wings straight out—he was shot in the head. Ah! isn't it just like thim, the divils, to rise like that ahl av a plump; why cudn't they cum wan be wan, singly an' giv' a dacent man a chanst at them? Mother av Moses! but I laughed, yer ahner, when ye wiped me eye a while back foreninst the stone wall.'
The laughter had not been perceptible, but this was making theamende honorable, and to show there was no ill feeling I handed him the flask to take a drink. 'An' what about lunch, surr?' he said, as he handed it back.
'We'll go up to the top of that hill and have lunch now.'
'What for wud we climb the brae? There's nothin' up there batin' a rabbud mebbe.'
'I want to see the view.'
'Auch, the view,' said Hughie, in high disdain; he did not see why any one should go out of his way to climb a hill when he could stop comfortably at the bottom.
Arrived at the top, the wide prospect below us repaid me at least for the journey. The country spread white and glittering before us until it met the gray line of the sea upon the horizon, the faint undulations of the stone walls looking like infants' graves, and the few hedges and trees on the bare landscape draped with waterfalls of snow.
Hughie, on more practical thoughts intent, searched out a well of spring-water and unpacked the sandwiches out of the game-bag. Just as we began to eat, a bird flashed round the corner of the wall and flew straight away from us down the hill. 'Shute, man, shute,' cried Hughie, dancing with excitement; I crammed my sandwich into my mouth, and seizing my gun with one hand, let it off vaguely from the hip.
'What's the good in telling me to shoot and scare the bird when it was out of range already, you idiot?' I said.
'Oh, niver min' the range. What's a pennorth ov powdher? Ye shud ahlways shute at a wudcock if it's in the same parish wid ye. Ye'll niver git another chanst,' and he pointed to where the bird was winging its way with the steady flight of an owl across the open to the opposite hill.
'Tell me, Hughie,' said I, when we had settled down to our lunch again, 'why don't you learn a trade to work at in the winter, and then all you earn in the summer would be clear profit? You must earn a good deal then if you only had constant employment to keep you going the rest of the year.'
'Ay, I do that. I arn me guinea a day an' live on the fat ov the lan', but the best ov the saison is on'y for two months, an' the rest is slack. Whin I wus a bhoy me father sint me to Ameriky to larn a thrade, an' he giv me the time ov day in me pockit; but I kim back agin widout it, an' niver a tatter but the clothes I stud up in, an' thim in rags, an' since thin I niver thried to larn a thrade agin. Ye see, it's this way, surr, some rivers is early, an' some is late, an' what wid wan an' another there's fishin' for them as likes it from the beginnin' ov March to well-nigh the ind of October, an' that on'y laves foor months ov the year empty, tho' I'm not arnin' reglar ahl the time. Sometimes I've gone over to Glasgy an' Liverpool in the winter an' dhrew me thirty shillin' a week workin' on them stamers; but as soon as the time cum roun' I started to hanker afther the oul' life; there's no life like it. I'd give the swatest song that iver wumman sung for the song ov the tight line to the music ov the reel, so back I kim. I kin fish an' I kin shute, an' what more do I want?'
'That last is a matter of opinion,' I said, 'but the sarcasm was too English, and passed harmlessly over his head.
'Why don't you marry and settle down?' I continued, 'and you'd soon get regular work.'
'Marry, is it? Me? I'd luke a nice gomeral, wouldn't I, wid a parcel ov childher trailin' at me tail. Me, I've got as much call wid a wife as a pig wid a side-pocket. The whisky's done, an' none to be had nearer nor Biddy M'Intyre's shebeen, two mile away, an' it on'y putcheen; but putcheen's none so bad whin there's nothin' else handy, an' the hollys roun' her house is just crawlin' wi' snipeses.' And Hughie turned the flask upside down regretfully.
I took the hint, and said, 'Very well, then, we'll make for Biddy's. But how is it that there's a shebeen left in this part of the country? I thought that the priests had stamped out the illicit liquor trade hereabouts.'
'Ay, so they have. But, ye see, Biddy's a Protestant, an' can snap her fingers at them.'
'Then there's some advantage in being a Protestant, after all.'
'Ah, what's a sup of putcheen to a quiet min', av yer a Protestant ye have to bear the load av yer own sins instid av the prastes bearin' it for you, an' givin' ye a wee bit penance ivery now an' thin. Av I was yous I couldn't lay quiet in me bed for thinkin' ov me sins.
'Talkin' ov Ameriky,' continued Hughie, for once started talking he never stopped, 'there's Annie M'Gay kim back from it Friday's a week that fine that ye wudn't know her. I wus seein' her yistherday, and axed her if her tay wus to her taste, an' she ups an' says, says she, "The shuperfluity ov the shugar has spoilt the flavoracity ov the tay." Boys, but she's the gurl wot can use the gran' long wurruds,' and Hughie rolled the syllables over again lovingly in his mouth.
'That minds me,' he continued, 'ov a day we had yestherday's a month. It was a fine day, the Duke of Donegal was havin' a shutin' party, an' me an' twinty others was the baters. A broilin' day it was, an' we got a drouth on us ye cud cut wid a knife. The Duke he's a fine hospitable man, an' he giv us a barrel of porther for lunch, an' as much as we cud ate wi' lashin's an' lavin's to spare. An' we finished the porther betwixt us, an' was fair sighin' for more. Whin we kim to Farmer Gavigan's, an' he axed us in an' giv us whisky all roun', beautiful whisky it was, it wint down that soft, like mother's milk. But the head-keeper he hears of it, an' he comes up rampin' an' ravin', an' he says, says he,—
'"Farmer Gavigan," he says, "I'm surprised at yous, givin' these men whisky on the top ov porther, an' thim just foamin' for a fight."
'"An' why wudn't they fight?" says Farmer Gavigan; "ducks will go barefut."
'"Troth, they'll khill other."
'"Ah, lit them khill away," says he; he's a fine raisonable man is Farmer Gavigan.' And Hughie licked his lips at the luscious recollection.
'D'ye min' the day,' he went on, 'that ye caught the salmon on Lough Legaltian?'
'No, and you needn't start any of your lies about it, for I never caught a salmon in my life.'
'Ah, thin it was yer brither; it's all wan. Boys, ye shud ha' bin' wid us the day him an' me caught the big throut. There was a big sthorrum on the lough that day, an' we wus blown clane aff ov the wather, an' dhruv five mile down the lough to the far end ov it. About half-way down yer brother he shtuck in the throut while throllin' the flies afther the boat, an' if it hadn't bin for him we'd ha' bin ahl drownded for shure. The waves wus that big, an' kep follerin' that fast, that they'd hav overtuk us an' swep clane over the boat, for we didn't know how to row fast enough, but that throut started on ahead, an' sind I may die if it's not truth I'm tellin', but he towed us afther him as if he'd bin a whale.'
'It must have been a good strong trout line that you had that day!'
'Ay, the best; ov our own sellin'. It was that light an' thin ye cud see through it ahl but, but ye cud houl a man up be it. Well, when we got into the shelther of the bay at the far ind I started to gaff that throut, but he wus so big I cudn't lift him into the boat. Yer brother had to git a catch ov him be the gills an' be the tail an' help me to take him in. An' whin we came to weigh him he was a hundred an' ten pound, every ounce of it, an' he wus foul-hooked be the tail.'
'Why not make it the even hundredweight at once?'
'Now ye think it's jokin' I am, but I'm not, an' I can prove it to yous, that same. For I had the head stuffed, an' it's in me chimbly at home this minute.'
'All right, I'll come in and see it to-night on our way home. I should like to see that head.'
'Ah, now ye spake ov it, I mind me I sint it on'y yistherday's a week to the Fisheries Exhibition in Lunnon.'
'I thought so. It's a wonder I never heard of that trout from my brother.'
'Ah, him is it? He's got as much mouth on him as a cod.'
'Damn,' said I, 'there's the third snipe I've missed since lunch, and I didn't miss one at all before that. My eyes are all watering.'
'I'll tell ye what it is, Misther Harry; it's them specs ye hav on. They catch the glare ov the snow. When yer eyes was fresh ye saw everythin' distinct agin the snow; but now they're tired ye'll see nothin'. So ye may jist giv up.'
'I suppose that's it. I know that last night I did a thing I never heard of being done before. I shot a snipe by moonlight.'
'Now ye're sayin'.'
'It's a fact, you unbelieving Jew; you're so accustomed to hear lies roll out of your own mouth that you don't know the truth when you hear it. I was coming back in the evening about eight o'clock, and there was bright moonlight; as I was passing through that rushy bit at the head of the town a snipe got up in front of me; I got it clear against a snow bank, and bowled it over as clean as if it had been daylight.'
'It's as well we're at Biddy's now; I'd as lave hav a dhrink afther that. Bring out the putcheen, Biddy.'
The old woman brought out a large earthenware jar from underneath her bed, and taking down a couple of delf mugs off the dresser, handed them to us.
'Will you have a half-un or a whole-un?' I asked.
'A whole-un, to be shure, an' another on the top of that. Here's luck, more power to yer elbow. There's no call to be puttin' wather in it; it shpoils the flavor an' lits out the hate.'
The flavor was a strong taste of turf smoke, and the spirit was so fiery that it nearly rasped the skin off my mouth and throat on its way down.
'An' whin yous hav done that, I'll larn ye a wrinkle. Just put a glass of the crathur in aich ov yer boots, an' ye won't know yersilf; it'll kape yer feet that warrum an' yer boots that aisy. It's ivery bit as good as dhrinkin' it an' betther, an' it'll save yer inside in the mornin'.'
I did so to try the experiment.
At that moment the old woman caught sight of an approaching car, and exclaimed, 'Auch, wirra' it's ruined I am, I'm desthroyed enthirely. Here's the gauger comin' up to the dure wid a polisman beside him, an' me niver to notice him attendin' on yous jintlemen,' and she made a grab at the jar to hide it.
'Never mind that; it's too late now,' I said, 'and I'll see you through. Come in, Gillespie, and have a drink with me.'
'I don't mind if I do for once,' replied the gauger; 'a man wants something inside him sitting on a car in a day like this. It is the coldest day I ever was out in. But you must have that stuff outside the house the next time I come this way, Mrs. M'Intyre.'
Meanwhile the policeman and Hughie had foregathered in a corner, and were having a drink together; but the effect of the whisky made itself rapidly apparent, coming upon the change from the biting air outside to the stuffy atmosphere of the hut. Presently their voices became raised, and we heard the policeman saying,—
'Stan' up agin' me, is it? ye little gingerbread whipper-snapper ye. I'll tell ye what I'll do; I'll put down me five pound agin' yours, an' I'll box you for twenty rounds, an' sweem yous a mile, an' run ye five, the best man to lift the hard stuff.'
'Box? is it yous?' said Hughie scornfully. 'D'ye see that little roun' button on the top ov yer saucepan? I'll putt ye on that an' twirl ye roun' for half an hour, see that now,' and he put his leg behind the crook of the other's knee, and giving him a push on the chest, sent him toppling his full length on the floor.
Hughie looked rather frightened at the success of his wrestling trick, as the policeman rose quivering with passion; but remembering he was in the presence of his superior, the latter touched his cap and contented himself with remarking, 'Wait till the next time I catch ye, me bould buck, dhrunk in the streets, or by your lone in the counthry, an' I'll giv ye a bastin' ye won't forgit, I promise ye.'
I thought by this time it was time to go, and saying good-day, went out. As I went out I heard the policeman say to Hughie, 'By the way, me boys, suppose ye let us see your license now.'
'License is it?' said Hughie; 'what wud I want wid a license? I haven't fired a shot the day. Shure, this is the masther's second gun I'm carryin',' and he came scuttling after me.
'Oh, but them polis is botheration,' he said, when he reached me; 'there's too many ov them in the counthry be half; ye cud feed the pigs aff ov them ahl winter an' not fin' the differ.'
From that point home was a straight walk in along a hard level road, and we swung briskly along in the frosty air.
'Not bad walking,' said I, as we entered the outskirts of the town, 'four miles in three-quarters of an hour.'
'Walkin', says you,' replied Hughie, with impartial justice, 'it's not us at ahl as did it; it's the putcheen. It's a powerful strong walker is putcheen. Thank ye kindly, Masther Harry,' and Hughie touched his cap, put his hand in his pocket, and walked away.
Charlie Vaughan sat playing chess with his sister, as they had played it every night these thirty years. They belonged to the yeomanry class, a class that is mostly English or Scotch by extraction, and has few Irish characteristics. In the narrow circle of their lives on the lonely farm there was not much room for variety; they did the same things at the same hour of the day from one year's end to another.
As bedtime drew near they began to quarrel. She said that he had taken his finger off a piece before altering his mind, and moving it back; he denied it, and they quarrelled. The same quarrel had occurred every night in all those years. They loved each other dearly, but the game wouldn't have been a game without its quarrel. She swept the pieces off the board in a passion, and he wandered gently off into the night to see that all the gates about the farm were locked and the house securely barred.
To-night he was not quite in his usual mood. Perhaps the quarrel had been a little more real than usual, and had jarred upon his nerves. The subtle seduction of the moonlight moved him. He felt a void in his life, a vague craving for sympathy, for something which he had never known. After a time he identified the feeling as one which had occurred periodically to him before. It was a yearning for one sip of the wine of life before it was too late, a sense of weariness, of discouragement at the thought that he had never known that joy which is every man's birthright once in his lifetime, the joy of knowing the full meaning of a woman's love.
Now he remembered the incident that had started the train of thought. He had been making a move, and his eyes fell upon his hand, and he had recognized with a strange outwardness for the first time that it was the hand of an old man, the fingers bent and gnarled, the nails dull, the muscles corrugated, and the veins dried up and withered. If he was ever to know more about women than he knew now, it behoved him to act quickly ere his manhood had quite died within him.
Once or twice before he had awakened to the same fact, but never with such urgency as now. Even still he was the wreck of a fine man, and there had been a time when he might easily have found favor with women, but he had let his chances slip. A bookworm and a dreamer, he had let his youth slide by before he knew that it was gone. His manhood he had spent beneath the rule of his elder brother. Once he had asserted his right to an individual soul, and fallen in love with a woman, and she was ready to reciprocate his love. But when he went and t told his brother, the elder replied: 'You can marry if you like, but as sure as you do, out you go out of my house. There's not enough on the farm to keep more than the three of us. I've never married, and I don't see why you should.'
For the moment his manhood rose in arms, and he determined to go out into the world and make a place for himself; but he put it off and put it off, and his brother was twenty years older than himself, and it seemed a pity to lose his chance of the farm, so the time never came, and he grew old waiting for his brother's death, and the woman that he loved grew old too.
At last his brother died, and he went to her and asked her to marry him, but she said: 'I loved you well once, and would have stood by your side if you had had the heart to make a fight for me. I've waited for you all these years, but now it's too late. I'm too old to change,' and she died also, and they were never married.
After her death he was numbed for a time, for he had so little that the loss of even the placid affection of their later years made a great gap in his life. Then the farm began to go wrong; he had not the practical head to manage it as his brother had managed it; and though he worked as hard as ever, what had formerly sufficed to keep the three in comfort could now barely support the remaining two. In truth, weakness of character had been his bane all his life, and would be to the end. He had not the strength to carry any purpose to its appointed goal. He was strong neither for good nor for evil. He was cursed with the curse of Reuben, 'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.' But he knew that he was weak, and it was very pitiful.
To-night, after shutting up the house, he went to his bed; and as he lay awake there through the watches of the night, his desolation came home to him and ate into his heart, and he pitied himself exceedingly.
About three o'clock, the darkest part of the night, he rose and wandered restlessly out into the garden, and sat alone there with the 'night of the large few stars, the mad naked summer night,' till its fascination entered into his marrow and stirred his placid soul with a strange disturbance.
As he sat there in the darkness, suddenly there was a movement in the hedgerows and all the trees around him, and a twittering burst forth on every side; it was the birds rousing themselves from their night's slumber. For five minutes the matin song lasted, and then as suddenly ceased, and a great stillness reigned over the world, waiting for the birth of another day. Five minutes later the first ray of dawn tinged the eastern horizon, and the birds burst into song a second time to hail the new-born day.
Often before he had noticed that sudden outburst and sudden hush before the dawn, and vaguely wondered what it meant. But the sound of cocks crowing and the wakened life of a farmyard came to his ears, and reminded him of the thread of his daily duties that had to be taken up.
When he entered the house one of the maids was already down, and was cleaning the kitchen window, kneeling upon the table, with her back to him. He went up to her, and to attract her attention laid his hand upon her ankle. He felt a sudden tremor run through her, and at the contact a flood of fire pulsed through his own veins, for the glamour of the night was still over all his senses.
She turned and looked at him with a wanton twinkle in her eye; they were bold, black eyes in a gypsy face, and he wondered he had never noticed before how pretty she was. Something in her gaze struck him. He looked at her shiftily. He wanted to take her in his arms, to ask her to kiss him, and he opened his mouth to do so; but, after all those years, the hinges of his tongue worked creakingly, the thought of taking decided action of any kind out of his ordinary groove daunted him, from long disuse his executive faculties were no longer under the control of his will, and the words that issued from his mouth were quite different from what he had intended, they were dictated by habit; he jerked out with parched lips,—
'Where's the key of the byre, Cassy?'
'Troth, sir, you have it hangin' on yer little fing-er,' she replied, with a glance that showed understanding and a spice of contempt for his weakness of purpose.
'Oh, ay, so it is,' he answered, and turning, shuffled hastily out in confusion.
But he couldn't settle down to his work, and soon gave it up, and started for a walk in the cool morning air, hoping thus to allay the fever of his blood. All the way he was arguing with himself, despising himself for the failure of his overtures, and yet frightened at the idea of their succeeding. He tried to persuade himself that it was respect for his sister that had withheld him, but even he could not sink to such self-deception as that.
It was haytime, most of the mowing was already over, and nothing further could be done with the grass until the sun and wind had had time to dry the dew of the night. Few people, therefore, were yet stirring, no smoke rose out of the cottage chimneys, not a sound was to be heard but the croak of the corn-crake running before him in the meadow, the juicy swish of a distant scythe through the wet grass, or the strident sound of the whetstone upon the blade. Crossing a field, he met the daughter of one of his tenants carrying two pails of foaming milk—a pretty, fair girl with a sun-tanned face. She was not the least like the other, but again the same mad longing came over him, checked by the same infirmity. He wanted to ask her to put down her pails and to give him a kiss, but, unready as ever, all he could force his lips to stammer out was,—
'Good-morning, Mary.'
'Good-morning, surr,' she answered, with a courtesy, and passed on to tell her mother that 'big Misther Vaughan' knew her Christian name—a depth of interest of which she had never suspected him before.
For some days afterwards every time he met Cassy about the house she looked at him, and every time she looked at him he made up his mind to kiss her the next. At last he met her on the stairs early one morning, and did kiss her. She made a slight scuffle, and, more from his nervousness than her resistance, the kiss only fell on the tip of her ear, and she scuttled downstairs laughing. But nevertheless he felt uplifted in his own esteem all that day; he actually had achieved the task he had set himself.
The next day Cassy was missing, and never returned. For a time there were some queer rumors about her, which at last were confirmed by the birth of her child. And soon afterwards, to his great dismay, he was served with an order for maintenance as the father.
Of course he went to law about it; but, as he afterwards told himself bitterly, he was fool enough to admit that he had kissed her once, and in the light of that admission the jury found against him with £100 damages.
Not long afterwards Cassy was married, and it began to be whispered about that her husband was the real father of the child, and the pair had taken advantage of Vaughan's simplicity to saddle him with the responsibility.
Mingled with their disapprobation before there had been a certain respect in people's attitude to him; they were surprised, and said, 'They didn't think Charlie Vaughan had it in him.' But now all this was changed to amusement and contempt.
But that did not affect 'old Vaughan,' as he now began to be called. He was too much taken up with his own disillusionment to mind other people's conduct. From Cassy's manner he had thought that he had at last attained the wish of his life, but he now recognized the meaning of her regard for what it really was, the mere ephemeral desire of a pregnant woman; and he had let her see through his weakness, and himself suggested to her the means of his own undoing.
His old sense of weariness and discouragement returned upon him and settled down over his life. He saw that with the ridicule in which he was held what had now become his consuming desire, the only means of renewing his self-respect, had become utterly hopeless. His thirst for the wine of life had come to him too late to be ever quenched. He lost heart. The sap went out of him. The neighbors noticed that he failed visibly, and grew rapidly gray. Within the year he was dead, and no woman had ever loved him.
Maggie Paterson stood on the edge of the frozen surface of Lough Legaltian and looked about her with a dreary sense of loneliness. Round her were several groups of chattering girls; they glanced at her furtively from time to time, and she felt that they were talking of her; she wished to speak to them, but the reputation of her father's sternness, the life apart that she had led, and the barriers of custom, which are so strong in country life, stood between them. Some of them she knew by name, nearly all by sight; but though they were of her own age and station, she had never played with them; she had never gone to school like other children; she had always lived at home with her silent, gloomy father, who thought of nothing but his religion.
Now, as she stood there, a spectator of the life in which she should have shared, and the joyous shouts of her compeers rang in her ears, blended with the metallic whir of the skates upon the ice, a bitter feeling of rebellion welled slowly up in her young heart. All the joys of childhood and of youth, which she had never known, all the repressed instincts of her vigorous young life, called aloud in her for outlet, and a slowly gathering wave of restlessness, of resentment against all the forms of her narrowed life, swept over her.
Her eyes, bent inward upon herself, no longer saw anything of what was happening around her. A young man, clashing his skates together, came up and sat down near her to put them on; he was one of many now hurrying from their work in the winter twilight, to make use of a spell of frost which comes but seldom in the moist climate of Donegal. He looked at her hesitatingly, got up, and sat down again nervously; but she noted nothing. She saw a vision of herself learning to know the inward meaning of life; she felt a craving for some being outside herself to whom she might be necessary, for whom she might experience some feeling other than the merely dutiful affection which she bore to her father as a matter of habit. And with that vision before her fixed gaze, she moved out slowly over the lake.
When she came to herself she found herself standing in the middle of the ice, while a figure on skates was hovering distractedly about her. She looked at him, and as soon as he caught her eye, he dashed boldly up and said,—
'Good-evening, Miss; can I help you on with your skates?'
She remembered him now; she had seen his face on the rare occasions when she passed through her father's shop; he was the manager of the drapery department. His name was Johnny Daly.
'I can't skate,' she said pathetically, feeling that this was the last drop in her cup of bitterness.
'I can teach you, if you like,' he replied diffidently.
'Father doesn't like me to be out alone. I oughtn't to be here now. He would be right mad if he knew it,' she answered, with an exaggerated gratitude that she had at last found some one who appeared to take an interest in her.
'Perhaps you would like me to see you home then?'
'Thanks, I should like it very much later on. But I am not going home just yet. Now I am here, I intend to enjoy myself.'
The defiance of her tone was so very much out of proportion to the mild manner in which she was taking her enjoyment, that the young man felt inclined to laugh. To cover his embarrassment, and at the same time to display his skill, he began gravely to execute figures round her. Unaccustomed to outdoor exercises, the girl looked with wide eyes of admiration at his process of 'showing off.' But by this time they had worked out into the centre of the lough, where the spring which fed it bubbled up in a clear open space. In doing a backward roll he approached dangerously near the edge; she opened her mouth to cry out; at that moment his skate caught in a roughness of the ice; he fell backwards with a crash, and broke through the thin ice into the black water beyond.
Maggie screamed for help, and dark figures came flitting along the ice towards her. But they were a long way off, and she saw she must depend upon herself if the young man's life was to be saved. He came up and clutched at the edge of the ice, which broke off in his fingers, and he disappeared again; it was evident that he could not swim.
Rapidly the girl unwound her long knitted scarf from about her neck, knotted her purse in the end of it, and flung it to him as he rose the second time.
He seized it eagerly, and gasping from the chill of his sudden immersion, said,—
'Shure you're an angel, Miss Maggie; hold on a bit, don't pull till I tell you.'
Then he gradually broke his way through the thin ice till he came to a thickness sufficient to bear his weight.
'Now pull,' he said, and when the rescuers arrived on the spot they found their work already done, and Daly trying to persuade his master's daughter that she oughtn't to shake hands with him while he was so wet.
Before the others arrived within earshot, she said to him with a motherly air, 'Now run away home and get your wet things changed, or you'll catch cold. To-morrow is Sunday, and I'll see you at church.'
At the church porch the next morning, at twelve o'clock, Maggie found the usual assemblage of young men sitting upon tombstones and lounging against the headstones of graves, as they watched the congregation enter. This particular morning they were massed together like a herd of bullocks eying a strange dog, and all gazed steadfastly at Johnny Daly, who was sitting on a large tombstone by himself swinging his legs disconsolately. Behind them the bare barnlike church was squatly silhouetted against the sky. When he saw her his face brightened, and he came up to her with an air of relief.
'Good-morning,' she said; 'are you coming into church with me?'
'If I may,' he replied, looking at her curiously.
'Of course,' she said promptly, and they passed into church and entered a pew together.
All through the service she noticed that he watched her closely, and copied her every movement. The rest of the congregation stared at the pew in a manner that made her feel very uncomfortable, and seemed greatly in excess of the occasion.
As they were going out together, she said to him,—
'How is it I've never seen you in church before?'
'Don't you know I'm a Roman?' he replied wonderingly.
Then the demeanor of her neighbors was made plain to her, and she blushed to think of what she had done.
'No, I didn't know; why didn't you tell me?' she stammered. 'Why did you come in if you didn't like it?'
'But I did like it,' he replied in a vibrant voice. 'I'd do more than that to sit along of you. Didn't you save my life last night?'
Maggie blushed and kept silence, but a gentle glow of satisfaction thrilled through her.
Presently they came to the cross roads, one arm of which led homeward, the other to the shore.
'I'm going this way,' she said, motioning towards the beach.
'May I come too?'
'Of course you may,' she laughed, with a coquettish glance at him from under her long eyelashes; 'do you think I'd have mentioned it, if I hadn't meant you to come?
'Does father know you're a Roman?' she inquired suddenly, after a pause.
'Of course.'
'Then how is it he keeps you in the shop? I thought he was so bitter against your folks.'
'So he is; but there's no one else in the town as can hold a candle to me at the feel of the stuff. And old Paterson—I mean, Mr. Paterson, Miss—doesn't mix up his business with his religion, or he wouldn't be the smartest trader in the town, as he is now.'
Every Sunday after that they went to church together, and for their half-hour's stroll afterwards. She looked forward to the meeting as the one bright spot in her dull existence. Her starved heart was ripe for love; and soon her whole life became centred round the glow in this one young man's eyes. Her father knew nothing of what was happening. He attended the Wesleyan Chapel, where the service was half an hour longer, and always found his daughter at home when he arrived.
Old Paterson was a queer character in his way. His hard-featured face showed the Scotch blood that is so prevalent among the middle classes in the North of Ireland. His was a nature that had been warped by adversity. Somewhat late in life he married a wife whom he tenderly loved. After one short year of wedded happiness, she died in giving birth to Maggie. Up to the date of that crowning sorrow of his life, Paterson had been an ordinary church-goer, somewhat Low Church like the rest of his class. But from that moment onward his religion flowed in an ever bitterer and narrower stream. The emotional side of his nature, thwarted in one direction, expended itself fiercely in another. He became noted in the parish for his intolerance and rabid sectarianism. In him all the forces of Orangism, its opposition in race, class, and religion to the surrounding Papists, reached their fullest development.
Gradually his bigotry became too intense for the orthodox Church to hold him. He got himself elected a churchwarden for the mere purpose of thwarting the vicar at every turn. At last, when the harassed clergyman was nearly persecuted to death, that lack of humor which was an inherent element of Paterson's severely practical mind, delivered him from his enemy. Paterson's eye fell upon the church notice-board, and perceived that it was held in an Oxford frame, which was in the form of a cross. This was rank Popery, and not to be borne in a Protestant establishment. In all haste he summoned a vestry meeting, and proposed that the Oxford frame should have its ends sawn off and all resemblance to the accursed symbol removed. The vestry-meeting, composed chiefly of his friends, and Scotch like himself, gravely carried his proposal into effect. But the ridicule of the town descended upon the idea, and the mutilated notice-board remained for a testimony against him.